Guitar Synths, pitch to MIDI, Hex pickups, pre-amps etc

[David Hirst]

I’m looking for the fastest, most cost effective, guitar pitch to MIDI, or guitar synth, or guitar Hexaphonic pickup (with or without 6 channel pre-amp). Or any standalone versions of any part of the signal chain along the way, especially say a cheap 6 channel pre-amp.

Does anyone have experience or knowledge of any of these devices out there?

I’m familiar with Miller Puckette’s patches and work in this area, and have seen him perform with his setup. But I want to create my own take on this instrument. Fast pitch to MIDI conversion is important, but if I can get a low cost 6 channel (one for each string) hex-pickup and pre-amp combination, I can do the pitch following via Max or PD, etc.

Does anyone have any special insights in this area.

Thanks in advance,

David

[magnus alexanderson]

Hi David,

the most cost effective (and perhaps fastest) guitar-MIDI would probably be to only use six high e strings to the same pitch and transpose the remaining strings bgdae (from top down) in the sound module/sound program to the tuning you wish. i haven't tried it myself, but do have a Casio MIDI guitar and the Roland Hexaphonic pickup on another guitar. the thinnest e-string normally doesn't cause any tracking problems. 

this means of course it doesn't work to use the standard guitar in parallell if that's what you need. then I would google-check what pitch-to-midi-converter John McLaughlin (a very fast-picking) player used/uses.

here's one recent example:

Roland GI-20 USB MIDI interface

some earlier models by Axon and Photon

(then there is the YouRockGuitar, not a real guitar but produced for guitarists, check some examples on youtube)

I hope this will be useful for you somehow…

best

Magnus Alexanderson

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[eric cadesky]

I was just reading that Roland has released their latest guitar synth, a model GR- 300(? doing this from memory) that requires no pickup at all and responds to polyphonic information from your guitar.

cheers

Eric

[Si Waite]

Hi David

I’m using this at the moment: http://jamorigin.com/docs/midi-guitar-for-win-mac/

In terms of hardware, there is this option: http://www.fishman.com/tripleplay

All the best

Si

[Petri Kuljuntausta]

Hi David,

sounds interesting!

I have owned many guitar synths since 1980s and still have a few:
Roland GR-300 & Roland G-303 Synthesizer Controller, Casio MG-510,
Korg Z3 w/ Korg ZD3 synthesizer driver. Tracking and slow latency was
always the problem and you had to develope your own playing style with
these 'lazy' instruments.

Few years ago I wanted to update my gtr synth setup and studied what
would be the best guitar interface for my use. I purchased Roland
GI-20 and Godin xtSA guitar.
- "The xtSA comes in the form of its synth tracking. As with all Godin
synth-ready instruments, a built-in 13-pin connector provides direct
access to all Roland GR-Series synths as well as most other 13-pin
devices."

Latency is below 6 milliseconds, if I remember correctly. Fantastic
combination! John McLaughlin played with the same instruments for many
years.

Then John moved to Fishman GuitAero WGS6000-RX.
http://www.johnmclaughlin.com/equipment/

And after this (prototype) came this wireless from Fishman:
http://www.fishman.com/tripleplay

I don't know what you're looking for, but these new MIDI-guitars (ca.
$ 250) are also in market...

http://jamstik.com/
- I'll try this one soon, my friend just bought this and recommended.

http://www.yourockguitar.com/
- I am still waiting for their new model. I don't know what happened
for the new 'real guitar' model that they promised to release 2 years
ago (after their Kickstarter campaign). No news since then...

At the moment we're constructing sensor guitar for my use. With this
guitar I can eg. control the sound of the guitar with my body and hand
movements (without touching the strings or knobs). The prototype will
be ready this summer.

best,
petri

[David Hirst]

Many thanks to all for your insights. Will collect them up and research further.

Cheers,
David