There seems to be an abundance of programming/DSP talent floating around this particular forum. I know I couldn't pull this off, but I bet Tobybear and the rest of you visionaries could:

BUILD A VST GUITAR SYNTH!

No, I don't mean a synth that models a guitar sound. I mean a guitar to MIDI converter.

Screw the hex pickups, screw the $1000+ guitar-to-MIDI converter, screw the cheesy onboard PCM synth sounds.
It should be possible* for a VST plug-in to track the incoming pitch of a guitar signal in real-time, convert it to MIDI events and pass it on to the VSTi of your choice. Wouldn't you love to play a silky slide lick on your Strat and have it trigger a squelchy Reaktor lead patch, all by just plugging into your soundcard?

*ok, maybe when CPU clocks have hit 50GHz and FSBs run alot faster

Just thinking out loud.

keep thinking out loud. we need more of that.
reminds me of a joke that was actually somewhat disturbing, considering the state of mind of the person who invented it.

"That guy's so crazy, even I can hear the voices in his head"

actually there is something that sorta does this. http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-1896427-100-5403972.html?tag=st.d l.10001-103-1.lst-7-2.5403972

its not a vst plug but it does do pitch to midi tracking. Ive never tried it but I believe the latency was an issue with people that did. You can even use a mic and track your voice pitch to midi.
.... ive always wanted to play the fatFM.ens from the essential library with a midi guitar....someday...

Or try this:

Sound 2 midi

Sort of what you'd expect really - the tracking goes a bit wonky here and there, and there's a bag of latency issues (what's half a second between friends) - so more for pads than Joe Satriani stuff.

Once you've wierded out your friends, you start to think that it would be easier playing the keyboard parts with a keyboard.

Life, eh!

H

There is this also

GUITAR SYNTH 2.0

Guitar Synth 2.0 Fact File:

Guitar Synth allows you to control either the synthesizer built into your soundcard or an external synthesizer, by playing your electric guitar in real-time. Unlike a hardware guitar synthesizer, Guitar Synth does not require special pickups to be attached to your guitar. You simply attach the guitar to the microphone input of your soundcard using a simple 0.25" to 5.25mm audio adapter available from electronic and audio shops.
Play the guitar and Guitar Synth will convert the audio signal from your guitar into MIDI. Hear beautiful piano chords or whatever instruments your synthesizer supports! You can even control the synthesizer using your voice, a CD or other audio input. You can also use Guitar Synth to tune your guitar.

In this version:

Several sampling speed options up to a possible 106Hz (<10ms delay) for much reduced latency
Wide range option for improved tracking at low frequencies and wider note range
New settings panel which allows you to control various parameters on the fly
New harmonic suppresser controls which have different strengths for different frequency ranges
Fingerpicking ratio control for fine tuning how Guitar Synth responds to fingerpicking style
Split points allow you to assign different note ranges to different instruments
Step entry of notes on the keyboard or guitar window using a mouse (when in pause mode)
Load and Save all parameters in SET files
Stay on top function
Change the note sustain time
Various other enhancements and bug fixes

Download here >>>>>>>>>

http://www.lateralsol.com/

[ 17 October 2001: Message edited by: Raven ]

Holy @%$^, it's like they read my mind... thanks Raven for the heads up. I will have to give that a go with my guitar (and my bass!) when I get a chance.

Too bad it's not VST format (I know, wah wah for me, but I just find that using everything as plugs inside Logic/Cubase/Whatever has spoiled me for working any other way).

This has the potential to be a fantastic performance tool. Still, I think it will be years before any hardware is fast enough for this kind of real-time pitch-to-MIDI conversion, especially for use in conjuction with higher-end soft-synths (as opposed to the soundfonts bundled in most soundcards).

I will see if I can get that guitar synth program thing to work with my MOTU 24i audio card, hopefully they will prove my scepticism very wrong...

Yack yack yack, I've blathered on too long.

Peace, kids.

Has anyone tried that software? I can understand how it could do single lines, but how can it do chords?

The whole point of a hex pickup is that each string has it's own pickup, and 6 seperate audio signals are sent through the cable into some sort of device which has 6 seperate pitch detectors, and each detector only has to figure out one note at a time (which any automatic tuner is capable of, simply count the cycles) and creates MIDI note messages based on the pitches.

Now once you have more than one note at a time, you can't just count cycles, so how can it work? If someone has created a technology to really do this then wouldn't there have been more talk about it? Anyway, if anyone here has actually tried this, and strummed a chord on a guitar and heard it come out of a soft synth, then I am really interested in hearing more about it

Tufif, of course you are absolutely right - all the methods presented above would presumably fall short with a polyphonic signal (my real interest in all this was actually using a Chapman Stick as a MIDI controller without having to fit the Roland MIDI hardware).

But I wonder if a hex pickup (or other equivalent) is truly an absolute requirement in converting a guitar chord to MIDI events. There should be a way, with powerful and smart enough DSP, to separate sympathetically generated harmonics from the actual fretted fundamentals on each string. I would agree, though, that this is pure fantasy (at least for now) and that a hex pickup is the only option to do the job for now.

Well, there's only one way to find out. Download it and try it out! It's a free download. $35 if you want the full version - which adds save as midi and lower latency.

But... the free version should be sufficient to tell you whether it works.

I just finished downloading and am going to try it out. I like the fact that it's software-based and plugs into the mic jack on your sound card. I'm wondering how it might work on other instruments and maybe even voice. Hmm.

Thanks for the info Raven!

The latencey is ok now(V.2.0),chords are no problem but getting it to stop spitting out random notes..,well,the guy who desinged this thing is on to a good idea but it definitley needs work.I gave up and found a G-50 second hand.