Polyphonic Guitar to MIDI VST/AU "MIDI Guitar"- BETA TEST

[AdmiralQuality]

Notice that if the preset/sound is sample based pitch bend will not work.

That shouldn't always be the case. Most good samplers can pitchbend.

I got a chance to try it and I feel like it's not tracking nearly as well as 0.5.2 did. Does anybody else notice it cutting off bent (or even finger vibrato) notes early? (Even when pitchbend is set off.) And it doesn't seem to like fretted notes any more where before it was GREAT for this. Now I seem to have to pick each and every note or it doesn't play them.

I've sent further details and samples to JamOrigin.

About to try 0.5.3 and do an A/B test...

[AdmiralQuality]

6.1 appears stable for me in Sonar 853. I seem to be getting less false triggers and ghost octave notes as well as the note off is a bit snappier now.
Been playing around with the pitch bend and boy is it a treat. String bands are such an important part of expressive playing for a guitarist that to translate this over to MIDI is really incredible. I used to try to use pitchbend on my old roland G.I. 20 but the little bit I Fiddled around with that it was always way too sensitive And would have a hard time holding the anchor note when I wanted it to instead of pitch bending. It was probably more user error programming the hardware than anything but I didn't spend a lot of time with it. The whammy bar on my midi you rock guitar was functional but you don't get the same expressiveness as you get with real string bend that guitarist innately uses in his musical flow.
A question for you synthe people about pitch bend though.
As I scroll to the patches on my two of my favorite synthesizers, AAS analog and massive, I noticed that they have some patches that respond to midi guitar string bend and some that don't respond at all. Actually most don't respond. When I plug in my you rock guitar and use the Whammy bar ,which is set to pitchbend by defualt I believe, all the patches will respond to the pitch bend that it generates. This is without any set up on the synthesizer at all, just plug it in and they all work with it. What can I do to make this connection between Midi guitar and all Soft synths. Or in other words, how do I make synths respond to the continues controller data that midi guitar is producing by default.? I am such a preset guy that I almost never go beyond something like using midi learn to map a knob to my midi floorboard pedal controller.

Spinedoc

If the pitchbend lever on a hardware "guitar shaped" controller like the YouRock or whatever is making your instruments pitch bend, then MIDIGuitar should be too. If it's not that's MIDIGuitar, not the instrument or program's fault.

Note that you HAVE to set up the synthesizer (or MIDIGuitar) so the pitch bend ranges match. (As several of us have already noted, above.) This is the same for hardware (real) guitar converters like the Roland and Axon too. (I believe the Rolands are hard wired for +/- 1 octave, 12 semitones. At least I remember one of their manuals recommending that setting.)

I can't bend with MIDI-Guitar 0.6.1 more than about half a semitone (50 cents) before it kills the note. (This was in 12 semitone bend range, maybe it's more tolerant if I turn it down some? Don't know, haven't tried yet.)

Also note that pitchbend is NOT "continuous controller data". It's its own controller, and there's only one per channel (there's 127 CC controls per channel, but they only have 128 step range which is unsuited for pitch bend where you'd hear the steps. Pitchbend has 16384 possible steps as it doesn't need to "waste" 7 bits defining the controller number.)

This is also why MIDI guitar should really be multichannel. So each string can have its own channel (and therefore its own pitchbend). You can't bend strings on your YouRock, so it doesn't matter. But for real guitar technique, it's vital. I don't think JamOrigin should be doing pitch bend without having multichannel working as it's just weird. (My understanding is it cuts off all other notes when one is bending. But most of the time guitarists have one note rining while another is bending, which is impossible to encode the way MIDI-Guitar is currently working.)

I actually find the ghost octaves to be far worse with this update. I hardly got any before.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they'll work through this. But I'm still seeing this release as a step backwards, though I'm sure it's a temporary one.

[JamOrigin]

AdmiralQuality, I got your recording and are looking into why this happens for you. At this time we need to understand and test different approaches and maybe some approaches of 0.6 isnt good for your guitar or playing style, but now we will understand why, and this knowledge will ultimately give a better product in the end.

Some approaches in 0.6 might turn out to cut processing usage into a fraction of what it is now and that could be traded in for even better latency or accuracy. The full picture is sometimes hard to see, but we are uncovering it bit by bit. And of course keep 0.5 available for you.

[AdmiralQuality]

AdmiralQuality, I got your recording and are looking into why this happens for you. At this time we need to understand and test different approaches and maybe some approaches of 0.6 isnt good for your guitar or playing style, but now we will understand why, and this knowledge will ultimately give a better product in the end.

Some approaches in 0.6 might turn out to cut processing usage into a fraction of what it is now and that could be traded in for even better latency or accuracy. The full picture is sometimes hard to see, but we are uncovering it bit by bit. And of course keep 0.5 available for you.

Yep. Like I said above, I'm confident you'll work through the issues.

I'll have some more tests to send you, probably later tonight. Now that I can A/B between the two versions (I hope, haven't tested the new 0.5 yet.)

[ariajazz]

Notice that if the preset/sound is sample based pitch bend will not work.

That shouldn't always be the case. Most good samplers can pitchbend.

IK Multimedia Sample Tank does not, I don't know if NI KONTAKT does. I will check it out tomorrow and try MIDI GUITAR 6.1 as well

[AdmiralQuality]

Notice that if the preset/sound is sample based pitch bend will not work.

That shouldn't always be the case. Most good samplers can pitchbend.

IK Multimedia Sample Tank does not, I don't know if NI KONTAKT does. I will check it out tomorrow and try MIDI GUITAR 6.1 as well

Yes, Kontakt does. And from a quick Google, Sampletank does too. (It would have to be a VERY substandard sampler product to not support pitchbend.)

[AdmiralQuality]

Just went back to 0.5.3 and it has the same rejection of bent notes. If I pluck a note and hold it, it holds fine, but applying any bend to that note, or even a slight "whammy bar" vibrato causes it to cut off. So I guess it's not just the 0.6.1 update that's doing that. (I could have sworn it wasn't doing that before. Could I be remembering behavior from an earlier version than 0.5.2 maybe?)

One thing I miss from 0.6.1 is the new velocity sensitivity, which is great! You might want to provide controls for both the maximum and minimum velocities that it will output. (Though minimum is more important.)

Oh and MIDI has release velocity too. Though it's very rarely implemented on synths or sent from keyboards so I wouldn't consider it a priority. It's really only useful for modulating envelope release time (as it doesn't exist until that point in the note). I'm not sure if there's really slow or fast releases (note cut offs) on guitar. Maybe a palm mute could be considered fast, and letting the string die away naturally could be considered slow. (It's amazing how MIDI-Guitar can still hear the string sustaining even when my ear can't. But as soon as I palm-mute it cuts off the note. It's almost spooky!)

More tomorrow...

[ariajazz]

Notice that if the preset/sound is sample based pitch bend will not work.

That shouldn't always be the case. Most good samplers can pitchbend.

IK Multimedia Sample Tank does not, I don't know if NI KONTAKT does. I will check it out tomorrow and try MIDI GUITAR 6.1 as well

Yes, Kontakt does. And from a quick Google, Sampletank does too. (It would have to be a VERY substandard sampler product to not support pitchbend.)

Probably some presets that uses samples do not support pitch bend, it happened to me using Sampletank with a Vibes sound loaded, no way to have pitch bend, so I concluded that sample based sounds do not support pitch bend in some samplers.

[AdmiralQuality]

Notice that if the preset/sound is sample based pitch bend will not work.

That shouldn't always be the case. Most good samplers can pitchbend.

IK Multimedia Sample Tank does not, I don't know if NI KONTAKT does. I will check it out tomorrow and try MIDI GUITAR 6.1 as well

Yes, Kontakt does. And from a quick Google, Sampletank does too. (It would have to be a VERY substandard sampler product to not support pitchbend.)

Probably some presets that uses samples do not support pitch bend, it happened to me using Sampletank with a Vibes sound loaded, no way to have pitch bend, so I concluded that sample based sounds do not support pitch bend in some samplers.

Are you sure that pitch bend wasn't just turned off in the patch? Real vibraphones don't pitch bend, so most patch designers wouldn't make their vibes patch bend either. You'll find this a lot on piano patches too. But any sampler worth it's salt should let you get in there and change that. (Assuming you have the ability to edit patches. Sorry, I'm not familiar with Sampletank offhand. Anyone?)

[ariajazz]

Notice that if the preset/sound is sample based pitch bend will not work.

That shouldn't always be the case. Most good samplers can pitchbend.

IK Multimedia Sample Tank does not, I don't know if NI KONTAKT does. I will check it out tomorrow and try MIDI GUITAR 6.1 as well

Yes, Kontakt does. And from a quick Google, Sampletank does too. (It would have to be a VERY substandard sampler product to not support pitchbend.)

Probably some presets that uses samples do not support pitch bend, it happened to me using Sampletank with a Vibes sound loaded, no way to have pitch bend, so I concluded that sample based sounds do not support pitch bend in some samplers.

Are you sure that pitch bend wasn't just turned off in the patch? Real vibraphones don't pitch bend, so most patch designers wouldn't make their vibes patch bend either. You'll find this a lot on piano patches too. But any sampler worth it's salt should let you get in there and change that. (Assuming you have the ability to edit patches. Sorry, I'm not familiar with Sampletank offhand. Anyone?)

Yes, that's what I'm trying to say, SOUNDS do not support pitch bend

[AdmiralQuality]

Yes, that's what I'm trying to say, SOUNDS do not support pitch bend

Can you not edit the sound/patch/program? Or are they "hard-wired" presets?

[sheldrakes]

Trying to figure out why you would want pitch bend on vibes, it would sound awful I think. Acoustic bass in sampletank sounds great and the pitch bend makes it sound all that more realistic.

[AdmiralQuality]

Trying to figure out why you would want pitch bend on vibes, it would sound awful I think. Acoustic bass in sampletank sounds great and the pitch bend makes it sound all that more realistic.

Yep. Guitarists need to realize what us keyboard players learn early on. That certain sounds demand certain playing styles.

[ariajazz]

Yes, that's what I'm trying to say, SOUNDS do not support pitch bend

Can you not edit the sound/patch/program? Or are they "hard-wired" presets?

I believe you can edit tone parameters and add effects and thing like that, not quite sure what else, probably envelope filter but I remember I could not get pitch bend to work.

"Trying to figure out why you would want pitch bend on vibes, it would sound awful I think. Acoustic bass in sampletank sounds great and the pitch bend makes it sound all that more realistic."

I need pitch bend feature when I used FretKeys guitar to midi software since slides and hammer ons relies on pitch bend in this appication, thats the only reason I wanted pitch bend then.

[AdmiralQuality]

I need pitch bend feature when using FretKeys guitar to midi software since slides and hammer ons relies on pitch bend in this appication, thats the only reason I wanted pitch bend then.

Then FretKeys is "doin it wrong". Both slides and hammer-ons should be discreet notes.

Slides should be legato notes, meaning the previous note-off isn't sent until after the new note-on, there's a slight overlap in time. This can be used to inform synthesizers with legato triggering and/or portamento features, which were quite common on classic monophonic synths.

With hammer ons, you'd probably want staccato notes (meaning the previous note-off is sent BEFORE the new note-on, no overlap). But legato would be acceptable here as well (and I doubt it's very easy for the software to tell the difference between a slide or a hammer-on).

Picking should definitely be staccato.

Then, when you run 6 monophonic synths, one for each string on its own independent MIDI channel with independent pitch bend, you can really apply a lot of guitar technique to controlling the synth sound, and in a way keyboardists can't touch!