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wow - I agree - this thread got off track.

Let me put it out there one more time, to see if I can bring it back:

Quote:


All that said - I'm finally learning to hook up and use my Roland GI-20. Funny enough, I do find the delay, no matter how small, annoying. I could see it throwing me off when playing with a live band. And I do find that the thinking/composing/jamming using synth sounds is extremely different. The easiest sounds for me to use are those where the attack is fast, like on the guitar, and the sustain of sounds are relatively short, like the guitar.

One think I thought the guitar synth would do for me is allow me to emulate some of the instruments I really love but don't play - like the fiddle (love double stops, bow tricks, and volume swells in bluegrass), and I love the sound of the pedal steel in Yes and Neil Young. Alas - after playing around a little - I don't think I'll ever get satisfaction in trying to emulate and play these instruments on my guitar synth.





Has anyone been able to inject the expression of instruments like fiddle and pedal steel via a guitar synth combined with the appropriate expression and volume pedals ? Or should I just look for sampled sounds of such expression.

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I guess Joe V didn't bother to check the Youtube link I listed way back up there.

You should, Joe, Skunk Baxter answers your questions and even demonstrates exactly what you are asking about. And get this, he did that using the GM-1 synth.

Check it out. Fiddle? Skunk shows how to pull it off.

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Quote:

1. I was not complaining.
2. I was talking about one song, not an entire CD.
3. Not sure what a tuxedo and a shower have to do with producing a listenable song.
4. I was just trying to help.




Um, what I put up there was a joke, man.

Did not mean anything like your takin' it.

My apologies.


--Mac

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Quote:


Joe, Skunk Baxter answers your questions and even demonstrates exactly what you are asking about. And get this, he did that using the GM-1 synth.





Yes, I did miss that link. Just checked it out - and it's pretty good - if you can't get the real thing, that is : )

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About the "real thing" -- When you viewed Skunk's instructive video, consider that what the eyegate sees is a lucite strat copy sounding like a fiddle.

But imagine what someone just hearing a recording or a movie underscore would visualize when hearing that performance.

Believe me, a Stratocaster would not be the instrument envisualized, eh?

When working with MIDI, I always try to keep in mind that, no matter the Patch or Sample, the job is to attempt to create the illusion that the target instrument is playing. Sometimes that means intentionally NOT trying to make it play certain things that the real instrument would do easily. Such as slurred passages when using a Horn Patch that has all notes sampled with an Attack. Things like that are a dead giveaway. I have found that simply leaving such out of the track, most people won't think that there is something missing, they will just think that the guy didn't play that way for that particular passage. Unless, of course, the recordist makes the mistake of talking too much about how the thing was created. Which is another thing we should not do. The magician does not typically explain how the illusion was done, home recordists are better off to follow that lead IMO.


--Mac

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