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so i switched the steel strings on my guitar for nylons. i love them. i heard some guitar people say they wouldn't sound good, but i've made some pretty decent recordings with them. they age quickly, and stretch a lot when they're new, but they sound great and they're so damn playable its crazy.
so i got to thinking, what do i want to use a midi keyboard for when i'm a much better guitarist? so i started to look around for ways to midify my nylon string guitar. its not cheap, or easy, so any suggestions would be appreciated.
here's the all in one solution, the brand new 2007 carvin ns1:
link
looks awesome!
i'd like to use my own guitar though, and just get the pickups. i guess you need hexaphonic pickups + a converter. the converter you can get cheap, guitar synths have been around since the 80s.
there's a new roland one with usb that looks real nice:
link
the hexaphonic nylon string pickups though? the company that makes the ns1 pickups doesn't sell them separately (yet).
RMC pickups:
link
carving holes and fitting elelctronics in a full bodied acoustic just seems like a bad idea to me. i want something that i can take off easily, and attach to the outside of the guitar.
anyone know about this stuff?
EDIT1:
oh yeah, the other thing.
aren't there nylon coated steel strings? that would be much cheaper. i've seen ones with protective finishes, but i haven't see strings with a thick coating for adding feel rather than endurance.
EDIT2:
i believe hexaphonic pickups are 6 voice polyphonic. pitch tracking on the newer converters are much better than they used to be. a lot of research has been put into this area of signal processing in the past few years.
i use reaktor for basically everything but editing, so all i'm really thinking about is getting the midi into my computer, the noise making i can do myself.
it had occured to me that you could use hex pickups and have each element connect to a different sound card channel. then you could use a computer to do the pitch tracking. i think the hardware option would probably be more reliable and take up less cpu. pitch tracking 6 individual audio streams would probably be a cpu killer, it wouldn't leave me much room for sound generation.
however... processing each string individually would add a lot of depth to the sound. even just using 6 voice reverberation and being able to tune each voice to the range of the string would give a great complex reverb sound. i can only imagine how far you could take this approach. how about this on each string: pitch tracker -> tuned flanger. make some awesome metallic sounds. super complex and deep.
there's a firewire electric guitar that does this...
link
also a little out of my price range.
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04/25/07
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sprouts
godin guitars
04/25/07
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eyesnine
yeah, godins use rmc pickups. they're nice though.
oh yeah, the other thing.
aren't there nylon coated steel strings? that would be much cheaper. i've seen ones with protective finishes, but i haven't see strings with a thick coating for adding feel rather than endurance.
04/25/07
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ejectorset
fender makes the black nylon tapewound strings for bass. i have a set on my fretless, they are awesome. not sure who might makes something like that for guitar, but someone told me someone does.
04/25/07
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adcBicycle
I heard that the reason you shouldn't use steel on a classical if because it's not built to hold the higher tension. So could end up damaging the guitar.
But I usually have at least one steel string on my classical guitar though (depending what I have around when one breaks). And it seems fine.
edited: Apr 26 2007
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pierlu001
i would have assumed that putting nylon strings on an acoustic guitar would damage the guitar itself (for lack of tension, as for too much tension steel strings on a classical guitar will bend your neck). but a quick google search ( link ) reveals me there are no troubles with tension, only problems with tuning.
anyway, classical are way different than acoustic guitars, and i suggest that if you enjoy it, you think about buying one in the future (Godin is the state of the art nowadays) for your playing will benefit by having a proper git.
Recent blogs: first blog!
04/26/07
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pierlu001
oh and anyway, as far as i know (but my infos about it are a couple of years old) midi pickups for guitars are subjects to quite a latency, so that your style of playing has to modify in order to deal with it... fast phrases are not allowed with midi pickups, or if so, the direct guitar signal has to mixed together with the synthetized signal so that you can have a decent sharpness to your phrases. most of the people i heard of use the audio signals of guitars for computer processing, which keeps the timing of playing more accurate...
woa at times i wonder why i insit in writing long sentences in english cos i always have the feeling i'm saying a bunch of disconnected concepts lol
anyway i think i managed to explain myself
cheers
Recent blogs: first blog!
04/26/07
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hecanjog
i've always wondered at how good a dedicated hardware pitch tracker like this is - are we talking polyphony, or is it monophonic with latency? if it's the latter, i'd say go with max/msp - you can get very usable (and extremely flexible!) results with objects like pitch~ and fiddle~ and whatever that one IRCAM makes is called (if you like crashes! ;-) ).
04/26/07
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quip
i use both guitar synth and processed guitars (nylon, steel and electric steel). both have their advantages and disadvantages.
guitar synths
actually with the old analogue roland system latency is not bad.
tracking is ok even for bent notes.
the synth engine on my roland unit is analogue and quite warm. however
you don't have much range of sounds - it all sounds like a roland polysynth
(which is what it is!)
processed guitars - signal following
i use bidule and a boss vf-1 efx box for this approach. latency tends to
be quite bad depending on what sound card you use.
however you can get any sound and use any guitar. it is very flexible in this
respect. pitch tracking can be suprisingly accurate although bent notes
tend to mess things up and chords are a no no. however you can get some
great note jumping happening which is a sound in itself.
i usually setup patches in bidule to trigger vst synths and the like.
also use the built in synth in the boss but again this is limited to a mono synth.
a range of methods helps and gives you flexibility. i have never used a proper midi
guitar like the godin so would be interested how it goes - keep us up to date like!
04/26/07
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eyesnine
i believe hexaphonic pickups are 6 voice polyphonic. pitch tracking on the newer converters are much better than they used to be. a lot of research has been put into this area of signal processing in the past few years.
i use reaktor for basically everything but editing, so all i'm really thinking about is getting the midi into my computer, the noise making i can do myself.
it had occured to me that you could use hex pickups and have each element connect to a different sound card channel. then you could use a computer to do the pitch tracking. i think the hardware option would probably be more reliable and take up less cpu. pitch tracking 6 individual audio streams would probably be a cpu killer, it wouldn't leave me much room for sound generation.
however... processing each string individually would add a lot of depth to the sound. even just using 6 voice reverberation and being able to tune each voice to the range of the string would give a great complex reverb sound. i can only imagine how far you could take this approach. how about this on each string: pitch tracker -> tuned flanger. make some awesome metallic sounds. super complex and deep.
there's a firewire electric guitar that does this...
link
also a little out of my price range.
04/27/07
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deltasleep
having personally bent a classical guitar nearly in half, let me attest to the truth in claims that steel strings will warp your classical guitar.
you should expect a week of frequent playing before your strings stabilize very much in terms of tuning.
04/28/07
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Tripnik
dude....NEVER put steel strings or anything else on classical guitars except nylon. Not all guitars are created equal, and in this case, there are stuctural differences that could end up screwing you.
As far as pitch tracking on the guitar there tends to be some wonky issues when you use an external pickup on a non-midi ready guitar. Processing sound works passably, but on all the setups I've played, there is a barely distinguishable latency. Not enough to mess anything up, but just enough to make things not feel quite right. Due to the delicate nature of pitch tracking, slapping an external midi pickup on your guitar won't cut it either. It makes sense in a way...how could you expect to get the same results from each guitar...hollowbody, solid body, acoustic, electric...when each instrument resonates differently?
I've heard that midi-ready guitars are A LOT better both in terms of latency and pitch tracking, however I can't attest to this since I haven't had the pleasure of playing one yet. Careful, though. Pat Metheny certainly uses it for evil. Can you honestly say that you wouldn't do the same?
sidenote: the IRCAM object is called [yin~]. It works like butter, but yes, it will crash max.
06/17/08
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packetst0rm
I use one of these!
link
It's quite useful, I find the only problem is that the note off signal is almost completely non-exsistant so you have to silence the strings to stop a note.
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