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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2017 7:47:37 GMT -5
Here I am again First off, I wish merry Easter to all Orthodox Christians, non-Orthodox Christians and finally non-Christians. I wouldn't say this right now, but frankly I believe the times we go through are the toughest of all since a very long time. I wish peace for Syria, Ukraine, eastern Europe and the Balkans, since all indications show that we are going for yet another round of wars. Anyway, back to topic. So I got my first USB-MIDI interface, i got it some weeks back when I thought of trying to sound like Doors or Pink Floyd for once. So the thing arrived yesterday. This is a cheapo chinese interface : I played with this and my Yamaha DGX 300 a little bit in order to do smth useful with Linux first, to no avail. I managed absolutely nothing for a full whole day. Except being able to find out it is called CH345 pretty enough for a googling marathon around this MIDI-USB interface, until I found out I am connecting the two ports wrong. OUT should go to IN and vice versa. Pheww. More trials with qjackctl, qsynth, vmpk till I managed to get output to the Yamaha! But no input from it.... Grrrr. I saw some post of a guy who said he used a MIDI keyboard with this interface and got me into thoughts, then some others, till I saw some complaints about grounding. I have no MIDI experience, but I said what the heck, why don't I open this, this was only 3 EUR. So I opened this today and I saw the one of the IN's pins disconnected from the board. So I tried the most obvious pins, and I got some diagnostics from Linux working.... YEY!! So I got the solder iron out, and after a couple of minutes I connected this to the windows laptop to play with a program called anvil (yes I had to resort to windows just to make sure the hardware was not the culprit). All good. MIDI sending to the Yamaha and MIDI receiving worked like a charm. Then it worked with linux as well (vmpk, qsynth, qjackctl all at the same time) I also got some nice tunes 70s rock stuff, pretty nice melodies, this helped. So, now where I am : I managed to correctly use the Yamaha as a MIDI keyboard. Which is great and worth the 3 EUR by itself. What I wanna know : Where do I go after this? Where do soundfonts, VST's fit in this? I got a pretty modern Windows Dell laptop, how can I finally have my dream Hammond Leslie tones with this setup : Yamaha DGX 300 <--> CH345 <---> Windows 10 ?? Thank you GAIs !
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2017 8:08:45 GMT -5
side note : doesn't have to be linux, or to be more precise, FORGET ABOUT LINUX for a while! I want to get MIDI play well with the Yamaha and Windows, before I start getting back to Linux. Thanx for any help from the MIDI/VST Veterans. All I am asking is for a brief review of the ecosystem.
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Apr 14, 2017 10:25:43 GMT -5
Hey Greekdude,
As far as starting from scratch with MIDI on Windows, you need to start with some basic tools to see what is going on with the interface.
Check out: MIDI-OX - midiox.com . Also, MIDI Yoke is useful for distributing MIDI to/from multiple programs running at the same time. That might be later on though.
Next, a freeware/shareware DAW program to record and play back MIDI. Reaper is probably the best known and loved of this type of program but there are many out there.
Your Yamaha keyboard has a polyphonic MIDI synthesizer onboard with hundreds of sounds. As is, it can play back General MIDI (GM) files with multiple instrumental parts, drums, etc. All you need to do is to send a General MIDI file to it over the MIDI interface. The DAW can do this, or you can use a dedicated MIDI file player to do that. There are thousands of GM MIDI song files on the Internet if you want to play with those for a while.
The DAW program is the missing link to allow you to use MIDI and audio VST plugins. From there the sky's the limit on plugins, including soft synthesizers, including probably the Hammond organ sounds you crave.
Just a side note, there is a program, VSThost, which will allow you to use one or more plugins and allow you to play the plugin directly from your keyboard, without the overhead of a full fledged DAW.
Hope that gives a couple of useful directions.
Take care,
Charlie
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Post by sumgai on Apr 14, 2017 11:19:05 GMT -5
greekdude,
Hi, and welcome to The World Of Synth Music!!
The first thing you need to understand is that MIDI encompasses two distinct layers - the hardware aspect and the software portion. Leaving the hardware out of the equation for the moment, software is "merely" the way that we use a controller to generate a sound. For many folks, that's all done within a single piece of hardware, usually a computer (laptop or desktop or DAW, etc.), but I think your Yamaha also qualifies - it has a user interface (keyboard and speakers) and it generates sounds, amiright? The traditional keyboard is the preferred way to go of course, the vast majority of musicians understand how to make music with such a goodie, whereas the non-musician (by training) has no interest in investing years of study into proper technicque, they just want to program a computer to make the music for them.
Now, in today's age, we can combine them such that a traditional keyboard (with anywhere from 25 to 88 keys) can communicate with the computer to access all of those neat sounds stored therein, sounds that aren't available directly on that keyboard.
A keyboard without any kind of sound generation module is called a 'controller' - it might have other knobs, buttons and doo-dads to exercise control over what's going out the communications line (for example, pitch modulation), but it doesn't create sound on board.
A complete unit might be called any of several names, but synth is most often encountered. A properly implemented MIDI interface allows the 'controller' portion to control an external source of tone generation modules, and it should also allow an external controller (another keyboard, or a computer, or....) to operate the built-in sound generation module.
And there's the end of it.... at least as far as I'm going to go here. You've already worked out the hardware end of things, thankfully, and as long as you keep it simple, you should have no more problems. Here I define simple as connecting only two units - adding more can be done easily, but then we start talking about In, Out, and Thru, and how to daisy-chain them all together for the desired effect. I myself used to simply hook 'em all up, Ins to Outs, using Thru where available (which is not often on Roland equipment, sorry to say), and did my best to get over the limitations. Nowadays, when I do play, I use a MOTU interface that takes all the Outs into one box, and feeds them to what ever device Ins where I want the signal to appear - call it a massive switchboard that doesn't require a computer. Sure, computers can do the same thing (with midi-Ox on Windows, perhaps the xNix world has an equivalent?), but I for one don't like the idea of taking an expensive laptop on the road, and having some drunk trip over his own feet and puke all over my gear... or worse!
And that's about as complicated as I ever get. Once it's all hooked together, it's only a matter of what device controls what other device. In my case, the dedicated 'switchboard' lets me change things on the fly if needed, but most of the time I have just one program to set everything up, and I leave it like that. For us here in The NutzHouse, that means that my axe controls five different sound modules. But some of those modules are nothing less than dedicated computers with controllers of their own (and here I mean foot pedals and foot switches) than can send signals to control other devices, if wanted/needed.
Now that I've expounded on what I do know, let me get all cheezy and tell you what I don't know: Music software running on a computer is almost foreign to me. Yes I understand how it works, and can usually do something better than a 1st year violinist, but not much better! But for me, the computer is better suited to host a patch editing program (I have one for each of my devices), and to store my current device settings. If a backup battery dies, the patch settings stored on the 'puter can be sent back to the device (over MIDI or USB) - after the battery has been replaced, of course.
And that about ends my general knowledge on things MIDI. I'm sure you know how to use a search engine, but one of my favorite sites is www.synthzone.com, a veritable wealth of how to do things, like installing and using VSTs in your sound generation module, etc. BTW, 'soundfont' was a creation of the (very!) old Soundblaster company. I used them long before MIDI even came on the scene, but they were rather crude by today's standards. Essentially, it was a method of assigning an instrument to a channel, but we didn't call them channels back then.
And since you're a guitarist first (and foremost, IMO!), I also suggest you take a look at www.vguitarforums.com. Lots of helpful people there, even gumbo sometimes sticks his oar in the water!
I'd be remiss if I didn't cover one thing here: In other threads, over the years, we've hit lightly on the topic of "pitch to voltage" conversion. This is where the guitar uses a pickup to detect a note (a pitch) and convert it into a voltage level that is understood to represent a distinct pitch. At that point, the voltage is used to generate a Note On signal, but it's not limited to just that. Indeed, any MIDI signal, no matter where or how it was generated, can be used to control anything in the MIDI world, notes or otherwise. It's all in how the setup is connected together, or as they often say, it's in how the patch is programmed.
Now, a so-called MIDI pickup is not a MIDI pickup - it's a hex pickup.... MIDI has nothing to do with it. As you've seen before, a hex pickup merely houses one pickup per string, and in the case of a Roland style unit, they're actually humbuckers - two pickups under each string! For piezos, they don't need to buck hum, they're acoustic in the first place (read that as sensitive to a string's physical pressure - no magnets or coils involved at all). But again, piezos are most often set up to have one sensor per string, so they can also be called hex pickups. (Very simple acoustic guitars with only one sensor under the bridge won't meet this definition, of course.)
Hex pickups were designed for one thing - sending one, and only one, signal to the processing equipment. When multiple strings vibrate a single pickup, there's a lot of what we call 'intermodulation', but for the purposes of turning a string vibration rate into a voltage, it's better described as 'interferance'. Cross-modulation prevents accurate pitch-to-voltage conversion, and that's the whole reason for having hex pickups in the first place. And as it turns out, processing six (or four, for a bass) separate signals is child's play for digital gear, as you might guess. After playing around with "hex distortion" in a Roland processor, you'll never go back to using a TS-808, a ProCo RAT, a Big Muff Pi, or any other analog distortion unit - trust me, it's that big a difference in tonal quality. Chords never sounded so clean when fuzzed up!
I don't know where else to go just now. Let me say only that I stand ready to help. You have only to ask, and I'll try my best.
HTH
Oooooh, good thing I re-read your post, I almost didn't answer this one: Getting Hammond tones.
Whatever you're using for the music program on your Windows machine, there is probably a large number of add-on sound modules. Sometimes they're VSTs, sometimes they're proprietary. But you need to use the web to search for add-ons to your particular program, and specifically for Organ tones. That's all I can suggest, sorry.
HTAH
sumgai
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Post by lunaalta on Apr 14, 2017 17:22:26 GMT -5
Here are a couple (or 7) Hammond VSTIs for you to mess with. Hammond VSTi filesI think they should work with Anvil...... (I use Sonar 8 Pro on Windows 7, they work fine for me..... Here is another free DAW that gets very good reviews.... Reaper Technically a 60 day free trial, but after that time you will still be able to use it, but will get reminders to purchase.......) Drop the dll file into the vst folder withing Anvil's program files, or follow any instructions that come supplied. You should then be able to open the VSTi and play/record away........ There is some nice piano VSTi stuff about, too..... not to mention sax, well, anything really..... Have fun. Oh, and a merry Easter to yourself and the other members, too.....!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2017 8:50:33 GMT -5
Thanx a lot people! WIFI access sucks right now, I will come back.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2017 0:26:59 GMT -5
Hey Greekdude, As far as starting from scratch with MIDI on Windows, you need to start with some basic tools to see what is going on with the interface. Check out: MIDI-OX - midiox.com . Also, MIDI Yoke is useful for distributing MIDI to/from multiple programs running at the same time. That might be later on though. Next, a freeware/shareware DAW program to record and play back MIDI. Reaper is probably the best known and loved of this type of program but there are many out there. Your Yamaha keyboard has a polyphonic MIDI synthesizer onboard with hundreds of sounds. As is, it can play back General MIDI (GM) files with multiple instrumental parts, drums, etc. All you need to do is to send a General MIDI file to it over the MIDI interface. The DAW can do this, or you can use a dedicated MIDI file player to do that. There are thousands of GM MIDI song files on the Internet if you want to play with those for a while. The DAW program is the missing link to allow you to use MIDI and audio VST plugins. From there the sky's the limit on plugins, including soft synthesizers, including probably the Hammond organ sounds you crave. Just a side note, there is a program, VSThost, which will allow you to use one or more plugins and allow you to play the plugin directly from your keyboard, without the overhead of a full fledged DAW. Hope that gives a couple of useful directions. Take care, Charlie Thank you, I'll try those out as soon as I get home!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2017 0:36:28 GMT -5
greekdude,
Hi, and welcome to The World Of Synth Music!!
The first thing you need to understand is that MIDI encompasses two distinct layers - the hardware aspect and the software portion. Leaving the hardware out of the equation for the moment, software is "merely" the way that we use a controller to generate a sound. For many folks, that's all done within a single piece of hardware, usually a computer (laptop or desktop or DAW, etc.), but I think your Yamaha also qualifies - it has a user interface (keyboard and speakers) and it generates sounds, amiright? The traditional keyboard is the preferred way to go of course, the vast majority of musicians understand how to make music with such a goodie, whereas the non-musician (by training) has no interest in investing years of study into proper technicque, they just want to program a computer to make the music for them.
Now, in today's age, we can combine them such that a traditional keyboard (with anywhere from 25 to 88 keys) can communicate with the computer to access all of those neat sounds stored therein, sounds that aren't available directly on that keyboard.
A keyboard without any kind of sound generation module is called a 'controller' - it might have other knobs, buttons and doo-dads to exercise control over what's going out the communications line (for example, pitch modulation), but it doesn't create sound on board.
A complete unit might be called any of several names, but synth is most often encountered. A properly implemented MIDI interface allows the 'controller' portion to control an external source of tone generation modules, and it should also allow an external controller (another keyboard, or a computer, or....) to operate the built-in sound generation module.
And there's the end of it.... at least as far as I'm going to go here. You've already worked out the hardware end of things, thankfully, and as long as you keep it simple, you should have no more problems. Here I define simple as connecting only two units - adding more can be done easily, but then we start talking about In, Out, and Thru, and how to daisy-chain them all together for the desired effect. I myself used to simply hook 'em all up, Ins to Outs, using Thru where available (which is not often on Roland equipment, sorry to say), and did my best to get over the limitations. Nowadays, when I do play, I use a MOTU interface that takes all the Outs into one box, and feeds them to what ever device Ins where I want the signal to appear - call it a massive switchboard that doesn't require a computer. Sure, computers can do the same thing (with midi-Ox on Windows, perhaps the xNix world has an equivalent?), but I for one don't like the idea of taking an expensive laptop on the road, and having some drunk trip over his own feet and puke all over my gear... or worse!
And that's about as complicated as I ever get. Once it's all hooked together, it's only a matter of what device controls what other device. In my case, the dedicated 'switchboard' lets me change things on the fly if needed, but most of the time I have just one program to set everything up, and I leave it like that. For us here in The NutzHouse, that means that my axe controls five different sound modules. But some of those modules are nothing less than dedicated computers with controllers of their own (and here I mean foot pedals and foot switches) than can send signals to control other devices, if wanted/needed.
Now that I've expounded on what I do know, let me get all cheezy and tell you what I don't know: Music software running on a computer is almost foreign to me. Yes I understand how it works, and can usually do something better than a 1st year violinist, but not much better! But for me, the computer is better suited to host a patch editing program (I have one for each of my devices), and to store my current device settings. If a backup battery dies, the patch settings stored on the 'puter can be sent back to the device (over MIDI or USB) - after the battery has been replaced, of course.
And that about ends my general knowledge on things MIDI. I'm sure you know how to use a search engine, but one of my favorite sites is www.synthzone.com, a veritable wealth of how to do things, like installing and using VSTs in your sound generation module, etc. BTW, 'soundfont' was a creation of the (very!) old Soundblaster company. I used them long before MIDI even came on the scene, but they were rather crude by today's standards. Essentially, it was a method of assigning an instrument to a channel, but we didn't call them channels back then.
And since you're a guitarist first (and foremost, IMO!), I also suggest you take a look at www.vguitarforums.com. Lots of helpful people there, even gumbo sometimes sticks his oar in the water!
I'd be remiss if I didn't cover one thing here: In other threads, over the years, we've hit lightly on the topic of "pitch to voltage" conversion. This is where the guitar uses a pickup to detect a note (a pitch) and convert it into a voltage level that is understood to represent a distinct pitch. At that point, the voltage is used to generate a Note On signal, but it's not limited to just that. Indeed, any MIDI signal, no matter where or how it was generated, can be used to control anything in the MIDI world, notes or otherwise. It's all in how the setup is connected together, or as they often say, it's in how the patch is programmed.
Now, a so-called MIDI pickup is not a MIDI pickup - it's a hex pickup.... MIDI has nothing to do with it. As you've seen before, a hex pickup merely houses one pickup per string, and in the case of a Roland style unit, they're actually humbuckers - two pickups under each string! For piezos, they don't need to buck hum, they're acoustic in the first place (read that as sensitive to a string's physical pressure - no magnets or coils involved at all). But again, piezos are most often set up to have one sensor per string, so they can also be called hex pickups. (Very simple acoustic guitars with only one sensor under the bridge won't meet this definition, of course.)
Hex pickups were designed for one thing - sending one, and only one, signal to the processing equipment. When multiple strings vibrate a single pickup, there's a lot of what we call 'intermodulation', but for the purposes of turning a string vibration rate into a voltage, it's better described as 'interferance'. Cross-modulation prevents accurate pitch-to-voltage conversion, and that's the whole reason for having hex pickups in the first place. And as it turns out, processing six (or four, for a bass) separate signals is child's play for digital gear, as you might guess. After playing around with "hex distortion" in a Roland processor, you'll never go back to using a TS-808, a ProCo RAT, a Big Muff Pi, or any other analog distortion unit - trust me, it's that big a difference in tonal quality. Chords never sounded so clean when fuzzed up!
I don't know where else to go just now. Let me say only that I stand ready to help. You have only to ask, and I'll try my best.
HTH
Oooooh, good thing I re-read your post, I almost didn't answer this one: Getting Hammond tones.
Whatever you're using for the music program on your Windows machine, there is probably a large number of add-on sound modules. Sometimes they're VSTs, sometimes they're proprietary. But you need to use the web to search for add-ons to your particular program, and specifically for Organ tones. That's all I can suggest, sorry.
HTAH
sumgai
SG this is the 3rd time I am reading this, and I understand more and more with each iteration
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2017 0:46:18 GMT -5
Here are a couple (or 7) Hammond VSTIs for you to mess with. Hammond VSTi filesI think they should work with Anvil...... (I use Sonar 8 Pro on Windows 7, they work fine for me..... Here is another free DAW that gets very good reviews.... Reaper Technically a 60 day free trial, but after that time you will still be able to use it, but will get reminders to purchase.......) Drop the dll file into the vst folder withing Anvil's program files, or follow any instructions that come supplied. You should then be able to open the VSTi and play/record away........ There is some nice piano VSTi stuff about, too..... not to mention sax, well, anything really..... Have fun. Oh, and a merry Easter to yourself and the other members, too.....! Hey man thnx. I had tried the first one of those 7 VSTi, but Anvil would complain about missing additional DLL's. It didn't seem right. It's been almost 20 years that I work almost exclusively with Unix (FreeBSD, Linux) so I may have lost some episodes. I'll give it a go when I get home, or try with VST host that Charlie suggested. Thanx for the reference to Reaper!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2017 13:48:59 GMT -5
Hi, so I tested the nubi-plus VSTi and I find this EXTRA nice!! I just downloaded some midi files and played back some of the tracks with the nubi VSTi using soap-bar. This is pretty close to what I am after. As soon as I get home and connect the Yahama to the windows laptop, I will right you how it went.
BTW, AZR3 didn't work even using the second laptop I have with windows 7, so it must be smth with the specific VSTi.
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Post by lunaalta on Apr 20, 2017 3:04:39 GMT -5
You may need to tweak the midi files, GD, just to add a little realism......
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2017 5:07:35 GMT -5
Last week I spend some time in freezing Bosnia, today some snow fell in the morning, away from guitars, keyboards, left with only my laptop, so I tried some more software. I booted back to Linux, and tried some hammond/leslie synths : setBfree and bristol. Bristol B3 is MIDI/Jack-ready and sounds very good. setBfree is also MIDI/Jack-aware, and has a fantastic LV2 leslie plugin, ready to use from Ardour : which is fantastic. I'll get back soon.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2017 5:09:28 GMT -5
Hey,
so it seems I got a starting clue of what the MIDI technology is about. And I think its a wonder! As SG said the next sane step is not to learn how to play keyboards, but instead get some HEX MIDI-ready pickups for some guitar I have.
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Apr 25, 2017 7:18:18 GMT -5
Greekdude,
When you want to get into the whole world of guitar MIDI, etc. I don't think you can go wrong with the (Roland) Boss GP-10. With a GK-3 pickup it's about 400 dollars and has huge sound-making power on its own, and also includes guitar to MIDI that works very well. It also allows individual string outputs to a DAW so you can record and process with plugins, each string separately, as well as the combined output, all at once. That's only scratching the surface. I have one. It's amazing.
If you want probably the state of the art wireless MIDI to guitar interface, the Fishman Triple Play would be the unit to consider.
Just a couple of suggestions when you are ready to take the next step with some gear.
-Charlie
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2017 8:12:02 GMT -5
thanx Charlie, I have very good experiences with my boss me-25, so I have faith in Roland, its so good that only smth better would justify this investment. But I am getting into the "serious" musician category here + I had some slight hopes of learning keyboards... Anyway the sounds I got from Bristol and setBfree were very good. Ardour also can do nice "whistling" organ tones with its Calf-Organ plugin.
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Post by sumgai on Apr 26, 2017 13:09:09 GMT -5
OK, 'dude, you're ready for the next step. But....
As we've said before, and as you'll find throughout the all the innerwebs, in order to play and sound like another instrument, you need to think like a trained player of that instrument. This is where you go back and evaluate again your desire to learn at least the rudiments of keyboarding, if not a few others. OTOH, who wants/needs to spend years going through all the malarkey yet again, when you already have all the tools in hand (your experience, etc.). Right about now, I'm speaking to how certain classes of instrumentalists think, which breaks down sort of like this:
Keyboardists can easily think in two part melodies (nominal and counter-melody), usually the left hand being a more simple accompanyment, but not always. On top of that, they can, and do, think in at least three-part harmony, which is the reason we think of many leading keyboardists as being complete musicians - they sound so.... satisfying.
Horn players (brass and woodwind) are limited to single note melody lines.
Drummers are limited, period. Make no mistake, some drummers have a very well-tuned sense of melody, and can write music for others to play, but a drum set itself..... 'nuff said.
Anything with strings falls into a compromise amongst the others - single note melodies and (often) double strings for harmony are the norm, amongst the more advanced players.
Guitars (including mandolins, basses, and lots of others) are a very eclectic mix of the above - six-part harmony, single note melodies, dual (and even triple) part melodies, the possibilities are nearly endless.
Now, how does one think in terms of another instrument? Well, for me, it was easy - I started out at 10 years of age playing woodwinds. I was never very good, but I could keep up with the big boys. But the bottom line as I see it is to simply think in terms of scales for single-note instruments, and in terms of harmony for multi-note instruments. That last can also be phrased as 'think in terms of chords', and you get pretty close to what's going to sound more than just 'decent' when you play your axe.
Casting back several decades, you'll find that many early jazz, fusion, and even some rockers spoke of imitating jazz-era horn players. I think that's pretty good advice.
So, here's a video of a guy who works for Roland as a demonstrater. Tell me what you think of his performance, please.
sumgai
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2017 23:09:55 GMT -5
I am 100% sold. Also this one : You were correct. Once someone dives into MIDI + synth, then all discussions about woods, trems, etc becomes irrelevant. One guitar can do it all. How about those? : www.boss.info/global/categories/guitar_synthesizers/Why do they have to maintain two different lines of guitar synths? one for boss and one for roland? which one is better or cheaper or more modern?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2017 23:35:10 GMT -5
Just saw this : Ok, I see that gr-55 is a full MIDI synth working with specialized roland hex pup, while sy-300 an analog-like(??) synth working with regular pups, but still I don't get : 1) what is "tracking" ? The gr-55 is supposed to have fast tracking while the sy-300 no tracking at all. 2) how bad can it be without COSM modelling? The COSM in my boss me-25 I find just great. All the vids I made were done with this one. So I cannot understand how can I get regular amp simulated tones out of the SY 300 with no COSM ?
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Post by sumgai on Apr 27, 2017 10:37:09 GMT -5
.... I [still] don't get : 1) what is "tracking" ? The gr-55 is supposed to have fast tracking while the sy-300 no tracking at all. More or less, tracking is defined as the ability to accurately reduce the frequency of your note to a MIDI signal. As frequency is the inversion of time, you can see that it will require a certain amount of time to convert a frequency into a voltage that is understood by a MIDI unit.
For instance, the A note of the open 5th string is 110Hz, if tuned properly. The time required to get from one positive peak to the next positive peak, a complete cycle, is 1/110th of a second. During that time, the unit must:
a) Determine exactly how long of a time has passed, (0.00909 seconds for this example); b) Convert it to the correct corresponding voltage (the heart of what we call the pitch-to-MIDI conversion process); and c) Send out a MIDI Note On signal.
Do note that a Note On signal need not actually cause a note to be synthesized and sent on to an amplifier. Indeed, I've stated before that any MIDI signal, regardless of how it was generated, can be used to trigger any event of which a MIDI unit is capable. There is of course a convention (or more to the point, a set of rules) that says we treat certain signals as sacrosanct - to use a MIDI Note On (or Note Off) for anything else would be to break everything we usually understand about how MIDI works. Doing something like this would probably not be found outside of very experimental shenanigans. (However, using another MIDI signal called All Notes Off can usually be found to not only turn off all note generation, but also to reduce the output Volume to zero, thus also killing any left-over Reverb.)
According to a) above, any MIDI unit that processes analog notes in order to generate a MIDI signal had better have an almighty accurate time base. Most of the units you see on the market will depend on a processor running at several MHz, just like those CPUs found in early-generation PCs, etc. And here I'm including very early stuff, like Roland's GR-707... all of those units were fast too, to be any slower would invite inaccuracy, and if anything were to set MIDI guitar back on it's arse, it would've been inability to accurately produce the correct frequency, I'm sure you'll agree.
And as to that last statement..... We're now back at 'tracking'. The player's hands are actually generating a real-world analogue note, not just closing a switch on an electronic circuit to make a note. From there, the conversion process takes place as shown above. In simple terms, the shorter that 'tracking' time, the more accurate the system. But now we have to become aware that there are a few 'glitches' along the way.
In order for a conversion unit to work correctly, the incoming signal (from the string) must be clean. I mean, really clean. Any lazyness on the player's part, and the unit won't track - correctly, if at all. Sloppy playing is OUT - O. U. T. - you must finger your note(s) correctly, or you will confuse the pitch-to-voltage conversion processor, and the output will be gibberish... if there is anything to hear at the output.
Another aspect is in picking. Nowadays, we can do almost anything from gentle fingerpicking to flat-out power blasting, and most of today's units can handle it all - even hammer-ons and pull-offs! Roland units in particular can be adjusted (fine tuned) to accomodate the widest possible range of picking styles, but for the most part, the default settings will work for most picking styles.
OK, let's move on.....
The short version here is, Roland's units are truly capable of 6 times the processing power of Boss's units. The reduced capability of the Boss units translates to lower costs, pure and simple.
What's the compromise? No guitar modeling. Or to be more precise, no accurate guitar modeling.
Harkening back to what I said above, if you try to make a pitch-to-MIDI conversion unit handle 6 signals at once, it won't happen. Even gigahertz processor can't divine what each of the root fundamental frequencies are, with all that intermodulation going on. They might get close, or close enough for government work, but at the end of the day, they're just guessing at what the player is doing/has done, so any output is a presumption, and not trustworthy.
So, given that once we've arrived at a Note On stage of affairs (or even several of them, one for each string), and that all such have been mixed together (either in mono or in stereo), what we see now is really nothing more than what would be the input signals to an amplifier. At that point, we can use digital processing to do wonderous things to our signal(s). Besides just amplification, and even before that, we can add reverb, phasing, compression, distortion, all kinds of things. And this is all digital, before we get to that last stage of converting everything back to analog for the real-world amplifier.
As to the last part of your question, amp simulations without COSM - that's been done for many years, long before COSM came on the scene. In fact, it used to be done all the time in analog form, well before the dawn of digital processing. But I suspect that your ME-25 is actually doing something quite similar to COSM, they just don't brag about it.
Let me clear up one point, and in turn, it will re-emphasize another point.
By using six pitch-to-MIDI converters, you get each string's signal into the processor as cleanly as possible. Not only does this allow said processors to work efficiently (and correctly!), it allows you the user to tell them to do different things. What if you want a 12 string guitar sound? Easy. What if you want stereo, with 1-3-5 going to the right, and the others going to the left? Again, easy.
OK, let's amp up our game... What if you want the low E and A strings to sound like a Bass, and the remaining upper four to sound like a Les Paul... on your Strat clone? Oh come on, that's no challenge, that's so easy that Roland even includes such a patch as one of the defaults - right from the factory! That's all pitch-shifting, which is easy for a digital signal - a little applied arithmetic, and Voila!, you have a lower or higher frequency than the original. Which also leads you to understand how they do two- and three-part harmony from only one signal... digital processing at it's finest.
And all that's before we get into actually generating a non-guitar-sounding tone. Organ (your favorite of the moment)? Default, already on board. Bells? Samo, samo. Brass? Woodwinds? Stringed instruments? Percussion? Not even enough of a challenge to talk about. Where it starts to get interesting is not only in combining some of these (I've got one patch that puts a piano on the right and an xylophone on the left, with the pedal panning between the two), but in generating non-musical noises. (Right about now, ashcatlt is sitting up!) By default, there are several tones (too many, in some player's opinions) that are nothing more than noises, or special effects sounds you might find in a movie, stuff like that. I especially like the penny-whistle sliding down for sounding silly, it's something that an audience just doesn't expect.
Jeeez Louise, I've rambled on again. Hope This Helped!!
sumgai
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Post by Deleted on Apr 27, 2017 11:27:00 GMT -5
WOW!!! THANX!!! didn't read but the first paragraphs and all I can say is again THNX MAN!! Reminds me of digital processing class we did back in Uni in the late 80s. I will be back for more reading . You helped TONS. Just a note : the me-25 is based on COSM , it writes COSM on the metal casing. Ok, now back to reading update : finished all reading, but smth tells me that repetition is the mother of knowledge, so I might opt for a second pass before I say smth worthy. A.... just a question , I know you are the master when it comes to Roland synths, the GK pups, etc, so you might be a little biased, but lets not, so the question : I see GR-55GK and SY-300 are priced the same, and this is a little weird regarding that the GR-55GK packages also contains the hex Roland pup. So, why is the SY-300 so expensive when a) it cannot give many useful tones from the vids i've seen b) it doesn't support COSM, when my el-kido me-25 utilizes COSM and gives very nice sounds c) it doesn't let the strings give separate signals (as you have so nicely illustrated), so that I cannot just drop tune for lower B.... ahhhh ok E and make it drop D ?? Why is Roland pushes this so much like its the next big thing? Just because it doesn't need the GK pup? I mean, normally, from what I've read, from what greek ppl told me in the greek forum, and from what you are telling me (and I have been reading you for years), the GR-55 should simply wipe the floor under the SY-300. So? Why the similar pricing ? Most of the SY-300 tones sound silly, but again I cannot judge from the vids alone, without really having the thing. OTOH, one can use the SY-300 on any guitar even a 7-string one. So what do you think? Maybe as processors become faster (you know quantum computing, AI, etc... ok, kidding) maybe the SY-300 is the new technology ? You mentioned smth like accuracy in pitch-to-MIDI being hard without the individual sensors for each string, but the majority of players play ... well ... predictable (google search type) chords... Maybe this is where it's heading? Moreover, the GK requires installation skills, many players have not.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 27, 2017 13:39:11 GMT -5
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Post by newey on Apr 27, 2017 16:04:21 GMT -5
It sounds good. But does it sound like a B3? That's difficult to say, as the whole idea of a B3 (or any organ, for that matter) is to emulate other instruments, to be able to sound like pretty much anything you can envision. The clip didn't have enough happening in the low end for me to say "B3". But that also implicates my crappy computer speakers as well. What made a B3 worth carting around was its bass response compared with other organs. IMO anyway.
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Post by sumgai on Apr 27, 2017 16:56:25 GMT -5
gd,
You pointed out several of the easy-to-see differences between the two units. But I was unaware that they cost nearly the same. To that I have to say (exclaim) WTF?
I do recall that when the '55 first came out, it retailed for $799 USD, with the pickup - take out $100 to buy it without the pup. At least, that's what Guitar Center asked for it in my area. I just did a search for new stuff, and found them in several stores and on eBay for $600 or so, more if you want to support the big guys sending their kids to fancy universities....
This is where it would be smart to go the 'used' route. Roland's gear has always been built like a tank, it will just laugh at you as you try to mistreat it. Seriously. Used is a good route for trying it out, because if it turns out that the unit is not to your liking, then you can turn around and re-sell it for about the same amount - no loss! Bonus: you got to play with it at home, for as long as you wanted.... instead of for only 20 minutes, in a crowded store, with a half-dozen little kids trying to out-Jimmy Page Jimmy Page on Stairway To Heaven!
Which then begs the question - you're in Greece, and things are priced differently there, yes? So what are the two units actually selling for, translated to USD, please?
Yes, Roland and Boss both use the COSM moniker to denote a lot of digital power under the hood. Truly, this stuff is the Gold Standard by which all others are measured. (Fairly or not, that's another question.) But if there's no hex pickup (and we're not speaking about MIDI at this moment, just the ability to process each individual string), then there are no guitar models, and probably few or no synth capabilities. The only thing left to model are amplifier/speaker combinations, where to place any microphones for those combos, and some digital effects that you'd normally place between the guitar and amp (or in an effects loop on the amp/mixer board). That's still a lot of potential for inventing your own sound, to be sure, but what's missing is the ability to change the tuning (12 strings, bass, harmonies, etc.) and or to sound like other stringed instruments. How about a banjo? Mandolin? Baked in at the factory. Drop to D, or open tune to G, D, A, etc.? Again, the factory has you covered.
And all of this, I mean everything I've mentioned in this entire thread, is all just a starting point - you can literally mess with everything!! There are probably some limitations somewhere, but so far I haven't run into any!! Which is why some musicians get turned off, fast - way too steep a learning curve to even begin to understand all the bells and whistles, let alone how to use 'em. I admit, it takes a certain mindset to sit down and figure out what the fella did in that video up above - I d/l'ed the patch set from his link, and it about blew my mind to see what he did.
But the opposing side is, setting it up and finding a few "cool" patches can be fast and easy, Roland tries to make it easy for players new to the field. And if you never use any other features... so what? If the unit is serving the purpose for which you bought it, who can say that you're doing it wrong?
The '55 is the first Roland unit that combines a true modeler and a fully qualified synth in one package. The VG-99 comes close, with a smattering of synth capabilities, but it's not the real thing. If you need the ultimate in modeling power, the '99 is the way to go. If you're not going to do battle with Joe, Steve, or others that have similar out-of-this-world skills, then the '55 should serve all your needs.
I'm sorry to have to say that I've never even seen an SY-300, let alone experimented with one. Perhaps gumbo or Charlie H. can be of some assistance here.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot... one other thing:
In all of the hoopla, it's easy to forget that every sound that comes out of these units assumes one thing - that your amplifier will have a perfectly flat frequency response. This includes the speaker cab(s) too. In other words, a PA mixer and quality speakers will do a better job of making your setup sound good... or even, 'correct'. Your standard (read that as: any) guitar amp won't cut the mustard. It'll sound OK in the bedroom/studio, just for testing purposes, but at a practice with other players, or on a gig..... no way, Jose.
Like most other players of this stuff, it's actually easier to just buy an 'extended range' bass/keyboard amp. Leave the controls set at neutral (or middle, not all the way down), and that should do the trick. If you start playing with stereo stuff, then a second such amp becomes a little tougher to justify (harder for us hold farts to cart around!), and a small, decent PA starts looking more attractive. (Me? I had both, 'cause that was the way I rolled. )
HTH
sumgai
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Post by ashcatlt on Apr 27, 2017 17:10:31 GMT -5
sg has given quite a lot of good info, but I think this point has been missed: The Roland GK pickup - really the whole "wart" that goes on the guitar" - is nothing but 6 individual humbucking pickups, 6 individual analog buffers, and a couple knobs and switches that modulate a control voltage. Six of the wires in the 13 pin cable are the "hot" outputs from each of the buffers and they share a seventh as "ground". All that comes out of that thing is the sound of the individual strings. We can do any number of things with that. The "simplest" thing would be to "break out" those 6 signals via straight wire and plug them into anything you might plug a buffered guitar signal into. Amps, pedals, recorder inputs, whatever you can imagine. The funny thing is that these "simple" breakout boxes are surprisingly expensive. I have a plan to make my own, but it's "on the list" IYKWIS. The Roland units actually do two completely different things with these signals. Some do one, some do the other, some do both, and apparently at least one does all three. Audio-to-MIDI conversion I think came first. This is what sg was talking about above where they "listen" to the input, try to figure out what note was played and how loud, and spit it out as a MIDI Note message. Then they came up with the whole COSM modeling thing. AFAIK, this has nothing to do with MIDI conversion. This system pretty much just applies DSP to the audio signal from each string. I'd imagine it uses different algorithms for different types of effects, but it's more like running each string through a bunch of pedals than what happens in the Audio-to-MIDI conversion process. Some of those things could be done to all of the strings at once - amp modeling for example almost requires it, but of course if you want to retune individual strings, or make it sound like a completely different instrument, you really need each string separately. So they can and do sell boxes with simple, single 1/4" inputs that you can plug any guitar into that use their COSM technology to model amplifiers or stompboxes or other effecty type things, but if you want the "full experience" of being able to turn your guitar into a bass on the two low strings and a 12-string on the top, or have access to all of Thurston Moore's whacky tunings, or things like that, you need to be able to do the COSM thing to each string individually, so you need the GK pickup, and one of the boxes that accepts it. Now the Boss SY thing is (I think) a different type of DSP with which I am not super familiar, but again it has nothing to do with guitar-to-MIDI and is really just a fancy stompbox. There are all kinds of different "resynthesis" boxes out there nowadays - from the analog ones like the Moogerfooger FreqBox, and the EH POG to...well...this type of digital thing from Boss and others. These have limits. Most of them work best with a monophonic input for reasons sort of described above, but technology is getting better and some of these things can do things we'd have thought impossible just a couple years ago. I hope this helps clarify rather than muddy the waters on that front. Edit to add - BTW, the GK pickups don't really take much in the way of "installation skills". The "wart" part really just attaches with the strap button screw, and the pickup itself either just sticks on the guitar in front of the bridge with double sided tape or on an adapter thing that attaches to the posts on a TOM-type bridge. Mine is held together with duct tape, but that's more a fashion statement than anything.
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Post by sumgai on Apr 28, 2017 0:08:52 GMT -5
Everything ash says above is all true - believe it or else!
But that part about Thurston Moore? He's a piker (although he does use the right guitar - a Jazzmaster!). Joni Mitchell famously uses 51 different tunings, although she likely doesn't use every one of them in any one concert appearance. For her, the Roland setup (a VG-8) was just the ticket to no longer having to carry around 5 or 6 different axes, plus spares.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2017 3:34:22 GMT -5
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Apr 28, 2017 8:05:50 GMT -5
Greekdude,
Don't sell the GP-10 short; it doesn't take a back seat to any of Roland's GR series on pitch-to-MIDI performance. It's just miniaturized and put in a different price category (BOSS versus Roland VG series).
It doesn't have the onboard synth like the GR-55 does, because it isn't a guitar synthesizer - besides the pitch-to-MIDI, it has a COSM string remodeler which bases its sounds on the actual string vibration, not in converting to a MIDI or pitch signal which triggers a synthesizer.
The COSM modeling is capable of some synthesizer type sounds that have a high amount of tonal controllability by picking and damping techniques. But for certain instruments, keyboards in particular, the MIDI synth capability works better for having more variety of sounds available. So your choice of unit, say, a GR-55 versus a GP-10, would depend on where you want to go tonally, and what your needs are for let's say, playing live.
A single guitar with a GK interface can drive two Roland units at the same time, with a special cable, and several players do exactly that (GP-10 and GR-55 for example.)
Roland has always had somewhat of a problem with people understanding what the VG series (VG-8, VG-88, VG-99) did, versus the GR series, and the difference between COSM modeling -derived sounds versus synthesizer sounds.
Now there's a third category of Roland unit - the SY-300, which is a digital tracking synthesizer which doesn't require a GK 13-pin interface; it has enough computing horsepower to figure out the different string signals from a mono input, and re-synthesize tones from that, in real time.
A great resource for all of this stuff is the V-Guitar forums site - vguitarforums.com. This has forums on all the Roland guitar products, and other vendors' products as well, GK interfaces, guitars with built-in 13 pin capabilities, etc. There's a huge amount of information there .
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2017 8:23:17 GMT -5
well explained Charlie! thnx! You were very accurate. I agree. We are talking about 3 technologies here. Still strikes me why no COSM in the SY-300, it would make more sense than putting COSM in the end of the chain (after the synthesis part) in the GR55. Maybe Roland has smth cooking for the future?
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Post by ashcatlt on Apr 28, 2017 10:57:44 GMT -5
I've had a GI10 for like 20 years, but the GK2 pickup that came with it never really worked right and I never really had a budget to replace it until just a few years ago, so I dabbled with it a bit back in the day, but was never really happy with the results. I'm pretty darn happy now that I've got a (almost) properly installed GK3A on my SG, though. It has made a real difference in my drum recordings especially. I've tried a number of different things for that in the past. Like I've got a full kit of drum triggers, but I can't play drums like that. I of course tried tapping them in on a keyboard, but that doesn't feel natural either. I even got a little USB keyboard controller with pads for tapping in drums. Not comfortable. I just can't get the timing and dynamic control that I want from any of those things. Probably if I took the time to actually practice... But I've got other things to do and could just draw the drums in the piano roll and move on. Now, though, I have a way of generating MIDI from an instrument with which I am completely confident in both my timing and my dynamics. It's a whole other thing. It's really nice for playing acoustic and electric pianos, and really anything else, too. It does require that you either play cleanly, and like sg said, you've got to kind of think differently. Keyboardists tend to instinctively grab different types of chords and often make different intervalic choices in their playing than guitarists tend to. Or, like, string instruments are tuned to fifths between strings rather than our fourths, so they have different options available. I find this part an interesting challenge that brings me new insights on my guitar playing in general, though I haven't put a lot of time and effort into it. Now as for organ sounds...I'm of the opinion that close enough is close enough most of the time. There actually isn't anything particularly special about the tone of a Hammond organ itself. The tonewheels make about the purest sine waves you'll find even today. The internal tube amp really shouldn't distort enough to add much harmonic content. The hard part is the Leslie. I've been through a lot of rotary speaker sims and very few of them have the controls I'm looking for and even fewer of them actually sound better than the one that's usually built into whatever B3 emulation I'm using. My dad keeps threatening to drag one of his Leslies out to our gigs. I'm all like, "We don't have a budget for roadies. Also, none of the rest of us have our own amps." For a while, he was also threatening to bring one of his actual organs (yes, he has many) out also. But he chose to settle for a Hammond XK1 "clonewheel", but that one died somehow, and he mentioned it to a friend and they mentioned it to a friend at Hammond so they sent him a brand new XK2 (I think that's the one, it's dual manual, but only one set of drawbars) for free. So that's pretty cool. I've always enjoyed rolling my own organs so I could make them less perfect and just have more control over the end result, and to create something unique and interesting. With the power in my DAW today, it's easier than ever to pull up - say - 8 simultaneous saxophones tuned to the appropriate intervals, use their faders as drawbars, and run the whole thing through a tube amp sim. Edit - Oh yeah! I listened to your thing and it sounded fine from my phone. Pretty cool tones actually. Well, I think the organ itself sounds good. There's some strange digital "flutter echo" thing happening on the recording that i don't care for at all.
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Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Apr 28, 2017 12:14:47 GMT -5
well explained Charlie! thnx! You were very accurate. I agree. We are talking about 3 technologies here. Still strikes me why no COSM in the SY-300, it would make more sense than putting COSM in the end of the chain (after the synthesis part) in the GR55. Maybe Roland has smth cooking for the future? There's two types of COSM modeling - one works on the individual string signals to model a particular instrument, allow alternate tunings/pitch shifts, etc., and the other place for COSM is in emulating the amp, speaker, microphone combination. The VG series and the GP-10 do both kinds of COSM, so they can model a particular guitar playing with a certain modelled pickup selected, through a particular amp with a certain mike, etc. The Roland all-in-one effects units (like the GT-100 )can do the second type of amp/speaker/mike COSM as well as a lot of other effects. But the tube amp/speaker/mike COSM modeling is mostly guitar-oriented. Not to say you couldn't use tube amp distortion/overdrive on a SY300 patch, but usually you would want to do something else. The SY-300 sounds are way, way different than what you want to sound like with a vintage guitar through a vintage amp, etc. Maybe the bottom line is that for now Roland wants you to buy one of their nice new multi-effects units to go with the nice new SY-300, GR-55, etc.
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