Here are some calculated guitar sounds.  They were calculated by "physical modeling" of the instrument.   This simply means that we used Newton's laws to calculate how the different parts of the guitar vibrate.  Unfortunately we are not (yet) able to model all parts of the instrument in a realistic way.  We have therefore constructed a series of calculations (i.e., models) which include more and more of the essential physics.  These calculations are described in our paper at the 2001 International Conference on Computational Science.  The paper can be found here.

Here are links to some very simple sounds calculated for several different virtual guitars.  In each case the sound is produced by plucking a single string, so we don't have a sophisticated melody, but you should be able to tell the difference.

1. The sound produced by an  ideal flexible string. This is a very simple calculation and a very simple model.

2. The sound from a  more realistic string.   This string has some stiffness, as do all real strings.

3. The virtual guitar used to compute sounds (1) and (2) has an extremely crude soundboard.  As explained in the ICCS paper, this soundboard model does not capture the complexity of the "attack" - i.e., the initial portion of the tone.  The next sound has a  more realistic soundboard.   This soundboard is a real vibrating plate with ribs.

We believe that sound #3 is the most realistic guitar tone, and that it is even possible to mistake this for a real guitar.  However, there is still much more that we plan to add to our virtual guitar.  These additions include a full body (with sides and a back) with air inside which will also vibrate.  These body and air vibrations will then excite vibrations is the virtual air around the instrument which will carry the sound to the listener.