The tech is getting a lot better, but tracking and latency issues are still there, and haven't been fully figured out yet.īut this raises an interesting idea: I think that the idea of a MIDI controller that uses a guitar-type interface rather than a keyboard would be an interesting idea. You're going to run into problems when you start playing more than one string on a MIDI-equipped guitar. If instead you monitor the patches you play in the computer along with the backing tracks you will be behind the beat, a little or a lot depending on latency, and maybe enough to ruin every take. Then you can go unmute the track you just recorded and see how it is. This way you'll REALLY be playing in time to the backing tracks. (or find some other zero-latency monitoring approach, like splitting the guitar's regular pickup signal to an amp). Unless you can achieve near-zero latency, which I'd not expect, I strongly advise you, when tracking to the computer, to play the backing tracks at a low volume and mute your guitar, so you hear only the acoustic sound of your playing on the strings. Latency, like tracking, is less of a monster than in the old days. So the real challenge is to trigger notes accurately and in time. It's hard, now, to even imagine a sound you can't make in the box.
In any case, the tracking is much improved in recent years, no matter what you choose. Wireless sounds tempting the Roland line has depended for many years on a special 13-pin cable. Graphtech offers similar ones, and there are new options I haven't tried like the Fishman TriplePlay. This is not to say that the Roland pickup is the best out there I once met Adrian Belew and he uses RMC piezos which he says track far better.
#Midi guitar mac
Current rig: Squier J Mascis Jazzmaster with GK-3 synth pickup into Roland GR-55, into my interface and Mac with Logic and Propellerhead Reason (you can run Reason inside Logic and so get all the sounds Reason offers). But the Jam Origin stuff may tempt me to demo and waste a bunch of time down the synth rabbit hole again, sigh, thanks for reminding me about it. I've moved pretty far away from wanting to trigger real synths with guitar and am much more interested in processing the guitar signal as a synth tone.
The demos are impressive, but I don't have firsthand experience with how well it tracks and how glitch-free it is. If you want to play VSTi soft synths, the best option around now seems to be Jam Origin for $99.
#Midi guitar series
I was more impressed with the synth-like patches on the VG series (again, no pitch-to-midi conversion) which made a real guitar signal sound synthy (including all dynamics, pinched harmonics, etc.). There was a midi out but it was pretty useless imho, because of tracking lag and glitches. The Roland floorboard stuff driven directly by their GK pickups tracked well (because there was no pitch-to-midi conversion), but the sounds were pretty generic. Hardware pitch-to-midi never got off the ground, mainly because there was WAY WAY too much data to try and stuff down a 5-pin midi cable (that only used one pin to transmit data anyway).
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