Quote:

Hola Carlos,
Wow! Great playing, and thanks for making such a great video.

>> I recorded this video playing my Epiphone Joe Pass guitar, a GK3 midipickup and Roland GI-20 as example of simultaneous audio MIDI recording in Band in a Box 2009.5.

That's great MIDI tracking you get from the GK3/Roland guitar,
Also, is the guitar display accurate as well?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VxCPlfV1lA

--------------------



Hola Peter,

Thanks Peter, your welcome, make of this kind of video is pleasure, further there is lot of fun when an interesting subject is implied.

I have two guitars ready for MIDI, the Epiphone Joe Pass with a Roland GK3 pickup and a Godin xtSA with Synth Access and built-in 13 pin connector providing direct access to all Roland GR-Series synths, this Godin guitar is constructed with MIDI in mind, RMS acoustic transducer, dense woods a la Les Paul for tons of sustain, mahogany neck and ebony fingerboard assure an excelent note tracking for MIDI conversion at first start. In this video I use the xtSA Godin and BiaB.
While a guitar with a GK3 don´t have the adventages of devoted synth ready guitars like Godin, it is perfectly possible to set a very decent system taking care of some aspects. The placement, curve and string height of Gk3 pickup in my Epiphone is a critical factor, I set it to 1.0 mm (check image) , also the GK-3 has an adjustment screw that allows adjust the pickup to match the natural arc (radius) of the guitar's fingerboard. Another important thing is to get the most careful configuration possible and settings of Roland GI-20 GK MIDI Interface, sometimes it require lot of tweaking before obtain a acceptable response. But definitely a decisive factor rest in the technique side of player, a clean, controlled and accurate playing style is a must, many informal rock guitar players hate or feel uncomfortable with MIDI guitars cause lack of accurate picking or clumsy fingering. Some tricks also apply, for example in the video you can see I did a variation on octaves playing technique, I did play it by picking the low string with thumb and octave with middle finger since "Wes" only thumb hit can cause a false triggering or ghost note from the mute string beetwen octaves, it can result in three notes in the score instead two.

I can see Band in a Box does a very good and mainly a true representation of notation from MIDI input, but MIDI guitar is not a perfect world, therefore can be false triggers and ghost notes depending of factors like string sensitivity, decay time, sustain, string bending set to chromatic, not to continuous, wrong finger pressure can cause false triggers or out of tune chords. Also muscular tension can be a issue if you play on the fingerboard with too much enthusiasm affecting the pitch detection. In this test I was amazed because after recording I found very little MIDI `dirtiness´, not extra edit was need except for some stuck notes and ghost notes whit low velocity values therefore inaudible. Considering I play some faster passages, which can end in MIDI inaccuracy, Band in a Box can considered a helpful recording tool for average normal playing from MIDI guitar.


Carlos


Some pics of Epiphone Joe Pass with Roland GK3 and Godin xtSA
Pic 1 Pic 2 Pic 3 Pic 4
Pic 5 Pic 6 (xtSA)