Midi for guitar synthesizer input

[AdmiralQuality]

I was all set to buy a Rodin until I saw this:



Pitch bends/vibratos seem perfect. Very impressive

I don't hear any bends or vibrato in those EP sounds he's demoing. Then he does it very briefly on a Hammond organ sound (where neither technique naturally applies). Wish he'd play some synth with it. He's also not playing any other notes when he bends, so I can't tell if it's sending proper multi-channel data or not.

It would also be nice if these converters output note envelopes as MIDI CCs. So you could preserve dynamic aspects of your playing in the synth sounds you're controlling.

[jgallows]

Impressive but he's playing it like a novelty. "Oh hey, check out me playing piano on the guitar." I guess it turns heads but it would be better if they stuck with the synthesizer element.

That's also my problem with 90% of the sounds in my GR-30. They're mostly organ, flutes, some kalimba type noises and the scarce synthesizer noise here and there. The preset synthesizer sounds it does have are fairly boring.

I've had extensive time with (but have not owned) all the early guitar synthesizer rigs from Roland. Everything from the GR-500 to the GR-700. They were great because they were limited to fairly synthy type noises and manipulating those noises was a lot more straight forward (a couple of knobs and sliders never hurt anyone). Coupled with some Taurus pedals I could get some pretty nice sounds going.

It would be great if someone built a nice modern and analog sounding box for a 13 pin guitar.

[AdmiralQuality]

It would be great if someone built a nice modern and analog sounding box for a 13 pin guitar.

I think a 13 pin guitar, a breakout cable, a DAW with at least 6 inputs, and some custom analysis software would do it. Someday, I hope... though it will be a REALLY small target market. Hmmm...

And yes, it's really hard to tell how real-world playable it is from jazzy-demo-dude's performance. He might just be really good at playing ahead of the beat and/or ignoring what he's hearing in order to beat the latency. You can't get a real feel for it until you try it yourself.

I also find most of the things he's playing to be musically atrocious. Hard to believe guitarists are chomping at the bit to make really bad early 90s sounding ROMpler sounds. I too am much more a fan of the classic guitar synths, but I do think a good hex to MIDI converter that also output envelope signals as CC messages would be possible and would be a really great controller for synth sounds that can actually assign controllers to appropriate parts of the sound.

There IS still some noticeable latency. Check this one out with guitar in the L channel and bad-ROMpler sounds in the R. You can clearly hear the latency, like a short slap-back delay.

[aldusmanutius]

Godin makes an electric guitar with the ghost pickup built in... I think it is the LA something model. I have it and it is great for MIDI.

Check it out.

Jim

I want the xtSA. Stratty-goodness! (I could live without the humbuckers but they could be swapped out for switchable coils.) I'd like to be developing software to process and/or interpret the direct 6-channel output from these.

I've owned and played a Godin xtSA for the past 6 years. I use it with both the 13-pin interface (Roland GI-20 => Roland XV-2020 Synth) and the MIDI-Out of the GI-20 to run things on the laptop (Plogue bidule, Garage Band, Logic, Galaxy Engine) and the MIDI-IN of an Alessis ioDock for the iPad, running Animoog, Alchemy and other synths.

By all means, get your hands on one, if you're seriously interested in MIDI guitar. I"ve got the "smoke" finished one and love the neck and action on it. I started off playing classical guitar, so the neck radius felt VERY familiar and quite comfortable from the moment I picked it up.

One note: the back of the neck is a "plain" (i.e., non-gloss, NOT satin) finish. I've played mine so much that the back of the neck is highly glossed from the action of my thumb traveling up and down the neck — truly a "hand-rubbed" gloss finish!

Best to all,

Dennis

[AdmiralQuality]

Godin makes an electric guitar with the ghost pickup built in... I think it is the LA something model. I have it and it is great for MIDI.

Check it out.

Jim

I want the xtSA. Stratty-goodness! (I could live without the humbuckers but they could be swapped out for switchable coils.) I'd like to be developing software to process and/or interpret the direct 6-channel output from these.

I've owned and played a Godin xtSA for the past 6 years. I use it with both the 13-pin interface (Roland GI-20 => Roland XV-2020 Synth) and the MIDI-Out of the GI-20 to run things on the laptop (Plogue bidule, Garage Band, Logic, Galaxy Engine) and the MIDI-IN of an Alessis ioDock for the iPad, running Animoog, Alchemy and other synths.

By all means, get your hands on one, if you're seriously interested in MIDI guitar. I"ve got the "smoke" finished one and love the neck and action on it. I started off playing classical guitar, so the neck radius felt VERY familiar and quite comfortable from the moment I picked it up.

One note: the back of the neck is a "plain" (i.e., non-gloss, NOT satin) finish. I've played mine so much that the back of the neck is highly glossed from the action of my thumb traveling up and down the neck — truly a "hand-rubbed" gloss finish!

Best to all,

Dennis

I ALMOST bought one back in 2004. Had Long and McQuade order me a red/wine one. Then at the last minute I changed my mind and got a 2004 50th Anniversary American Standard Stratocaster. (This was before I was doing the Admiralty thing, so MIDI wasn't a priority. Looking back, I wish I had gone the other way.)

I like non-glossed necks actually. I find they're not as sticky.

An xtSA is definitely on the list. I recently picked up a Godin Shifter-4 bass. (Transparent cream with rosewood fretboard.) What a great product! (Except for some reason the bridge isn't grounded, only the stop-bar in the back of the body. So if you choose to string-through-bridge -- as you need to for flat-wound strings -- the strings end up ungrounded! Why Godin, why? Anyway... easy enough to fix, though a PITA.)

[raintalk]

I think you guys seem a little to hard on Burr Johnson
The guy can play. Check out his other playing on regular guitars.

It's cool to hear pitch bend on organ sounds. Organist would flip off/on their hammonds, or some were rigged on pivots to do pitch bend effects. Imagine if they could do vibrato. Or bend one note in a chord.


Break the mold, do something on guitar the keyboards can't do. Do something on guitar that guitars can't do. That what these things are about.

[jgallows]

It isn't so much the playing as it is the stock sounds. Just not my thing.

But in principle I completely agree. Guitar Synthesizer is a different branch of musical instrumentation and should be treated as such.

[AdmiralQuality]

Yeah I'm not talking about playing or sounds. It's just that I can't tell from any of the demos if it works in MONO mode (6 channels for 6 strings). It sounds like POLY mode (all strings share one channel), in which case you might as well just play keyboard. You only have that single pitch bend. But tracking the strings individually to 6 MIDI channels is what's so special and unique about the guitar as a controller, but I haven't heard any evidence of that in any of the demos.

But maybe that's just the demos? I don't know what the product specs are. I do hope it can do MONO mode but those demos don't give me much hope.

[raintalk]

I've heard it's like the Axon
"It sends
the lower fret split on channels 1...6 and the upper split on channels
11...16; the hold, arpeggio and looper is on channel 7, so normally it uses
altogether 13 channels. But just like the AXON it can be configured to POLY
MODE, sending all strings on channel 1, if a compromise cannot be avoided.
But in this case there are no splits."

I don't think it does pick position like the Axon, have to wait for final specs, and it looks like there can be software updates after it's first release.

[AdmiralQuality]

I've heard it's like the Axon
"It sends
the lower fret split on channels 1...6 and the upper split on channels
11...16; the hold, arpeggio and looper is on channel 7, so normally it uses
altogether 13 channels. But just like the AXON it can be configured to POLY
MODE, sending all strings on channel 1, if a compromise cannot be avoided.
But in this case there are no splits."

I don't think it does pick position like the Axon, have to wait for final specs, and it looks like there can be software updates after it's first release.

Good to hear. I wish demo-guy would show that instead of playing 90s sounding ROMpler sounds.

[Shuzhen]

About custom tunings, I contacted Fishman in late July, partly to ask about that.

Here's an excerpt "...does/will Triple Play support real-time conversion of the MIDI from standard to custom tunings? I.e. what you find on some dedicated MIDI guitar controllers and some of Roland's modelling devices. Or if you're sending MIDI on seperate channels or similar and then muxing it in software, could it be part of a software/firmware update at some point?"

and the response

"I spoke to one of our developers and he said that you will be able to alter the tuning of the synth or samples you're using in their program, but you will not be able to pitch shift the dry guitar notes for alternate tunings. The Triple Play is going to be a basic guitar midi device and much of the tweaking you're talking about would only work if the soft synths you're using will allow you to do that."

I took that to mean that individual, per string MIDI channels can't be sent into a DAW or anything else (only the muxed MIDI, which I take it doesn't contain information about which string each note was played on), and that their own software won't allow the possibility of per string transposition for custom tunings either. But maybe their representative thought I was talking about audio.

[CapnLockheed]

So you should be able to build a 1 to 6 breakout cable from a 13 pin, to a handful of 1/4" connectors

Or you could buy one of these:

http://www.rmcpickup.com/fanoutbox.html

[AdmiralQuality]

So you should be able to build a 1 to 6 breakout cable from a 13 pin, to a handful of 1/4" connectors

Or you could buy one of these:

http://www.rmcpickup.com/fanoutbox.html

Good to know, thanks!

[CapnLockheed]

[zerocrossing]

Impressive but he's playing it like a novelty. "Oh hey, check out me playing piano on the guitar." I guess it turns heads but it would be better if they stuck with the synthesizer element.

That's also my problem with 90% of the sounds in my GR-30. They're mostly organ, flutes, some kalimba type noises and the scarce synthesizer noise here and there. The preset synthesizer sounds it does have are fairly boring.

I've had extensive time with (but have not owned) all the early guitar synthesizer rigs from Roland. Everything from the GR-500 to the GR-700. They were great because they were limited to fairly synthy type noises and manipulating those noises was a lot more straight forward (a couple of knobs and sliders never hurt anyone). Coupled with some Taurus pedals I could get some pretty nice sounds going.

It would be great if someone built a nice modern and analog sounding box for a 13 pin guitar.

I agree. I've owned a couple of Roland guitar synth products and my actual biggest complaint was their crappy ROM sounds. Imagine what it could be if they actually put a decent synthesizer engine in there, not some sample based garbage (note: I'm a fan of other Roland ROMplers) , but actual synthesis... even if it were as mediocre as the modern GAIA engine... but something that's not based on their PCM stuff that's been their go-to since the 90s. And yeah, I've tried to use the MIDI out to control other instruments and then the Roland GR stuff really sucks.