I am guitarist trying to do some instrumental through my MBOX Protools
LE. Can someone suggest any software or plugin that I can use as a
synthesizer. Meaning, I want to play keyboard through the guitar.

I guess, what I'm asking is, I would like to use the guitar only to
play the bass and keyboard.

Can someone give me some suggestion?

Thanks

Shahed

There are a couple options. Roland makes a device (I forget the name)
designed to do just that. It contains a special pickup that senses each note
on each string and converts that to MIDI. You can then plug that pickup into
the synthesizer that Roland makes that goes with the pickup, or I think you
could input it to any synth. But I may be wrong. The pickup connector might
be proprietary. There is a similar device out there called AXON I think. It
also consists of a special pickup and synth. Both these options run around
$1000. There is another device called GVOX that is no longer made. It too is
a special pickup that senses the notes on the strings. It sold for around
$100 and simply inputs the MIDI to the computer (you could then route it to
a synth). It is not as good as the others, but what do you expect for $100.
You will surely find G-VOX on ebay. I have one that I plan on selling on
ebay soon.

I hope one of these options suits you.

later,

brian


"Shahed Khan" wrote in message
om...
I am guitarist trying to do some instrumental through my MBOX Protools
LE. Can someone suggest any software or plugin that I can use as a
synthesizer. Meaning, I want to play keyboard through the guitar.

I guess, what I'm asking is, I would like to use the guitar only to
play the bass and keyboard.

Can someone give me some suggestion?

Thanks

Shahed

In article writes:

I am guitarist trying to do some instrumental through my MBOX Protools
LE. Can someone suggest any software or plugin that I can use as a
synthesizer. Meaning, I want to play keyboard through the guitar.

Search back a few days in this newsgroup and you'll see a discussion
about that topic, with a few suggested programs to try. Some of them
are even free (and worth it).



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

In article ,
(Shahed Khan) writes:

Meaning, I want to play keyboard through the guitar.

There are various brands of "pitch to midi convertors" such as the Roland
system. In my experience none of them work well enough to allow the guitarist
to play in the way they are used to. One has to learn to exclude some playing
techniques and to play very, very cleanly. Even then there are bound to be
spurious notes and intended notes that do not sound at all. If you are
sequencing you can go through and edit the part but for live playing you would
have to just live with the glitches inherent in this type of system.
There are a couple of other alternatives such s the Z tar which uses a
different approach to convert guitar type performance to midi data. I havent
tried the Ztar so I can't comment on its effectiveness.

Garth~


"I think the fact that music can come up a wire is a miracle."
Ed Cherney

(Shahed Khan) wrote in message . com...
I am guitarist trying to do some instrumental through my MBOX Protools
LE. Can someone suggest any software or plugin that I can use as a
synthesizer. Meaning, I want to play keyboard through the guitar.

I guess, what I'm asking is, I would like to use the guitar only to
play the bass and keyboard.

Can someone give me some suggestion?



Kill yourself. Now.

"Buster Mudd" wrote in message
om...
(Shahed Khan) wrote in message
. com...
I am guitarist trying to do some instrumental through my MBOX Protools
LE. Can someone suggest any software or plugin that I can use as a
synthesizer. Meaning, I want to play keyboard through the guitar.

I guess, what I'm asking is, I would like to use the guitar only to
play the bass and keyboard.

Can someone give me some suggestion?



Kill yourself. Now.

Yes. Go to the window ... go to the window ... go to the window ... go to
the window

In article ,
(Brian Huether) wrote:

There are a couple options. Roland makes a device (I forget the name)
designed to do just that. It contains a special pickup that senses each
note
on each string and converts that to MIDI. You can then plug that pickup
into
the synthesizer that Roland makes that goes with the pickup, or I think
you
could input it to any synth. But I may be wrong. The pickup connector
might
be proprietary.

The pickup connector - which uses 13 pins - isn't really proprietary.
Roland introduced it, but other manufacturers - including Axon and Yamaha
- have adopted it as a standard.

The Roland divided pickup for guitar is called the GK-2AH
http://tinyurl.com/x1lb (there's another one for bass called a GK-2B
http://tinyurl.com/x1lf ).

The pickup itself is passive, it plugs into either a GR33 synth module
http://tinyurl.com/x1lg if you want built-in sounds, or a GI-20
http://tinyurl.com/x1lh if you just want a MIDI signal to hand on to other
synths.

There is a similar device out there called AXON I think. It
also consists of a special pickup and synth. Both these options run
around
$1000.

Axon also makes a 13 pin to MIDI box (AX-100SB has internal sounds, AX-100
just outputs MIDI) http://www.musicindustries.com/axon/

All of the above use an electromagnetic pickup, so need to be fitted to a
guitar with steel strings.

An alternative is the piezo pickups made by Richard McClish
http://www.rmcpickup.com/ These are available as standard on guitars by
Godin http://www.godinguitars.com/godinproductlistingp.htm and Brian Moore
http://www.brianmooreguitars.com/ (and maybe others, but those are the
ones I know about).

Having messed with quite a lot of this kit over the years, I've found the
best tracking performance *for me* (and I can only speak of how this
stuff works for me) comes from plugging a Godin ACS
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinacsp.htm into a Roland GR33.

I also have a Godin Multiac Jazz
http://www.godinguitars.com/godinjazzp.htm which is a better guitar, but
it tracks just /slightly/ less well. There seems to be something about the
signal from the nylon strings that the converters like.

When this stuff is set up well (and all the converters have tweaks for
things like pickup sensitivity, that need to be adjusted for your playing
style) they can work very well indeed.

But they take time to get adjusted, and for you as a player to get
accustomed to. If you try even the best of these for 45 minutes in a store
you'll walk away convinced it doesn't work, which is the wrong conclusion
IMHO.

In article ,
(Shahed Khan) wrote:

I am guitarist trying to do some instrumental through my MBOX Protools
LE. Can someone suggest any software or plugin that I can use as a
synthesizer. Meaning, I want to play keyboard through the guitar.

http://www.lateralsol.com/index.htm can be made to work (a friend of mine
uses the registered version very successfully), but a) it's Windows only
and b) you *do* need to know about configuring your system (softsynths,
ASIO drivers etc) to minimise latency or you *will* be disappointed.

In article
writes:

I am guitarist trying to do some instrumental through my MBOX Protools
LE. Can someone suggest any software or plugin that I can use as a
synthesizer. Meaning, I want to play keyboard through the guitar.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but from a glance at the LE info
on Digi's site, it seems that LE doesn't deal with VST plugins. If not,
that's a bit of a drag, because you might be able to cobble together a
VST-based solution at very low cost.

I've just started playing around with these:
http://www.mda-vst.com/effects.htm

The vocoder and talk-box plugins take stereo input, letting you use the
envelope data from one channel (guitar, let's say) to shape the other
channel (your synth pattern, for example). But this would require
pre-sequencing the synth, which might be more trouble than what you'd
like to do.

If you want to go the VST route, I'd look around Sourceforge or
Shareware Music Machine for some cheap/freeware programs that deal with
VSTs. I know there are a few bare-bones VST hosts out there as well,
and at least one plugin that lets you stream to disc. I do this through
Peter Nyboer's Max/MSP-based program Girl. If you're on a Mac, you
might want to check it out: http://girl.yowstar.com/

If you're not on a Mac, there seem to be a number of PC-based solutions
out there, too.

HTH,
Maurice

--
Maurice Rickard
http://mauricerickard.com

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but from a glance at the LE info
on Digi's site, it seems that LE doesn't deal with VST plugins.

A VST wrapper for 99 bucks is about to be released.



---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

In article ,
(EggHd) wrote:

A VST wrapper for 99 bucks is about to be released.

A wrapper allowing VSTs to be used in PT? Cool! I'll have to keep an
eye out for it. Thanks for the tip.

-M

--
Maurice Rickard
http://mauricerickard.com