There are several ways to get there: you may have seen Victor Wooten using the new FretTraX system to trigger MIDI sounds and events, or a guitarist or bassist with an odd-looking and somewhat bulky Roland unit attached to their axe, or maybe just someone with piezo-equipped bridge saddles and a 13-pin output from their instrument feeding a rackmount unit or floor processor. Guitar instruments – really any stringed instruments – are much more imperfect in comparison, so reliable and quick translation of their tones and nuances to MIDI has been elusive, at best. Keyboards work great for this, because the information that keys being depressed and released with varying intensities create is easily digitized – the electronic keyboard is a “clean” instrument with no possibility of sympathetic string vibration, multiple locations of the same pitch in the same octave, no worries about intonation, etc. If you’ve never used a MIDI device, the basic idea is that you use a controller of some type to codify musical tones and expression into a series of digital numerical values, which can then be “plugged into” something else that generates sound – usually a hardware or software synthesizer in one form or another. Although far from perfect, the best protocol for that job is MIDI. That was one of the most salient lessons I learned in those early days of studying, and the further I get into my own musical career, the truer it rings.įor anyone who has put an inordinate amount of time into mastering a specific instrument, the concept of a link to the wider world of musical creativity, timbre, and expression via the instrument they specialize in is incredibly enticing. “Remember, you’re a musician first a bass player second.” So went the words of my first teacher (himself an accomplished career guitarist), whom I don’t really recall ever holding a bass. While one might expect the MIDI Bass offering to be the subject of review in a bass-specific magazine, I’ll actually be focusing on MIDI Guitar 2 and tandem use of both platforms. Jam Origin’s polyphonic MIDI Guitar and monophonic MIDI Bass programs have dramatically lowered the barrier to entry in this field, and have done so in unique and outstanding fashion. For anyone desiring to use their chosen instrument to make sounds typically belonging to another, MIDI (“Musical Instrument Digital Interface”) is a very tempting way to go. Bass players are increasingly called on to enter the electronic realm on key bass and more, or are sometimes replaced by those more familiar.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |