A pad floats in. You think it’s a synth.

But no — it’s a guitar, twisted through space and delay, stretched out with swells, warping through pitch bends. 

This isn’t the sound of campfires and solos. This is a cinematic guitar.

A guitar that doesn’t sound like a guitar at all.

Welcome to Virtual Guitarist CINEDREAM — UJAM’s new ambient guitar instrument. Built for (bedroom) producers, songwriters, but also film and game composers or sound designers who are bored of the obvious.


But why use guitar instead of synth? Because real strings, amps, and performances give your textures a human feel — even when they’re stretched, delayed, and mangled into something completely alien.

If you’ve tried making ambient guitar textures and ended up with something that still screams ‘six strings, you’re in the right place.

 

A Quick Look at Virtual Guitarist CINEDREAM

VG Cinedream Final UI 2

CINEDREAM is the most sound-design-focused Virtual Guitarist we’ve ever built. It’s less about riffs and rhythm, and more about texture, movement, and mood. You hold a chord — it evolves. You tweak a knob — it vanishes into reverb, pitch-shifted, reshaped. With 30 ambient styles, contour-based dynamic shaping, and two built-in multi-effect engines, it’s your shortcut to making guitar-based sounds that feel more like sci-fi score than singer-songwriter jam.

Let’s show you how to mangle that thing into something that feels like it drifted out of a Christopher Nolan fever dream.

1. Make Organic Pads That Breathe

The Contour knob is your new best friend. It doesn’t just change the attack. It reshapes the entire soul of the sound.

  • Dial it left → everything fades in like a synth pad. Plucks become pulses. Riffs become clouds.
     
  • Dial it right → you get exaggerated transients and sustained edges that sound less like picking and more like sound design.

In both cases, you’re shaping how the guitar behaves over time. Add a little delay or reverb on top, and boom: you’re not playing a guitar anymore. You’re shaping clouds.

Contour

"It creates a nice foundation for textures, pads, and carpets." 

— Peter Gorges, UJAM Co-Founder

Try pairing Contour with one of CINEDREAM’s 30 ambient styles and hold a chord. You’ll feel it evolve in real time.

2. Dream Bender

Normally the mod wheel in a guitar plugin gives you some vibrato — if anything. In CINEDREAM, it bends pitch in real time for trippy, evolving textures.

Automate it slowly while holding a note and you get an organic warble, it turns even the softest pluck into a warped, cinematic cry. Like an instrument that’s been detuned by memory loss. Use it sparingly, or go full Black Mirror.

Stack some delay and reverb from the Finisher section, and suddenly you’ve got a sound that’s somewhere between Blade Runner and an alien lullaby.

Pitch Bend

3. Use Style-Based Phrases to Build Atmosphere

CINEDREAM comes with 30 styles built for cinema. But don’t expect palm-muted chugs or funk strumming. These are loose, dreamy, abstract textures that feel composed by instinct, not theory.

Some standouts:

  • Head in the Clouds — Improvised fingerpicking, like a guitarist daydreaming through a movie.
  • Gimme Delay — Feels sequenced, like a synth pattern made from guitar.
  • Synthbass Pusher — Almost impossible to identify as a guitar, and that’s the point.

Load a style. Hold a chord. Each style includes variations you can trigger with keyswitches. Let the texture evolve. You’re not playing guitar. You’re painting with tone.

Head in the Clouds

4. Create Evolving Ambience with Built-in FX Chains

This is where CINEDREAM goes from cool to completely unrecognizable — in the best way.

Unlike other Virtual Guitarists, CINEDREAM places the Stompbox after the amp, just like you would in a film scoring studio. That means all your distortion and tone-shaping goes into the delay, filters, and modulation. Result? Super rich, unpredictable textures.

Use the Finisher Section to stack lush ambiences, rhythmic echoes, granular delays, and more. Two categories:

  • Effects — Distortion, pitch tricks, filtered movement.
  • Ambience — Deep reverbs, shimmering tails, evolving textures.

Some Finisher presets you should absolutely try:

  • Monster Bass — Dark, thick, and aggressive.
  • Creative Reverb — Perfect for spacey, swelling builds.
  • Syncopated Ensemble — Great for adding pulse to pads.

You’ll find elements from our UFX series here too, all baked into the chain.

Ambient - The End

5. Presets That Don’t Sound Like Guitar

CINEDREAM isn’t about one type of sound. It’s about transformation.

Try these presets to see what we mean:

  • Ghost Pulse — Soft, pulsing textures that feel like synths.
  • Static Dusk — Swelling drones that drift between organic and mechanical.
  • Pusher — Rhythmic, synth-like plucks that can carry a track.
  • Auto War — Use it for chaotic, stuttered textures.

You don’t even need a melody. Just hold a key. Let the FX engines do the work.

Dark Storm

6. Tips to Break the Guitar Mold

  • Stack it with pads from Usynth CARAMEL for cinematic glue.
  • Automate the Finisher FX dials to evolve your texture over time.
  • Pitch bend everything. Subtle, slow automation creates alien movement.
  • Use Head in the Clouds with a long Contour + deep delay = dream score vibes.
  • Swap amps mid-section to go from shimmer to crunch. It doesn’t just change tone, it changes character.

Final Thoughts

The Future of Cinematic Guitar Has Landed

Virtual Guitarist CINEDREAM 1200x630
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CINEDREAM isn’t just another guitar plug-in. It’s a sound design engine disguised as a guitarist.

Scoring a film? Building tension in a game? Layering textures under a dark pop beat? CINEDREAM slips right into the mix and makes it cinematic.

So forget what you think a guitar is supposed to sound like. Load up CINEDREAM, twist a few knobs, and let the sound take you somewhere else.

And if your audience asks "what instrument is that?" — you're doing it right

So, Do You Feel Inspired Yet?

Your fingers are probably tingling, ideas bouncing around your brain like echo trails in deep space. So why not start with a purpose?

Join our Sci-Fi Trailer Scoring Contest (link to Trailer Contest Blog Post)

We’ve teamed up with filmmaker Hashem Al-Ghaili to give you a stunning, wordless trailer — and your mission is to give it a voice. Use CINEDREAM to score the scene, shape the tension, and tell a story through sound alone.

Whether you’re crafting shimmering pulses, eerie textures, or ambient swells — this is your moment to show us what the future sounds like.