Originally Posted By: MarioD
[<...snip...>That is why after 50+ years of playing guitar and 10+ years of playing bass I purchased a wind controller. I could not correctly emulate brass and woodwinds with my guitar MIDI controller, plus I really suck at a keyboard.

I find entering single note guitar leads with a wind controller makes them much more realistic than using a keyboard, but then sax is my primary instrument so I am much better at wind controller than keys. I suppose if my primary instrument was keyboard that might not be the case.

I had an early MIDI guitar, but didn't like it. I'm sure they've improved them by now.

Each string was on a separate MIDI channel. That didn't bother me, but the latency did. And it seemed to me the latency on the low strings was longer than the high notes, so when combining the 6 channels, it didn't sound quite right to my ears.

Like I said, MIDI guitar was in its infancy back then, I'm sure they are better now.

But the entire trick of making MIDI sound like the instrument you are trying to emulate is listening intently to the instrument you are 'doing'. How does it get its expression? How does it use pitch bend, tonal changes, sustain, attack, ornaments, and so on. Then figuring which of these you can reproduce, and how to go about doing it.

Lean on the things you can reproduce, avoid those you cannot, and don't add anything the instrument can't do if you want a good emulation. Example: Adding pitch bend to scoop up to a note might be good for a sax patch, but it wouldn't work for a piano unless you are trying to make it not sound like an ordinary piano.

The mechanics of the instrument play a very important part on how that instrument expresses itself. Trombone players have that slide trumpets do not so unless the trombone player is sliding to the note, all notes are tongued, slurs are more like legato tonguing. Guitar players finger vibrato goes from on pitch to sharp and back again and never below pitch unless the string is bent up to pitch from a half step below first. Pianists will often not lift their finger off a grace note until a few milliseconds after the note a half step higher is attacked giving a delightful burst of dissonance and then release. Guitarists playing double stops will often bend one string more than the other. And so on.

I find that studying (with my ears AND my brain) how other instruments get their expression gives me better emulations. I also find it helps with non-emulative, pure synth voices as it can give an extra dimension to them.

I also learn that the secret to good emulation is not in the tone at all, it's in the expression. It's easy to blame tone, but as long as the tone is 'in the ballpark' it's the expression.

After all, if doing a guitar, what is good tone? Hendrix? Slash? Gale? Carlos? Burrell? Montgomery? Clapton? Page? Beck? Vai? Berry? Gilmour? Stevie Ray? Van Halen? May? etc., and on which guitar and what fx?

It's not about tone, it's about expression.

Get a couple of decent synth modules or plug-ins, pick an instrument you know how to play, and figure out how to get it to express itself the way your instrument does. There are 128 continuous controllers, many of which can help you with your quest. http://www.nortonmusic.com/midi_cc.html

I started with MIDI sax, because it's my primary instrument. Eventually I got to the place where I could fool guitarists to thinking I was playing guitar, trumpet players to thinking I was playing a trumpet and so on. I find that fun and rewarding. And as you go on the journey yourself, you might find the same thing.

The advantage of MIDI is that you can edit it millions of ways that are not available to audio (yet). You can add song specific licks, change the instrument, change the octave, change the chord inversion, and a zillion other things. You can make MIDI more your own music and less somebody else's music.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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