Guitar synthesizer recommendations....

[mazz]

I'm not a guitarist but from what I've read over the past few decades, the issue with MIDI guitar is partly that MIDI is really designed to work with keyboards and a guitar generates a ton of extra data just by nature of the instrument. On a MIDI keyboard, when you hit a key, the other keys around it don't also generate data, (unless the keyboard is just a total piece of crap), but on a guitar, unless the pickup is really well designed and the player is very clean, you're going to get a lot of extra stuff that you don't want from string resonance, other strings being touched, slight bends, etc. This makes translating the data to a sound module pretty tricky for live playing and for studio it requires a lot of cleanup on the back end.

The way i see it, if a guitarist is going to embrace MIDI, they are going to have to alter their playing to a certain degree to accommodate MIDI and the way it interprets the data it's getting. There are certainly ways to do this technologically, but the ultimate solution also involves adapting ones chops to the medium. Keyboardists do this all the time. A B3 is a different animal from a grand piano which is different from a clav and different from a crappy upright....you get the picture. You can select on the guitar mono mode which is a solo setting where all strings send on the same channel, good for playing those sax solos, or each string on it's own channel, which is pretty cool for polytimbral playing. Again, in order to make it really work, you'll have to play very cleanly and precisely to get anything close to keyboard like parts without a bunch of extra unwanted stuff creeping in.

I think if you just want pads and simple parts, it might be easier and more satisfying in the long run to simply press forward with getting better on the keyboards and just solo on your main axe. Besides, when was the last time you heard a keyboard solo in pop music?

[Len911]

I stumbled onto this, the Synthix synthesizer. Because it's a software synthesizer, filters, oscillators, envelopes, etc., you have much more control and essentially a sound design toolbox, it might prove more practical in cleaning up the extraneous data that Mazz speaks of or turning it into something musical.

http://www.xils-lab.com/pages/Synthix.html

"6.3 Guitar Mode
This mode is a powerful way to use the multilayer feature of the Synthix with an external Guitar
to MIDI converter. This apparatus uses one MIDI channel for each of the 6 guitar strings, then
thanks to Synthix’s 6 available MIDI channels, the Synthix Guitar mode can trigger up to two
Voices for each guitar string. Because of this powerful feature associated to a MIDI converter, a
guitarist can play the Synthix, each string playing a specific sound."

"...You can use the Guitar mode in several -hopefully- usefull ways like :

1/ 6 layers having 6 slightly different panels ( a panel = group of following parameters the 4 LFOs, the Matrix Mod, Oscillators, Filter, 4 Enveloppes, and the glide group settings ). So you can have a real "breathing sound" while controlling it with a guitar, or a capable KB with splits and zones.

2/ 1 or 2 layers as a bass and the others as a polyphonic synth : So a guitarist could play a bass with one string, while beeing able to play chords with the remaining ones. This could be very cool with techniques like picking. We did provide some Split presets in the factory library, but you can build your own rather quickly with the import layer function.

3/ Some totally different sounds for all strings like : E a bass A D G Chords/keytar/pad B Percussive noise or a slide effect E An Fx. Or 6 sequencer meat mono preset on each string.

Or anything between all the above.

You could think that you coul do the same thing with any Multitimbral unit like a rompler. But hey that would be forgetting that Layers interact with features like the Playing modes, global joystick, sequencer modulations as sources, etc etc

Unfortunately no member of Xils is a guitarist for a demo, but it works with a KB as well ( Your KB must be able to do splits layers zones etc though )

Really its only limited by your imagination."

[crs7string]

I've been dabbling in midi guitar for a long time.

I have three generations of Roland synths, a Yamaha rack mounted converter, (Axon consulted on the development of the product) and may be one of three or four people that bought, and still own, a Korg Z3 guitar synth.

For live performance, the later versions of guitar synths track really well. One does have to play cleanly and play the sounds properly. Playing a six note bar chord with a flute patch is not going to sound like a flute.

The issues involved with inputting midi data are largely the "false triggers" that show up as very low velocity notes of very short duration and sometimes are very high harmonics that you can track down in piano roll view and delete manually.

A company called Even Harmonic has created an interesting "overlay" for Kontakt. Rather than having to load six instances of a "patch" for each of thensix strings on six different channels, you load only one. As, or more, importantly, you can set a velocity window. This eliminates most of the false triggers. Also, when you render the midi track to audio, the false triggers are no where to be found. How do it know???

You do have to have Kontakt, a Midi guitar interface to input data in addition to the Gtak software.
But it works, and it works really well.

Here's the link:

http://evenharmonic.com/products/gtak


I will probably buy the Fishman Triple Play when it is available. Based on the videos I have seen it tracks well and you will be able to trigger any VI sound library. I just hope it is not a product that never sees the light of day. It was first shown at the NAMM Show in January 2012, is no where to be found on the Fishman website a year later. Neither of those things instill confidence.


Chuck

[Len911]

The issues involved with inputting midi data are largely the "false triggers" that show up as very low velocity notes of very short duration and sometimes are very high harmonics that you can track down in piano roll view and delete manually.

A company called Even Harmonic has created an interesting "overlay" for Kontakt. Rather than having to load six instances of a "patch" for each of thensix strings on six different channels, you load only one. As, or more, importantly, you can set a velocity window. This eliminates most of the false triggers. Also, when you render the midi track to audio, the false triggers are no where to be found. How do it know???

You do have to have Kontakt, a Midi guitar interface to input data in addition to the Gtak software.
But it works, and it works really well.

Here's the link:

http://evenharmonic.com/products/gtak

Chuck

The use of something like Cubase's Logical editor, transformer and input transformer could eliminate much of the false triggers automatically when you know what your conditions are. I never really used it much. It looks like Gtak has done all the programming for setting up the envelope parameters on over 1,000 instruments in the Kontakt library. Cool!

[Len911]

The issues involved with inputting midi data are largely the "false triggers" that show up as very low velocity notes of very short duration and sometimes are very high harmonics that you can track down in piano roll view and delete manually.

A company called Even Harmonic has created an interesting "overlay" for Kontakt. Rather than having to load six instances of a "patch" for each of thensix strings on six different channels, you load only one. As, or more, importantly, you can set a velocity window. This eliminates most of the false triggers. Also, when you render the midi track to audio, the false triggers are no where to be found. How do it know???

You do have to have Kontakt, a Midi guitar interface to input data in addition to the Gtak software.
But it works, and it works really well.

Here's the link:

http://evenharmonic.com/products/gtak

Chuck

The use of something like Cubase's Logical editor, transformer and input transformer could eliminate much of the false triggers automatically when you know what your conditions are. I never really used it much. It looks like Gtak has done all the programming for setting up the envelope parameters on over 1,000 instruments in the Kontakt library. Cool!

[Kolstad]

A great guitar-midi interface is the Axon AX50. i've had one for years, and having owned the Roland stuff to, I've found the Axon the best tracker.

The 2'nd generation of the Sonuus are reportedly good too (I have not tried that myself). Those are cheap, but one string only.

Actually, I've found Melodyne conversion to be a least on par with the best tracker's, depending on your playing style and the patch you play, so you still have to expect some editing using guitar to midi, even with the best ones (which I believe is Axon, especially with a guitar with built in Ghost system).

However you can do a lot with your playing style, playing exceptionally clean. Some (vsti) patches are also more playable than others, so that's also a variable in this.

I've had good results with Spectrasonics Trillian, playing bass on guitar (also Trumpet patches . There's still some feel missing for my taste, though, so I prefer a real bass (and it got me into learning keyboard, which I now prefer).

But with the right technique and patience, a guitar-midi setup can be really versatile.

[CHuckmott]

Thank you, may experiment with the guitar to midi conversion in Medlodyne and see how it works. Probably the best option, though, is do like Mazz suggested and work on the keyboard stuff. WIll even post my impressions....maybe even soundbites if impressed .

[6bq9]

Keith McMillen makes the String Port: http://www.keithmcmillen.com/stringport/overview only works on mac, but very full featured.

[pboss]

There are some big-name composers using a guitar as the instrument to convey MIDI data (live or recording, the idea is the same). Both the guitar and the piano use hands to write the notes, and there is much to say about using one's brain to write the notes (ie; notation) because like Ron Jones says, the brain is more powerful than the hands, or something close to that. So, you can find the gear perhaps to just use your instrument of choice (guitar) to trigger that info. I do not know the specifics on how to do that, but I don't see why you should have to spend the time to learn keyboard unless you want to. I tried to get the jist of this topic, so forgive me if someone already suggested this.

[6bq9]

I've used midi guitar converters on and off since the late 1980's and they still suck today. Yes, if you are very careful, you can coax them into doing interesting things. If you have any coordination at all, you would be better advised to take a year of group piano at your local community college and practice 1/2 an hour a day for that year. The year's worth of classes will probably cost less than a decent midi guitar setup. The bonus is that guitar players are notorious memorizers. Keyboard players have it a little easier. There's only one possible place that any note might be found. With the stringed instruments, you have to work out the fingering. Classical music notation has ways to deal with this, and there is tab in the guitar world, but that aside, guitarists memorize everything.

In one of the group piano classes I took back the dark ages of "The 80's" there was a guitar-playing DeadHead that wanted to learn to play the piano parts, and had a Dead songbook he was working out of. The instructor had him play something out of it, and told him, "Stop memorizing! Read the notes!" And the guy, being a guitar player asked, "Why?" So the instructor said, I don't listen to this band. Pick a song out of this book and I'll play it for you. So the guy picked a song and the teacher rocked it. When he was done he said, "I have no idea if I played that right, and that's why you need to stop memorizing and learn to read."

So, learning to sight read music is a bonus if you invest in some keyboard skills, and music theory - no extra charge! Sham-WOW! And probably cheaper than a decent midi-guitar setup that will take you a year to learn how to use even though you already know how to play the thing it is attached to.


"The band had a guitar player, but what they needed was a musician." Something another music teacher once said to a class I was in.