VSTI world hate MIDI GUITAR?

[nix808]

Thanks very much Dave,
I tried changing the way my pickup is set and got it down to less than 1 mm (Roland recomends 1 mm) from the strings, also centred it better. I also tried setting sensitivity lower and higher, and in the end left it at about 5. My technique isn't great, sometimes I play wrong notes and knock other strings, but the synth quite simply plays 2 different notes on one fret or skips a clean plucked note completely. I usually set the decay on the synths I'm playing so they don't ring out indefinetly, but thanks for the scrunchie tip. So I'm still finding an imperfect performance from the unit, it is nonetheless akin to magic being able to play whatever with guitar, and I'm enjoying it so. Did you mean hold when you mentioned hysterisis? Do you know if it's possible to get perfect tracking with the GR 20? It would be well cool at that. Thanks again,
Nix:)

[des]

Hi Nix!

I looked at the GR-20 manual and it looks like you only have a sensitivity control - so don't worry about the hysterisis setting...I might have been confusing it with midi drum sensitivity settings...

So you went to the adjust ment pages and set string 6 level first and everything went fine? You were able to make the level just right - not too high or low?. A couple of items:

- Is the GK pickup mounted as close as possible to the bridge?

- Regarding the two notes you hear - are they at the same time or do they go back and forth between the two? If it is the later, it could be that your guitar is slightly out of tune and the GR isn't sure what note it is supposed to play. A technique problem could be that when you fret the note you are pushing real hard on it causing the note to bend out of range slightly..this might cause the GR to 'hunt' for the correct note. If you are not sure what I mean by pressing hard - listen to the guitar clean and press on a note - the harder you press you can hear the note pitch change - you can actually apply vibrato this way if you want to. However, MIDI converters absolutely don't like this... Well, let me clarify - depending on the mode you are in they probably won't like it. In mono mode - each string gets it's own midi channel and if you were to say bend a note on a string on purpose, the GR would generate a pitch bend event...the notes would track. This requires the synth to be multi-timbral - able to receive on multiple channels at the same time. Great for guitar or string sounds - can make a piano patch sound horribly out of tune. But if you are in Polymode (and I think this is what the GR20 runs internally) all the strings are on the same channel - if the pitch changes even slightly it will jump a semitone. So if you are pressing a note really hard it could cause the GR to play the next note up...if the pressure backs off the note will drop back down and so on.

- did you purchase this new or used? If new - I would recommend taking it to the place you bought it and see if they have another GR unit you can try. This way you can dertermine if the problem is in your GR or in your GK pickup install. Hopefully they will have a GK equipped guitar so you can compare it's setup with yours. If your guitar action is real high, that can cause problems with technique that will in turn cause problems with the GR tracking....

...

[nix808]

Thanks so much for helping me out and for your time Dave,
I adjusted the sensitivity up and down, but it didn't seem to make much difference, apart from volume. It's on a scale from 1-9 and I've set all the strings at 5. My pickup is less than 10 mm centre from where the strings leave the bridge. I can live with the missed notes(they are very rare), but the ones that mispitch are a bit frustrating. They play out,and then without moving my hand, the next note will be right. They only go a semitone or tone out, I don't think I'm bending them out. It takes a real bend to get a note to trigger bent up. My guitar's action is decent. I've been playing it in both poly and mono modes, with the same results. I heard on another forum that the GK3 doesn't respond as well as those with pickup inbuilt. I'm going to contact Roland, I bought the unit new, and also the shop to find out if I should expect perfect(for intents and purposes) performance. Thanks once again (and sorry for hijacking the thread, Krraqk),
Nix

[Sascha Franck]

What guitar are you using, Nix?
I had some bad experiences with ones throwing out lots of harmonics and even worse experiences with some vibrato-equipped ones. The best performance I got out of some Steinberger (which I unfortunately sold ages ago, still missing the incredible TransTrem), which had a perfectly clean (some would say "sterile") tone.
And yes, the built in ones are usually performing way better - Fishman offer replacements for all sorts of bridges, but I'm not sure whether you can use the electronic part of the GK along with them.

[nix808]

Hey Sascha,
Thanks for your input. I'm using an Ibanez RG series. I took a couple of screws out of the bridge so I could mount the pickup as close as possible. It's action is pretty good, about 3-4 mm above the frets. It's a pity that I didn't suss this out sooner, as now the shop probably won't let me bring the GR back. I kind of suspect that it's the GR itself, and want to try a GI, as I've heard that someone was happy with theirs... although it could be the pickup, I really wouldn't know. Midi guitar is definetly my instrument, if only I could get the tracking sweet. I most certainly want to get a setup that works. I want to make sure my unit is not faulty before I suggest going for a different controller than the GR.
Happy music making, Nix

[krraqk]

i thought instead of samples it uses really basic physical modeling

Roland is not specially know to publish many details about the technology inside their units. But its stated clearly that there is used modelling to create the sounds, amps, etc.

It seems that it takes the real guitar signal and then model the diverse components that would create the (guitar or synth) sound and apply it to the original sound modifying it and creating the resulting sounds. That's not pure physical modelling but a hybrid approach, but it has great advantages, because you play and feel the instrument just like what it is, a guitar.

No pitch to midi, no false notes, no glitches, etc, etc, not more walls and frontiers between the instrument and the synth triggered, just play the instrument and the soft will model the sound for you. Amazing!.

Many years later Line6 has done the same with the Variax line, so Roland is not more alone with this approach, but sadly there is not synth sounds.

Again, its a GREAT technology with a enormous musical and expressive potential, which I hope would be developed much more. The future would be brilliant.

[krraqk]

maybe a good comparison would be antares kantos.

Dont know Kantos, but if its in the same approach, Im happy that there is more people working in this form of hybrid modelling synthesis applied to real instruments.

[AdmiralQuality]

Everything done in the digital domain is "modeling" of some form or another. The word is essentially meaningless.

[krraqk]

Bit late to the party, didn't read all posts either, but a few things:

() Looks as if impOSCAR is indeed there to do exactly what MIDI guitarists need.

() Most synths, if loaded more than once, don't consume more CPU power per se. Yes, there's a few things that *will* consume more, such as filters, which don't care about whether there's a monophonic or polyphonic signal running through them. Also, some synths share GUI ressources when loaded more than once, some don't. But on nowadays machines this shouldn't be too much of an issue.

() Energy XT could indeed be the solution. What you'd need to do is:
- Create one synth, set it up to your likings, switch to mono mode.
- Deactivate the filter on said synth (unless you got loads of power available, then a 6x filter might be fine...).
- Create a bunch of CC faders and cable them to the most important paramters (ADSR, maybe some timbre relevant parameters, whatever).
- Clone the instrument so you got six instances, set the MIDI channels accordingly.
- Run all the instances of the synth through one filter.
- Save it as a patch and open it in whatever your favourite sequencer may be.

Now, with the CC faders you created, it'd be possible to tweak the most important synth parameters all at once for each of the instances.
Theoretically, you should even be able to send program changes to all the synths and they should all load the same patch at once (btw, thinking about it, you wouldn't even have to set them to mono mode, but of course there's the "safety factor" of mono mode when it comes to glitch notes). I've never tried this though.
Btw, I seriously wouldn't recommend using a multitimbral synth, because none of the ones I know of (apart from ImpOSCar it seems) allow for simultaneous tweaking of all loaded channels at once (ok, in Kontakt, you could do so via some clever CC mapping, but you'd still need an environment to send those CCs to it). EnergyXT should however be sort of the best solution as you can tweak multiple parameters of multiple instances of whatever synth at once.
There's a big downside though: In the scenario described above, when you'd load a patch into all the six instances, the CC faders wouldn't update themselves according to the new patch (from what I know there's no such a thing as individual parameter outputs that can be routed back from a VSTi to a fader to get you some feedback). So, to work with this method properly, you'd have to adjust all your CC parameter sliders according to patch, then resave as an Energy XT preset and then do the patch changes for the eXT instance rather than for the synth inside. This causes another issue: Patch changes will take quite a while.

Bottomline: Apart from ImpOSCar there doesn't seem to be a perfect solution, but I would in any case fool around with Energy XT for a while.

Wow, very good suggestions here from you.

Sadly I think for now I have enough work to do with all that synthesis, daws, plugins, midi guitar (that Axon unit is complex), many external units, etc to have time to learn EnergyXT in order to do only that semi automation of the loading/editing patches in order to play with midi guitar. Although I would probably take a look at it in the future.

For know I'm trying to find some workarounds with some of my synths in order to be able to play with six channels loaded at the same time.
Contrary to what you have said, I find me more comfortable with multitimbral vstis. Kontakt, sampletank, even hypersonic (wich I plan to purchase because I have tried it in a friend pc and I love it). At first I play in one channel, tweak the sound and then load all the 6 channels easily. Not the best solution, but at least its semi workable.

Definitively yes the synth world is not done for the guitarist.

[AdmiralQuality]

Um, I read Sascha Franck's suggestions originally and didn't even bother to comment on them as they're so far off -- i.e. Why use just one filter? As synth filters are typically per-voice, then there isn't any extra hit from using filters on each instance of 6 mono synths (how many synths let you disable the filter ANYWAY?), vs. playing a 6 note chord on the same synth with a polyphonic patch. Either way you still have 6 filters.

So he's just overcomplicating things unnecessarily.

Look, the way to do this would be to run 6 instances of your favorite synth, each in MONO mode (or simply playing a monophonic patch) and put each instance on a successive MIDI channel (i.e. channels 1 to 6). And make sure your MIDI input from the guitar controller is routed to each synth and the guitar controller is sending in Mono mode. It's as simple as that.

Then make sure pitch bend range on the 6 synths match what your guitar-to-MIDI converter likes to send (I believe it was 24 semitones for at least one of the models I studied... mentioned somewhere above). And yes, this won't use MUCH more power than a single instance of your synth running a 6 note polyphonic chord. It's the voice count that uses power, not the synth count.

Routing the MIDI "Env Follow" CC (if your guitar converter creates that signal, as one of the ones I studied above does) to the filter cutoff or amp level will make it even more expressive and matching your guitar performance... though I'd think you wouldn't always want this as the synth sound you want wouldn't necessarily have the same dynamic envelopes as the original guitar string signals.

There are no doubt ways to get other common controllers out from the guitar controller as well... pressure, modulation, etc. And as you're in Mono mode, on 6 different channels, you have an independent one of these for EACH STRING.

[Prajch]

I don't know if it's been suggested yet, but ImpOSCar works with MIDI guitars in mono mode (at least that's what the manual says).

[AdmiralQuality]

I don't know if it's been suggested yet, but ImpOSCar works with MIDI guitars in mono mode (at least that's what the manual says).

Bit late to the party, didn't read all posts either, but a few things:

() Looks as if impOSCAR is indeed there to do exactly what MIDI guitarists need.

Yes. And My Poly-Ana will do it too (eventually, before ver 1.0). And I'm sure there are a few others that do it as well. But I keep trying to make the point that ANY VSTi can do it, if you just run 6 instances of the same (or if you wanted, different) monophonic patch.

But yeah, it's a lot easier to set up if one instance of the synth can be made wise to this.

EDIT: Oh man, I'm trying this now with the MIDI that krraqk sent me and it's NOT easy to set up! I'm having to filter the extra MIDI channels out of each copy of the track... So, MIDI guitar in Mono mode is DEFINITELY a feature all VSTis should support!!!

[AdmiralQuality]

http://www.admiralquality.com/mp3/krraq ... p3?vstwhmg

There it is, a Mono mode track rendered from krraq's contest entry, done the hard way with 6 separate instances of a soft-synth (each playing a monophonic sound). I had to filter out the extra unneeded channels from each of 6 copies of the track, but once I did that it worked.

[AdmiralQuality]

Here's an SX3 project demonstrating how to do it:

http://www.admiralquality.com/mp3/GuitS ... ip?vstwhmg

[kevink]

I'm very impressed with the specs on the Roland GI-20. The Axon AX-100 looks pretty nice too but no USB like the GI-20 offers. With MIDI streams as thick as you'd get from a guitar controller, I think USB would make a huge difference and nullify any thinning issues.

It doesn't nullify MIDI tracking delays completely, but it does reduce perceptably on my system. I had an older Roland that was completely worthless as a MIDI controller, but the GI-20 does a pretty acceptable job. Even with a lot of delay, if one is playing only a synth, one can play the guitar ahead of the beat, much as one would with a lot of instruments (I guess playing ahead of the desired note is something that guitarists don't normally have to deal with, which is probably one reason why so few take up guitar synth). The GI-20 is quick enough that one can put both the guitar audio and the MIDI of the same track together and have it sound like ensemble playing. "Evasion", which I put up at http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemus ... dID=161145 for want of a better place, started out as just a test of the GI-20 on my Strat, but I was having so much fun I turned it into something approaching a finished project. There are no keys used on the track, just guitar, bass, and GI-20. It's nothing great, but the Kontakt violin tracks the guitar with just enough delay to seem human.