Got My Midi Pickup/Midi Guitar Rig Working!!!!

[spiral light]

Finally, and I mean finally after a 2 years farting around, pieceing together what I could from what I had and that ol' devil called ebay (and one broken string on my wifes acoustic) I managed to trigger my first midi signal successfully from my guitar. I inheritted a Shadow GTM6 (midi converter) and SH22 (synth unit) and two Yamaha TX7's (basiclly a DX& in a box) but no pickup. A quick search on ebay landed me a humbucker/midi combo. To cut a long story short I realised that the GTM6 isn't doing its job as it should. I also picked up the SH075 along the way ( One of these ) albeit one that has the Gibson name on it when they were distributing Shadow in the US (as did Ovation for a while, look at the back cover of your GP's from the 80's).

 

Next step was beta testing, I installed it on my wifes acoustic, then raised the bridge on my strat , tuned on, tuned in and, er, played. The SH22 had some interesting sounds but has no patch editting or parameter names (what you hear is what you get, keeping it simple for us guitarists).

 

Next I got a little bit more daring and plugged it into my Kurzweil K2000: the sound of drums being triggered by a guitar! The ultimate challenge, I connected directly to the midi input on my pc, fired up GForce Minimonsta and had a virtual minimoog at my finger tips (as well as control of all the other vst instruments I have).

 

All this was fun, playing organ, flute & moog via my guitar. I also had the idea to add a lead synth sound to a piece of music I'm working on (very Tangerine Dream-ish, think Rubycon) to fill it out a bit (my keyboard soloing days are still a few weeks away), I'll post it when it is closer to completion.

 

Anybody else out there jumped into the world of midi guitar??

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

I've had one since about 1988, and I really liked it for a long time for recording... especially when I was writing music for industrials and product roll-outs. I haven't used mine in a while, but not that long ago I had a GraphTech Ghost put into my Pellow, with intentions of doing more writing of that ilk.

 

The main thing to putting realisim into such performances, is to try to keep in your mind how the sampled instrument is actually played and how it works. Keyboards suck for triggering woodwinds and strings, but a guitar is a great trigger for such instruments. A keyboard works better on some other instruments though, and some work best with a percussion controller, like an old Roland Pad. My DrumKat system is pretty well toast, but I have been eyeing up that Roland rig that sells for about $500. (As I'm in the midst of purchasing a new space, I'm still considering borrowing the real drum kit from the studio, but that does not cover actual percussion instruments.)

 

Midi guitar is a lot of fun, and very handy as one does not have to have to try to find a Flugelhorn player or a place to rent a djembe, or even a Bosendorfer.

 

Bill

[spiral light]

I also realised (pretty early on) that some patches require a change in the way you play, eg a xylophone (5:45am and I spelt that curektly!!) patch requires a different approach than a guitar does. Also, patches with shorter sustains are better suited to guitar triggering.

 

I've also been eyeing the graphtech ghost for future possible use. How's that been working out for you?

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

The Ghost is far better than the Roland GK was for me. I have not tried the model that you have, so I cannot comment.

 

For a few bucks more you can add the piezo pickup to the Ghost. I chose not to do this, mostly because of size constraints in the small electric body of the Pello.... it was hard enough for him to fit in the Ghost components along with the stock guitar controls.

 

Bill

[GuitarPlayerFL]

Originally posted by spiral light:

Anybody else out there jumped into the world of midi guitar??

I had a Yamaha G-10 in '89 which looked like a huge bowling pin with all unwound G strings. It truly was a big POS. I fortunately ditched it about 7 years ago.

 

I now have a Roland GR-33 and GR-20 which are superior. MIDI guitar opens up a HUGE door for guitarists. So sad many don't want to deal with it.

[spiral light]

Originally posted by GuitarPlayerSoCal:

MIDI guitar opens up a HUGE door for guitarists. So sad many don't want to deal with it.

Having the option to use it to trigger Asynth, MiniMonsta, ARP v2600 etc. really opens up the sonic possibilities. They're missing out...

[Gabriel E.]

I have an Axon AX100 with a Roland GK2 that I used with my Kurzweil K2500. It tracked and sounded great but it took forever to set everything up. I kind of lost interest in electronic music at that point - there's something extremely satisfying about a Tele straight into a tube amp.

 

They're listed in the "For Sale" thread.