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Looper's Delight
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--- Peter Shindler <shindler@mediaone.net> wrote: > Also, is it the box or the pickup that's responsible > for the quality of the > tracking? Is the GK-2A the only pickup I'll need to > look at? > Before Kim kills this OT thread, it is the string gauge that is responsible ;-} Peter's query has created much response about tracking, pickups, sounds, and midi for guitar. If I had read these responses 3 years ago I would have never tried a midi guitar. Thank goodness I tried it myself. Does midi guitar suck? For someone with refined needs like Kim, apparently. I didn't know any better, and decided for myself that I like playing midi guitar. So much so that I removed all 3 of the standard pickups from my Ibanez solid body guitar. It only has an internal GK-2a pickup now. Are piezos clearly better than a GK-2a? In my (and others) experience no. Roland VG-8 users have noted string to string crosstalk problems with the RMC piezos. Piezos have much more low frequency content on initial attack that can be a problem when using them with Roland VG-8, unless you install a low pass filter in the VG-8 (yes I know a vg-8 is not midi). Go read the vg-8 mailing list for more details. What effects tracking? 1.The guitar strings 2.the physical characteristics of the guitar body, neck, bridge etc 3.The pickup design, mount and installation 4.The analog input filters and pitch to midi converter in the box (axon, gr-30 etc) and most importantly: 5. How you have set the input control parameters of that box 6. interacting with How you play 7. and How you listen You cannot acurately judge a midi guitar system, or vg-8 without insuring proper pickup installation, and hex input setup adjusted to work with YOUR playing style. You may have to modify Your playing style to track more accurately, to get the sound out when and how you intend. That of course is true of acoustic instruments as well. I was surprised to find out from the various emails that fingerpicking doesn't work with midi guitars. I never use a pick on midi guitar, I use my thumb and 3 fingers. Jee, I thought it worked. I guess I just fooled myself for the past 3 years. What do I know, I have only played guitar for 32 years? I probably don't even know how to play the guitar, I have just fooled myself into thinking that. IMO, playing cleanly triggered midi guitar using finger picking is much like playing clean, precise finger picked acoustic guitar. If you play sloppy, it sounds sloppy. But I am no expert player. And I know I am a fool because I actually enjoy some the the sounds on the Roland GR-09 like sax, hammond organ, and god fobid, trumpet. Do I sound like Ben Webster, Jimmy Smith or Miles? Hell no, was I supposed to? I sound like me, a fool having fun with sounds. When I play (an actual) acoustic guitar I don't sound like Django either. Peter has specific desires of creating sounds on the pc, and using midi guitar to control them. As noted by others the best path for that is probably a high grade midi controller (axon), controlling a sound source that allows this pc dump. As noted, Roland GR-09, GR-30 don't allow that. And yes, the midi output on a gr-09 and gr-30 are slower than using the internal voices. In spite of that, I enjoy using the midi out of my gr-09. I use it to: 1. Input to the oberheim drummer so that it interacts with my playing. 2. Input to the oberheim cyclone to arpeggiate the midi note stream before I route the midi stream back into the gr-09 voices 3. Input to a kenton midi to cv convertor to control one or several moog synths which are used as either a.complete synth (vco, vcf, adsr, adsr, lfo.....) or b.input sound from either the vg-8 or gr-09 into the synth filter and envelope generators and other modulators. I find that a complex sound like a sax is much more fun to modulate than a square wave or triangle wave oscillator (even if that ocs has dynamic waveshapes). While the Roland vg-8 is not midi, it is a fun, and highly tweekable sound source (hexaphonic modifier) that reacts to and expresses subtleties of playing in a most wonderful way. I use the vg-8, and the gr-09 individually and in combination (using roland us-20)for a vaste amount of tone colors, and subtle, (almost) instant response (vg-8) when that is required. It sucks how much fun I am having with this gawd awful midi guitar, fake instrument sounds, and slow midi control, looped into multiple echoplexes with old codec chips. And the answer to the most important question? I use .10's, or are they .11's? bret __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com