Guitar synth vst?

[Spacek]

Is there any guitar synth vst? I can of course adapt any synth to my playing,but
I would like to have a sample based vst with acoustic guitar sounds or better,
a roland GR 300 emulation.

[izonin]

http://rekkerd.org/fretted-synth/

Look for GuitSyn SE and S2VA (Safron Pro). You won't get the same tracking as in the GR-300 without a hex pickup, but it's still lots of fun. For the Pat Metheny sound use the ramp waveform and a 500ms delay.

[Spacek]

Thank you, these vst seems to be interesting but I have an hexaphonic pick up
integrate on my Godin guitar with an interface roland gi20. So I'm looking for
something like a soft roland Vg99.

[izonin]

If it's the GR-300 sounds from the VG99 you're looking for, download the waveform samples from the bottom of this page:

http://www.joness.com/gr300/patent.htm

You can then connect the gi20 to any softsynth, that allows loading of user waveforms.

[Spacek]

Thank you, I will try that.

[AdmiralQuality]

Just a note that "guitar synth" usually means a guitar controller playing a synthesizer.

You're looking for a VST that makes guitar sounds? And you want to control it from a guitar? Doesn't the guitar already make guitar sounds?

Or do you mean a guitar processor VST? Obviously any VST effect will work on guitar, but if you want the 13 pin signal processing a separate effect on each string (which is how those Roland V-whatevers work) then you need 6 audio inputs on your computer and a splitter to break the 13 pin into 6 audio cables. THEN we can talk virtual guitar effects (but as virtually nobody has this, you won't find any software products that do it, you're stuck with the Roland boxes I'm afraid.)

P.S. Poly-Ana and impOscar (V1) are the only two softsynths I'm aware of that accept MIDI guitar input (in MONO mode across 6 channels, one per string) automatically. But with a little patching, you could use any mono synth under guitar control. All you have to do is put 6 instances on 6 separate tracks, and use your hosts MIDI filtering function to select the MIDI channel you want to send to each track (obviously all sharing the same MIDI input). Only real caveat is that then you can't tweak sounds on all voices at once.

Most MIDI guitar controllers also have a POLY mode, but you'll usually want to avoid this as then you can't bend the pitch of strings independently (as there's only one pitch-bend control on a single MIDI channel).

P.P.S. I lied. SCAMP is a 6 channel effect, so it would work if you had a 6 (audio) channel track to insert it on. A separate envelope following filter on each string, that would be interesting! But again, your first problem is getting the raw audio signals from the 13 pin connector into the computer. If you have an interface with 6 or more inputs, and are handy with soldering and building cables, then you could do it fairly easily.

[jancivil]

I guess what you want is a tight-ish interface in software with your hex-pickup as controller.
in the long run you're better off with Roland and recording the result, than expecting good performance with soft synths, was my experience anyway.

there are threads here with long discussions of this but they're a bit old.

[AdmiralQuality]

I guess what you want is a tight-ish interface in software with your hex-pickup as controller.
in the long run you're better off with Roland and recording the result, than expecting good performance with soft synths, was my experience anyway.

there are threads here with long discussions of this but they're a bit old.

The Roland V-pedals aren't synths. They're effects that work on 6 SEPARATE channels of audio, one from each INDIVIDUAL STRING. They do have MIDI outputs, which you can then run into a synth or any other MIDI capable instrument. The reason you feel less latency with the Roland box is because you're not using the MIDI, you're just running real time effects on AUDIO, so there's probably essentially zero latency in that mode. But to analyze the signal enough to determine its pitch takes a few cycles of the waveform, which necessarily introduces some latency. You can't analyze the pitch of the note until the note has played for a short time.

[Spacek]

I don't want electric guitar sounds, like you said I already have. But different
accoustic and classic guitar would be interesting. Like a keyboard player want
a piano sound fender rhodes and wurlitzer etc. On the gi20, I have the mono mode
wich allow six midi outputs on six different channels. I use Chainer as host
and I can use simultaneously any vst I want on six different channels. I think it could be great to have a guitar synth vst made for the guitar as controler,
with sounds and particularity of the guitar playing.

I'm not looking for six separate audio outputs.

Roland made an emulation of the gr300 with the vg99. I was just hopping if
the soft version exist.

[AdmiralQuality]

I don't want electric guitar sounds, like you said I already have. But different
accoustic and classic guitar would be interesting. Like a keyboard player want
a piano sound fender rhodes and wurlitzer etc. On the gi20, I have the mono mode
wich allow six midi outputs on six different channels. I use Chainer as host
and I can use simultaneously any vst I want on six different channels. I think it could be great to have a guitar synth vst made for the guitar as controler,
with sounds and particularity of the guitar playing.

I'm not looking for six separate audio outputs.

Roland made an emulation of the gr300 with the vg99. I was just hopping if
the soft version exist.

Well, guitar controllers speak MIDI so you're limited to the particularities of guitar playing that MIDI can encode. (For example, it no longer matters where you pluck the string, that's completely lost as it can't be detected or encoded.)

The fake 12 string, etc, that you get with the Roland V's are again actually an audio effect X 6 channels. It's fairly easy to take harmonics out of a single note, to create the sounds of different kinds of strings and pickup positions. Much more difficult (I'd say currently impossible) to do with chords though. Hence the 6 processing channels.

So there's no way a VST could do what the Roland V-whatever is doing unless you can break out those hex outputs and get them into your computer somehow. (Or you could only play one note at a time. Not an unrealistic approach, there's lots of classic pure analog effects that create absolute garbage on chords but sound great on a single note, pitch shifters and octaver/octavia in particular.)

As for the Roland GR-300, that's a pretty weak synth design. Most any quality soft-synth will be able to cover everything it could do, and more. You've got the right idea with Chainer. But a few products, like my own, do support MIDI guitar without all that setup. In Poly-Ana (and impOscar is very similar) any monophonic patch will create a separate monophonic instance of the synth for each MIDI channel it receives notes on. (Up to 12, we actually have one customer using a 12 string Chapman Stick to control Poly-Ana!) Just make sure Unison is ON and Polyphony set to no more than 2 (otherwise Poly's 12 voices can't cover all 6 strings at once).

[jancivil]

I guess what you want is a tight-ish interface in software with your hex-pickup as controller.
in the long run you're better off with Roland and recording the result, than expecting good performance with soft synths, was my experience anyway.

there are threads here with long discussions of this but they're a bit old.

The Roland V-pedals aren't synths. They're effects that work on 6 SEPARATE channels of audio, one from each INDIVIDUAL STRING. They do have MIDI outputs, which you can then run into a synth or any other MIDI capable instrument. The reason you feel less latency with the Roland box is because you're not using the MIDI, you're just running real time effects on AUDIO, so there's probably essentially zero latency in that mode. But to analyze the signal enough to determine its pitch takes a few cycles of the waveform, which necessarily introduces some latency. You can't analyze the pitch of the note until the note has played for a short time.

Right. Actually good job summing up what a thread search wouldn't really provide more than.

So I suggest that using a roland [re: synth] off a 'roland-ready' guitar, ie., 13-pin hex pickup is more suitable than soft synths.
Orange Tree Samples Evolution Guitars are scripted so you can use monophonic six channel input. I seriously wouldn't advise spending a great amount of time or having a lot of hope a roland-ready guitar is going to provide much joy with any soft synth. that's one thing to see in the old thread(s), people sharing that experience.

Someone will jump up in here soon I think and suggest the Ztar...

[AdmiralQuality]

It's not the guitar (though obviously set-up matters a lot for good MIDI tracking). But the guitar-to-MIDI converter.

I've heard the Axon is faster than the Rolands. Haven't tried either yet so just passing along hearsay. Oh, seems they have a new, littler, USB one! http://www.axon-technologies.net/module ... 6&menu=102

Here's a little clip of Poly-Ana being controlled by guitar in MIDI MONO mode on 6 channels. (2 takes on 2 tracks with 2 different patches.)

http://www.admiralquality.com/products/ ... arts03.mp3

[jancivil]

I'll check that out. Yes, the conversion from vibrating strings to midi is problematic. I think it's always going to be problematic. Back in the day, Synclavier had a [non-midi] system that John McLaughlin used briefly. Albeit the synth itself didn't seem very interesting as he used it, not very dynamic and he didn't appear to have any variety at his disposal.

[izonin]

I don't want electric guitar sounds, like you said I already have. But different
accoustic and classic guitar would be interesting. Like a keyboard player want
a piano sound fender rhodes and wurlitzer etc. On the gi20, I have the mono mode
wich allow six midi outputs on six different channels. I use Chainer as host
and I can use simultaneously any vst I want on six different channels. I think it could be great to have a guitar synth vst made for the guitar as controler,
with sounds and particularity of the guitar playing.

I'm not looking for six separate audio outputs.

Roland made an emulation of the gr300 with the vg99. I was just hopping if
the soft version exist.

For acoustic sounds I'd suggest Kontakt plus Vir2 Acoustic Legends. The GR-300 is essentially a 6x single analog saw oscillator with zero-crossing detection, so any synth with saw would do the trick. (The GR-300 isn't sample based and doesn't have any guitar sounds.)