Re: Fretless MIDI guitar

[Catilyne <catilyne@icicle.net>]

At 10:46 AM 1/2/2003 -0800, Richard Zvonar wrote:

>The system I mention as being available on the Peavey Cyberbass (each 
>string outputs a single MIDI note plus pitch bend within a two octave 
>range) has some interesting possibilities for fretless and even fretted 
>MIDI guitars. For instance, it allows playing with flexible intonation. 
>Microtonal players (whose pitch discrimination can be uncanny) would be 
>able to play guitar synth in Just  or other intonations without the synth 
>having microtonal features. Even though many synths have tuning 
>capabilities, it requires switching presets in order to change from one 
>to 
>another. With a MIDI pitch bend based system the intonation would be left 
>entirely to the player.
>
>There are certain technical issues related to pitch bend resolution. 
>[*snip*] ...The Cyberbass Voice Module and the Oberheim Matrix synths can 
>handle it.

I really like the concept, but as you mention there are some issues which 
have to be taken into account, primarily by the receiving sound 
module.  Another consideration is the ability of the synth to properly 
handle MIDI Mode 4 (guitar mode), since you don't want the pitch-bend 
messages from each string interfering with each other (as they would in 
Modes 1&2).  You could get away with this in Multi-Mode (Mode 3), but it 
might be a real pain on some synths, as you'd have to go in and manually 
program a separate preset for each channel/string.

In addition to the modules you mentioned above (I've got a Matrix 1000 
which works great for this, BTW), I'd also recommend some of the later 
Sequential stuff as well.  I can personally vouch for the Prophet 2002, 
Prophet VS, and Studio 440.

I'm also curious if there are any current MIDI processing programs out 
there which could accomplish a similar function on existing hardware (i.e. 
take an incoming MIDI note number then map it to a MIDI note + pitchbend 
value).  I think I mentioned previously that I used to use an Atari 
program 
called UltraMidi with my Yamaha G-10 to accomplish something similar 
(although there were other problems which I won't go into here).  It's 
obviously not the same as doing microtonal work on a fretless (for one, 
the 
fingering differences would be monumental), but it would be nice to be 
able 
use one's existing axe and existing sound-modules yet still call up 
different microtonal scales at the push of a switch.

         -c-

_____
"i want to reach my hand into the dark and *feel* what reaches back"
                                                 -recoil