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

[FrettedSynth]

Testing v0.2 with a Schecter emg humbuckers, Fender Heartfield single coil and a Tele single coil. All using the neck pickup and the tracking is amazing.

Latency feels much better than v0.1 sustain on high notes G,B,E strings is far improved. And one problem I had with v0.1 low notes sustaining too long is much better in v0.2.

Will let you know any other things I notice?

Thanks for this
Joe

[edteneyck]

Beta 0.2.0 is responding noticeably quicker here, though I seem to get more 'bad note' triggers than with the first beta. Still have to experiment more with plug settings, input volumes, different guitars, etc.

The "Show Instrument" function works 100% of the time here now, bringing the plugin into the foreground.
The direct out function is a nice feature. Polyphonic & Mono modes work as expected.

This is tested in FL Studio 10.0.9 on Win7 64bit. I'll follow up tomorrow after I've spent more time with it.
Nice work guys!

Best,

Ed

[spinedoc]

Testing with a Schecter and humbucking pickups. The note detection is improved over version 1 and I am not getting as many false triggers. the note off sustain is working much better in this version as well. so far two problems I still see. Number one is that when a project is saved with the plug-in it still does not save the loaded instruments plug-ins presets that was being triggered and defaults to the default state of the plug-in when opening a project. the second problem I'm still seeing is that the same audio wave does not trigger the plug in the same way every time. In other words if I lay down a few lines and then loop them, the way that the plug-in is triggered as far as the notes and such can very differently every time that It loops through that section. I understand that the plug-in is not optimized for non-real-time operation but it still seems that the same audio waveform would always trigger the plug-in the same way so it doesn't make sense to me. I am using sonar so the hosts does not support midi out to other tracks so this may not be as big a deal to people using other hosts that support the midi out function. going to experiment with the midi loopback driver next to see if I can get this functionality put into sonar through this workaround.

[AdmiralQuality]

but it still seems that the same audio waveform would always trigger the plug-in the same way so it doesn't make sense to me.

I've been wondering if that would be the case.

It's (I'm guessing) because the length of your loop isn't an exact multiple of their analysis window size.

[edteneyck]

I tested with two guitars today, a Sebring model ? and an old Ibanez EX series. I was able to get better results after lowering the plug's sensitivity and the gain on my audio interface. Higher sensitivity allowed for higher notes to trigger more reliably, but made the lower notes unstable. Both guitars tracked about the same. Overall a bit better than the first beta. The playable range here is from open low E to about the 12th fret on the high E.

[JamOrigin]

Thanks everyone for testing!

Just to round up:

Seems everyone on this forum and a ton of emails agree that latency is good now, which was the primary aim of this update. Also, most seem to think that even with lower latency 0.2 is on pair or better than 0.1 in terms of accuracy, although we are aware that 0.2 introduced a source of spurious note-ons which we dont handle well enough - so thats probably what some of you refer to.

Generally bridge pickups and plectrum playing seems to be best. Doesn't hurt to be in tune also.

Please always mention what Pitch Prediction level you refer to when reporting - they behave very differently.

FrettedSynth, CurryPaste, ShanecGriffo, Ed, Spinedoc - thanks for all the positive feedback!

Spinedoc/Admiral - yes, Admiral is right - loop size and block sizes may cause non-determinism. Currently there are other causes of non-determinism in the technology, which are avoidable, so chances are it will be more deterministic in future updates - again, real-time processing is stricyly harder then non-real-time, so let's focus on this when we finished the hard part.

Ed - what you describe with sensitivity makes perfect sense - and seems like a relatively easy way to improve the recognition in version 0.3.

Version 0.2.2 is already being released today - along new beta testers - and updates will be rapid now as version 0.2.2 introduce an automatic update notification system.

Thanks guys.

[shanecgriffo]

Could you explain briefly the "pitch prediction level" setting jamorigin ? Thanks

[memyselfandus]

anyone get this to work with Reason? if so. how do you do it? do we need to use audio jack or something?

[JamOrigin]

Could you explain briefly the "pitch prediction level" setting jamorigin ? Thanks

Yes, good question. Pitch Prediction is a new feature we introduced in version 0.2, which is our take at the usual latency problems associated with midi guitars in general. So, it's there for you to cut latency.

Pitch Prediction 0: The pitch prediction is turned off and midi guitar has a latency that is similar to other pitch detection methods. Version 0.1 and the iOS App up to version 1.4 use this setting.

Pitch Prediction 2: I hope you guys will comfirm that this mode is faster than traditional pitch detection methods - even comparing to monophonic or inaccurate alternatives. (As pr. version 0.2 this is only true for low end notes - some latency improvements on mids and highs can be expected in future updates). It will most likely be a bit harder to control for spurious hits than mode 0 and 1, but you might not notice.

Pitch Prediction 1: Some tradeoff in between 0 and 2. This mode is set by default.

I guess, since latency is close related to overall response or "feel" - preferences could be very subjective here.

[Jaxo]

I downloaded Round Two an hour ago and have not been able to stop playing with it since! The pitch detection/prediction is PHENOMENAL. I tried shredding as fast as I could on my guitar along a harmonic minor/pentatonic mutant-of-a-scale and it still picked up what I played near-perfectly (it wiggled around a bit due to bad playing). I also love how it detects how hard you hit the note and translates that into the MIDI as well.

Full chords sound mind-blowing, I actually tried to play this song (you'll know the sound if you know the video! If not, go to 4:40). It worked out fantastically, and I still can't get over how amazing this technology is.

I use FL Studio, and ran into some troubles getting the MIDI to record. The .dll version didn't seem to work due to the very strange way FL Studio handles MIDI. After much research, I did manage to get it to work - here's how I did it:

EDIT: MIDI Yoke kept crashing FL Studio every time I tried to export. I finally figured it out, and have discovered that loopMIDI works.
1) Download loopMIDI, and install it
2) Set MIDI Guitar's output to loopMIDI Port
3) In FL Studio, enable loopMIDI Port in the MIDI Devices area, by hitting F10 or Options->MIDI Devices

Done! This info might be useful on the site - I remember seeing something about loop2MIDI (something along those lines), but this works as well and is a very small download.

I also played around with the settings, and I find the default settings to be most suiting for my guitar. Today I tested it on my Ibanez RG2550Z - all pickups, and they each work great. Tomorrow I'll test it on my 'metal' guitar - a Schecter Synyster Gates Custom-S. I'm curious to see how MIDI Guitar will pick up the signal, since the pickups on the Custom-S (SD Invaders) are very mean sounding without any effects. I'll also test it on the Sustainiac as well, but it's a very niche pickup.

Thanks for the beta - I feel extremely privileged to be a part of this!

EDIT: I'm too useless of a member to contribute yet, sorry about the broken links!

[S1gnsOfL1fe]

Anybody else running this on Mac as a plugin? I got the stand-alone version up and running no problem. The AU version crashes my host before the graphic interface loads up. Wondering if any of you are experiencing that in the new beta...

That being said, I am mind-blown by this!!! Having never used any kind of "midi guitar" ever...it's a surreal experience loading up any one of my synths and start jamming. Un-freaking-believable. Bravo Jam Origin!

[JamOrigin]

I downloaded Round Two an hour ago and have not been able to stop playing with it since! The pitch detection/prediction is PHENOMENAL. I tried shredding as fast as I could on my guitar along a harmonic minor/pentatonic mutant-of-a-scale and it still picked up what I played near-perfectly (it wiggled around a bit due to bad playing). I also love how it detects how hard you hit the note and translates that into the MIDI as well.

Full chords sound mind-blowing, I actually tried to play this song (you'll know the sound if you know the video!). It worked out fantastically, and I still can't get over how amazing this technology is.

Awesome!

That being said, I am mind-blown by this!!! Having never used any kind of "midi guitar" ever...it's a surreal experience loading up any one of my synths and start jamming. Un-freaking-believable. Bravo Jam Origin!

Thanks guys!! - thats the kind of feedback we need

SignsOfLife, Which host are you using?

[Stephan326]

Using with an AF75 Hollow Body with Reason!! Phenomenal!!!!

[memyselfandus]

Using with an AF75 Hollow Body with Reason!! Phenomenal!!!!

how do you make reason recognize the input from midi guitar?

[jdt]

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.