I posted this in another forum but thought it might be nice to share here:
Lately, for my own musical pleasure, I've been messing around with my home writing set up. We have a much more complex studio that we use for work but at home I have a much more scaled down personal set up. It centers around a grand piano and an usual acoustic/electric guitar from Danelectro.
It's just a little mixer, some powered speakers sitting on top of the piano, a Boss SE70 multieffect unit, a Moog Piano Bar, a Helpinstill pick up on the piano as well and this old Dano acoustic/electric convertible guitar. Then, I can bring over my laptop with whatever small sound card and softsamplers and synths (not to mention HD recording studio such as Cubase or ProTools LE) and add that into the set up (and an optional extra midi controller in case I want to play finger drums... non-chromatic sounds don't trigger so great from a "real piano controller").
So what I am finding very enjoyable is hearing the real acoustic piano layered with electronic sounds from midi triggered plug-ins or hearing the sound of the acoustic part of the Dano and mixing the monitors so I hear an even balance with whatever washy effect on the electic signal there is. The combination of hearing the electronic part in stereo and the acoustic part of these particular "controllers" that are real instruments themselves LIVE is a very inspiring thing. It's also cooler to play mechanically than many midi controllers as well because you get a mix of the various imperfections of the instrument or your playing mixed with the perfection of electronic instruments or certain DSP processing. A sort of organic meets technology vibe.
Anyone else have a writing rig where you use real acoustic instruments as controllers or as dual acoustic/electric instruments?
Using Acoustic instruments as midi controllers and...
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- Sonic Reality Head Chef
- 8566 posts since 11 Mar, 2002 from Florida
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- KVRian
- 581 posts since 15 Dec, 2003 from Hangin' out with my 5 year old
For me, that "acoustic sound over an electronic wash" is very appealing. I have a couple of ways that to get it:
1) MHC's Space FX turns any acoustic part into a blissful synth pad. I usually use it as an insert effect on my electric guitar, mixing wet and dry to taste...tons o'filtered, ensembled, delayed, lfo sequenced fun.
2) Not exactly the same thing, but I get similar fun by playing pads layered with acoustic samples via my Yamaha Ez-EG midi guitar controller. Here, of course, even the acoustic part is electronic... which just means it can be anything I want it to be. The oddities of a guitar-midi controller add some randomness, desired or not, to the mix.
Anyway, that's my take on the matter. It's all good fun, anyway.
Oh yeah, I should mention that the M42 synth is somewhat based on this very premise: an acoustic sound (soundfont in M42) layered above (or below) a synthetic algorythmic arp, whatever the hell that is.
1) MHC's Space FX turns any acoustic part into a blissful synth pad. I usually use it as an insert effect on my electric guitar, mixing wet and dry to taste...tons o'filtered, ensembled, delayed, lfo sequenced fun.
2) Not exactly the same thing, but I get similar fun by playing pads layered with acoustic samples via my Yamaha Ez-EG midi guitar controller. Here, of course, even the acoustic part is electronic... which just means it can be anything I want it to be. The oddities of a guitar-midi controller add some randomness, desired or not, to the mix.
Anyway, that's my take on the matter. It's all good fun, anyway.
Oh yeah, I should mention that the M42 synth is somewhat based on this very premise: an acoustic sound (soundfont in M42) layered above (or below) a synthetic algorythmic arp, whatever the hell that is.
And all life's fears
Can invade my ears
I can handle it
Can invade my ears
I can handle it
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- Resident Cellist
- 539 posts since 11 Mar, 2002 from Ireland
I'd love to fancy employing my fave synths with my cello.. yes please i have seen something that Todd Machover has done at MIT.. it looked like he'd hooked a cello up somehow.. i only saw it in programme notes though.. when he was over with his toy symphony and beat bugs last year
http://www.media.mit.edu/hyperins/projects.html
are you thinking about making something squids????
ooooohhhh .. gowaan
i'll buy one 
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- KVRAF
- 1617 posts since 19 Mar, 2002 from Victoria, BC
Entirely imagination but...
could you not conceivably set up a variety of piezos and/or optical pickups at various positions on (and in) the cello body and have the amplitude of their signal converted into MIDI data by something like the devices at www.ucapps.de?
Thus you could extract a picture of the different areas of the cello resonating and have organic control over a variety of synth parameters. I don't know about the pitch tracking end of things, but it's certainly feasible.
Not an afternoon project by any means, but I don't see why it couldn't be done.
could you not conceivably set up a variety of piezos and/or optical pickups at various positions on (and in) the cello body and have the amplitude of their signal converted into MIDI data by something like the devices at www.ucapps.de?
Thus you could extract a picture of the different areas of the cello resonating and have organic control over a variety of synth parameters. I don't know about the pitch tracking end of things, but it's certainly feasible.
Not an afternoon project by any means, but I don't see why it couldn't be done.