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

[ariajazz]

Things were better with the Strat. One point to mention is that I'm playing a patch in MI FM8 synth wich is a sound that I use in a specific tune of my repertoir. This patch is a little bit "tricky" itself.

Some patches work better than others and every synth responds in different ways. I havent try it with KONTAKT. By the way an idea comes into mind right now. You can place six instances of MidiGuitar, each one triggering through a different midi channel (using midi yoke or Midi LoopBe) and in KONTAKT open six equal inatruments to be triggered by this specific midi channels (one per string) ans see the results. This in one manner to trigger ROLAND GR Synths with very good results.

I still miss the pitch bend adjustment which controls a pitch wheel

[AdmiralQuality]

Things were better with the Strat. One point to mention is that I'm playing a patch in MI FM8 synth wich is a sound that I use in a specific tune of my repertoir. This patch is a little bit "tricky" itself.

Some patches work better than others and every synth responds in different ways. I havent try it with KONTAKT. By the way an idea comes in to mind right now. You can place six instances of MidiGuitar, each one triggering through a different midi channel (using midi yoke or Midi LoopBe) and in KONTAKT open six equal inatruments to be triggered by this specific midi channels (one per string) ans see the results. This in one manner to trigger ROLAND GR Synths with very good results.

I still miss the pitch bend adjustment which controls a pitch wheel

How do you filter the strings? How do you know which string is playing which note, where a guitar can play the same note from multiple positions? (And really, without pitch bend, there's no reason to do the 6 channel thing.)

This is the big omission (so far) from this software, it can't do 6 channel in MIDI MONO mode, nor pitch bend (6 unique bends on each channel), the way MIDI guitar is SUPPOSED to work.

[ariajazz]

KONTAKT experiment not posible since MidiGuitar recognizes notes as a whole and not like hexaphonic pickups which work natively by recognition per string so you can assign a specific midi channel per string.

It was just an idea but when got into practice I realized this and all that Admiral says.

Still tweaking this great tool that I'm sure it will get to satisfactory results.

[memyselfandus]

Kontakt has Always sucked for this... its Kontakt. there is a program you can buy to use midi guitar properly with kontakt. It does not matter what way you do midi guitar stuff. kontakt sucks for it..

[ariajazz]

Yes, I know this application, its a powerful tool for kontakt and midi guitar.

I spent several hours with MidiGuitar software today, tweaking things here and there, I have to say that now it is tracking very well (there's only a little noticeable inconsistency when two strings are played together in a down stroke). I made a balance between the sensitivity knob and the level of the signal that reaches MidiGuitar input stage. Also some adjustment in the synth used is needed.

This time I gave it a try with Camel Alchemy Synth which responded very good, it is a nice soft synth. As I mentioned in a previous post there is a very important variable in making this to work satisfactorily and is the SYNTH and PRESET you use, some react better than others and this happens even in hexaphonic hardware systems.

But now I discovered another issue. I'm using Sensomusic USINE as a host and every configuration is by using presets, this is: MidiGuitar and Alchemy are chained and inserted within a preset or patch. The thing is that when I recall the preset there is no data transmission from MidiGuitar (no sound) unless you make the plugin "visible" and/or you click on it, you can then close the MidiGuitar UI and the sound continues. I tried the same configuration within NI Kore2 recalling presets and the same thing happened. It seems that there's a little detail there that has to be checked and solve about this behavior.

Ole do you have any consideration for this?.

I think that this beta testing it is not only to check out about tracking accuracy and latency but the overall performance of the software as a stand alone and vst plugin discovering both strengths and bugs. The goal is to develop a software with the best possible functionality.

[tapper mike]

How do you filter the strings? How do you know which string is playing which note, where a guitar can play the same note from multiple positions? (And really, without pitch bend, there's no reason to do the 6 channel thing.)

No not really says the ztar man.
Each string on a guitar has it's own "voice" much of the timbre associated with which string to use to play the note affects it's character.
Enter midi.....
If say yuo are playing a midi guitar with midi channels assigned per string you can do some amazing things like... assigning certain resonance to those channels in your midi device. Lets say you load up 6 of the same sound in your host/day and you can adjust resonance per channel/string. The audio representation will be more in line with characteristics that the "string" has to offe. It's actually the basis for the idea of round robin. The note remains the same the velocity remains the same or close to the same but the character is different. As well setting up different strings to channels gives one a more true polyphonic aftertouch. A characteristic such as virbrato (modulation) is applied to only one note of a harmony rather then to all of them simultaneously.

Alot of guitar suckage is in the guitar conversion process. The more stages required for conversion the longer the conversion takes. Especially with pitch to voltage. When you escape the ever flawed pitch to voltage approach you are left with "button" instruments (ztar, kitara, yourock, ez-eg) Many suck in regards to Velocity response. From what I've read kitara is "okay/pretty good at velocity response" Ztars, well I'm a ztar evanglist. I think they are great. Theu offer the most consistent velocity response and offer a means to fine tune it both in string sensitivity and curves. (the newer modesl over the last 7 years some of the prior models had a little bit to be desired in strings though great with triggers)
The next thing you just have to live with is....it's not a guitar. Your not going to have modulation/vibrato under your fretting fingers. Invest in an egenharp if it means that much to you. or learn how to compensate by other means such as pedals and whatever picking hand cc devices are available. Not the end of the world if you have to use a joystick.

[AdmiralQuality]

How do you filter the strings? How do you know which string is playing which note, where a guitar can play the same note from multiple positions? (And really, without pitch bend, there's no reason to do the 6 channel thing.)

No not really says the ztar man.
Each string on a guitar has it's own "voice" much of the timbre associated with which string to use to play the note affects it's character.
Enter midi.....
If say yuo are playing a midi guitar with midi channels assigned per string you can do some amazing things like... assigning certain resonance to those channels in your midi device. Lets say you load up 6 of the same sound in your host/day and you can adjust resonance per channel/string. The audio representation will be more in line with characteristics that the "string" has to offe. It's actually the basis for the idea of round robin. The note remains the same the velocity remains the same or close to the same but the character is different. As well setting up different strings to channels gives one a more true polyphonic aftertouch. A characteristic such as virbrato (modulation) is applied to only one note of a harmony rather then to all of them simultaneously.

Alot of guitar suckage is in the guitar conversion process. The more stages required for conversion the longer the conversion takes. Especially with pitch to voltage. When you escape the ever flawed pitch to voltage approach you are left with "button" instruments (ztar, kitara, yourock, ez-eg) Many suck in regards to Velocity response. From what I've read kitara is "okay/pretty good at velocity response" Ztars, well I'm a ztar evanglist. I think they are great. Theu offer the most consistent velocity response and offer a means to fine tune it both in string sensitivity and curves. (the newer modesl over the last 7 years some of the prior models had a little bit to be desired in strings though great with triggers)
The next thing you just have to live with is....it's not a guitar. Your not going to have modulation/vibrato under your fretting fingers. Invest in an egenharp if it means that much to you. or learn how to compensate by other means such as pedals and whatever picking hand cc devices are available. Not the end of the world if you have to use a joystick.

My point was that this plug-in doesn't (and if you think about it, can't) do that. It's all 6 strings mashed together into a single polyphonic channel, with no attempt at tracking pitch bend.

Now, I just said "can't", but... maybe you could. It would be QUITE a challenge though and I don't blame JamOrigin for wanting to straighten out this far more simple case first, before venturing into trying to guess which string is producing which note. If they CAN do that, then there's no more reason to buy hex pickups and MIDI guitar converter hardware anymore! Would be quite a coup if they could pull it off! (Even what it already does is something that, until now, common wisdom said couldn't be done. I've yet to try it with my guitars... tomorrow or the next day I'll get them over here and give it a go, but from what everyone's saying, apparently they've done it.)

And you CAN have vibrato with a hex pickup and hardware MIDI converter. You just match the synth's pitch bend range to the bend tracking setting on the MIDI converter, and any minor pitch changes (including vibrato) that you make on a string get tracked by the synth as MIDI pitch bend messages.

And... pitch to voltage? What year is this?

[AdmiralQuality]

*IDEA*

Now, what you COULD do with this software, AS-IS, and only IF you own a guitar with a hex pickup and 13 pin output, is build a break-out box to split the hex output into 6 line outputs. (It should probably also do impedance matching, as most audio interfaces only offer one high impedance instrument input, if any.)

Then you run the 6 outputs into 6 input channels of your audio interface. (Here again, we've just tossed out a huge part of the market who only have stereo inputs.) Then you could run each separate audio input to its own, unique instance of MIDI-Guitar (each set to MONO mode) and each of those would drive one separate instance of a mono-synth.

So, assuming you have a MIDI capable guitar, 6 audio inputs, and were able to source or build yourself the break-out box to convert the 13-pin to 6 line outs, you could potentially use this software instead of a hardware guitar to MIDI converter and save yourself quite a bit of money!

[tapper mike]

I don't think you are following what I'm saying.

When you state "And you CAN have vibrato with a hex pickup and hardware MIDI converter."

Yes you can if it's tracked to 6 outs. No not the same thing when you are trying to produce independent per string vibrato (One string vibrato and the other not vibrato sent to a true single midi channel. Even roland doesn't do that they send on all six string/channels internally to six different "internal channels"

Hundreds of companies have tried and failed to separate harmony sent as a combined pitch signal then attempted to spit it up to separate singles. Hundreds. They all failed.

Hex to a breakout box also while being really cool for audio is not cool for midi. That's what roland does already if you think about it.

Remember the guy (I forget his name or his vaporware company) who built a breakout box with preamps that drove into a computer so that the signal could be compressed and cleaned up and had all those cool fast playing videos. Anyway what he did was send the audio into a computer and sent it back out as midi into midi hardware (workstation) as opposed to try to use the computer to take the singal and play midi directly in the computer.

RMC (not fishman) were the original guys who developed piezo in replacement for hex. It was always (and still is) a trade off. With Hex you get more string vibration (especially if you move it away from the bridge) which translates into a stronger singal and better sustain especially in the upper range. Althogh you are prone to alot of ghost notes and a slightly slower attach. Piezo on the other had because it's mounted to the bridge or in the case of ghost riders is the bridge offers faster attack so faster conversion however less dynamic range and less sustain because it's reading more from the top of the guitar then for the strings vibrating.

I've had em all. I've had a GR1 and I've had an ibanez Xing, and I've had gr09 , gr30, gr33 GI10 axis, Gk1.2,3 ghost riders and rmc's, Everything someone says they can fix the problem with more processing they are fooling themselves and the public, More processing means more time and greater chance of misinterpretation of the signal.

I'm sitting here playing an upright bass patch from sample tank via my z6 and it sounds awesome. Stunning transparent the complete range of the instrument is within my fingers with all the nuance. It's just there and it's as fast as the best keybed in the world running thru the best computer in the world only it's not a keyboard and it's far far from the best computer the industry has to offer. I got the thing used and it's almost 12 years old now. The newer z's are better now that harvey has redone the string triggers the board and the os.

Honestly I pity those who refuse to see the futility of pitch to voltage conversion. I wanted to believe all that crap too for over 20 years "Oh the next version of something will be better" Oh they'll finally have it down soon"

Even though I hate them. Buy a used yourock stick it into synth mode so all you can do is tap and every promise ever made about pitch to voltage conversion will fly out the window with the first note you play. Granted the neck sucks the strings velocity is for the birds and it will maybe last you a year but maybe, just maybe you'll see the value of button guitars like ztars and kitara's

[AdmiralQuality]

I don't think you are following what I'm saying.

When you state "And you CAN have vibrato with a hex pickup and hardware MIDI converter."

Yes you can if it's tracked to 6 outs. No not the same thing when you are trying to produce independent per string vibrato (One string vibrato and the other not vibrato sent to a true single midi channel. Even roland doesn't do that they send on all six string/channels internally to six different "internal channels"

I thought I said that (3 times now).

Yes, all 6 strings on the same MIDI channel is a poor way to encode guitar and is not suitable for tracking pitch bend (because even with the world's best tuned Floyd Rose, your strings never all bend the exact same amount).

Hundreds of companies have tried and failed to separate harmony sent as a combined pitch signal then attempted to spit it up to separate singles. Hundreds. They all failed.

Except for JamOrigin, who are now doing it, and all these nice people here are beta testing it. What they're NOT doing (yet, who knows if they'll try) is attempting to separate the notes into different channels per string. Because it's VERY HARD to say which string is playing which note. (Maybe impossible, though some AI that knows something about the human hand might be able to do it.)

But they ARE separate signals (separate MIDI note events). What they aren't is separated into different MIDI channels. And again, this plug-in currently makes no attempt to track pitch bend (and there's really no point, until the strings can be separated).

Hex to a breakout box also while being really cool for audio is not cool for midi. That's what roland does already if you think about it.

Except the Roland box costs several hundreds of dollars and I could build the break out box for maybe $100. Also, THIS process may well track faster than the Roland box. (Or AXXON, which I've heard is the best.)

Remember the guy (I forget his name or his vaporware company) who built a breakout box with preamps that drove into a computer so that the signal could be compressed and cleaned up and had all those cool fast playing videos. Anyway what he did was send the audio into a computer and sent it back out as midi into midi hardware (workstation) as opposed to try to use the computer to take the singal and play midi directly in the computer.

Not sure what your point is here. Who cares where the generator (synth) is? A MIDI out only adds about 1 ms of latency.

RMC (not fishman) were the original guys who developed piezo in replacement for hex. It was always (and still is) a trade off. With Hex you get more

Graphtech make piezo bridges and bridge saddles, but they're still HEX. 6 separate (analog) outputs, one for each string.

string vibration (especially if you move it away from the bridge) which translates into a stronger singal and better sustain especially in the upper range. Althogh you are prone to alot of ghost notes and a slightly slower attach. Piezo on the other had because it's mounted to the bridge or in the case of ghost riders is the bridge offers faster attack so faster conversion however less dynamic range and less sustain because it's reading more from the top of the guitar then for the strings vibrating.

I'm guessing your an older guy. There's much better technology available now. Modern digital pitch trackers using FFT analysis techniques (like this software probably does) like the signal to be as harmonically rich as possible. So that means as close to the bridge as possible (or IN the bridge).

I've had em all. I've had a GR1 and I've had an ibanez Xing, and I've had gr09 , gr30, gr33 GI10 axis, Gk1.2,3 ghost riders and rmc's, Everything someone says they can fix the problem with more processing they are fooling themselves and the public, More processing means more time and greater chance of misinterpretation of the signal.

More processing does NOT mean more time. You're familiar with Moore's law?

I'm sitting here playing an upright bass patch from sample tank via my z6 and it sounds awesome. Stunning transparent the complete range of the instrument is within my fingers with all the nuance. It's just there and it's as fast as the best keybed in the world running thru the best computer in the world

That's because it's NOT A GUITAR. It might as well be a keyboard. It's just switches, same as a keyboard.

only it's not a keyboard and it's far far from the best computer the industry has to offer. I got the thing used and it's almost 12 years old now. The newer z's are better now that harvey has redone the string triggers the board and the os.

So your solution to MIDI guitar is don't use a real guitar. Noted. Since this isn't the topic of this thread, can you drop it now?

Honestly I pity those who refuse to see the futility of pitch to voltage conversion.

You're dating yourself again. Modern guitar converters don't go to a control voltage at any stage. (Unless you want to add a MIDI to voltage converter after the fact, to interface with classic analog synths with CV and Gate inputs.)

I wanted to believe all that crap too for over 20 years "Oh the next version of something will be better" Oh they'll finally have it down soon"

Even though I hate them. Buy a used yourock stick it into synth mode so all you can do is tap and every promise ever made about pitch to voltage conversion will fly out the window with the first note you play. Granted the neck sucks the strings velocity is for the birds and it will maybe last you a year but maybe, just maybe you'll see the value of button guitars like ztars and kitara's

Okay, so you don't like them and think extracting note info from real guitar performances is futile. Noted. But why are you posting HERE about that? You're not playing guitar, you're playing a GSO. (Guitar shaped object.)

I used to play an old Suzuki hardware GSO MIDI controller. It was fun, but didn't do mono channels (because there's no way to bend at the frets). There's a new one now that looks very similar (I guess that's the YouRock that you mention). But again, THIS THREAD IS ABOUT REAL GUITARS. Telling us we're all stupid for trying is not helpful.

[AdmiralQuality]

And actually, it doesn't REALLY matter which string is playing which note (except maybe for synth sounds with un-guitar-like long releases). The software could just put each note on its own MIDI channel without trying too hard to figure out which string the note came from, and sure, sometimes it'll be the wrong channel for that string. But so what? For most applications this wouldn't matter.

So maybe there is hope for this software to someday track pitch bend too!

Or (God forbid) maybe they'll make it a VST3 and send note expression for each note's pitch bend. (Which would be the first actually useful application of VST3 I can think of!) Really it's only the pitch bend issue that makes MIDI guitar want 6 channels. If only MIDI had poly-bend (like it has Poly-Pressure) none of this channel stuff would be an issue. But it's because pitch bend isn't a regular MIDI control change message, it's got double the bit depth of regular CC messages, which it needs because the ear will readily hear 128 steps across a wide pitch bend. (And most hardware guitar controllers recommend you set your bend range to +/- 1 octave, quite wide!)

[tapper mike]

Good luck with your delusions.

[AdmiralQuality]

Good luck with your delusions.

Wow. I've forgotten what guitar people are like, compared to synth players who usually have an understanding of how their technology actually works. Nothing but old wives' tales and vitriol!

I do this stuff FOR A LIVING, man. I know what I'm talking about. My softsynth product, Poly-Ana, is one of the few that handles multi-channel MIDI guitar input automatically.

Again, what is your goal in coming in here and telling us we should all go and buy Z6es or YouRock guitar shaped controllers? It's OFF TOPIC, this is a beta test for software that wants REAL GUITAR INPUT.

[edteneyck]

I've been testing 0.2.2 and it does seem to play better than the previous beta. Whether it is the software, my interface setting, or both. I found that it works best with Pitch Prediction at 1 and though it varies with each user, sensitivity is at 47, This
is playing a Sebring strat style guitar through an M-Audio Mobile Pre USB (1st gen at 16/44 with 256 latency) with about half
input volume in FL Studio 10.0.9. Most of the time I would start with an INIT sound in Saurus and just make a fitting sound though other synths worked well too, depending on the sound used.

It was able to play notes semi-reliably up to about the 16th fret on the high E string.

Pitch Prediction 2 seemed to track faster but there were a lot of bad triggers. It seems much of it was "machine gun" triggering the same note.

Overall I'm getting better results than with the previous beta.

[JamOrigin]

...
The acoustic guitar instruments in Kontakt responded better with my Tele through MidiGuitar than they ever did with a keyboard. I tried a lute, steel string slide, classical nylon, and a pedal steel.

Sorefingers - great long informative post!

Just tried both new stand alone versions, 0.2.0 and 0.2.2. Tracking seems to be dead-on with both, no latency issues whatsoever. I appreciate the Poly/Mono switch, nice option for playing chords versus melody lines, although there seems to be no problem playing single note melodies when Poly is selected.

I've been testing with my 30 year old Carvin CM 130 E, M22 Humbuckers...this axe has been waiting 3 decades to sing like this. Great job on this, JamOrigin!

Will test vst versions later today. Will these ovewrwrite each other, since all .dlls are named "MIDI Guitar.dll" ? I would imagine so.

jdt, Awesome! Yes, "MIDI Guitar.dll" should always be overwritten.

Hundreds of companies have tried and failed to separate harmony sent as a combined pitch signal then attempted to spit it up to separate singles. Hundreds. They all failed.

Except for JamOrigin, who are now doing it, and all these nice people here are beta testing it. What they're NOT doing (yet, who knows if they'll try) is attempting to separate the notes into different channels per string. Because it's VERY HARD to say which string is playing which note. (Maybe impossible, though some AI that knows something about the human hand might be able to do it.)

Yes, Midi Guitar actually does it - and all sorts of nice people here are spending free time beta testing it. Tapper-mike, this thread is for folks beta testing Midi Guitar and for those who like to play REAL guitars over controllers.

As for strings recognition please look at my second post on the very first page. We are pretty close.


ariajazz,

good to hear you're finally getting better results.

Good idea inserting putting an EQ into MIDI Guitar - we currently work on allow to create and save presets for recognition (for various guitars, preamps, pickups, etc.) - seems EQ is a natural fit here.

We are aware of the problem with some state not set until UI is opened - thanks - updates are comming.