Hello everybody! I'm just starting with Linux, I don't have a clue about MIDI stuff, so that makes me a noob's noob. So, according to the Guitarix site,
Once your guitar is perfectly in tune, the MIDI-output module will do its very best to grab every note you play and transform it into a MIDI-note. Thus you can record the notes you play in a MIDI-sequencer like Rosegarden or Qtractor and you can trigger MIDI-instruments like the CALF-synths or ZynaddSubFX.
How can I make it happen with Guitarix, amSynth and Jack? In the real world amps, effects go either in the input of the amp, or in the FX loop, but here, i can't understand what should I do. I'm posting some pics of Jack, so would you like to tell me what to connect with what? Thanks!
It will help to have a hybrid set of strings, with the least possible variation in size as possible,
the scrawniest of low E and A strings, the mightiest high E string, and the middle 3 strings
spread as evenly as possible between.
For clean tracking purposes, they are your guitars, so you could put play with just
3 strings, wide gaps between them, your choice of which 3, since you are
playing synth sounds, make guitar string anomalies and restrictions as few as possible, and
get good at editing glitches. If a phrase or riff is botched, keep recording, wait
for any background ambience to quiet down, and do more takes. Its easy to cut/paste
the good takes, when the background noise floor/ambience is nearly identical.
Using audacity sound editor, use the magnifying glass icons with + and - in them
to zoom in and back out of the waveforms from your imported recording. Zoomed in fully,
you see undulating rows of dots, zoomed in moderately, you see the shapes of sounds,
and can follow along as it plays, noting drum hits, modulations, volume and frequency swells,
and find glitches, that can be spikes or dropouts, or breaks in the fully zoomed dotted lines.
Keep a notebook to jot down numeric locations of special cuts, as you jocky about in
the waveform, to get perfect edits.
Click, hold, and drag to select portions of audio to delete, or modify, and with ladspa installed,
ladspa effects can be applied to selected parts, or the whole, of your music. The effects
menu choices are active when some audio is selected. Each one has a demo option,
and there are 'multiple undo' options in audacity. In audacity preferences, choose to load a copy
of your audio, so the original is always safe.
Synth-guitar is great fun, and you can route the guitar
to fx and clean sounds, as well as to the synth of choice, cpu and ram limits as they may be.
Setting up a guitar to accurately trigger single midi events, instead of gazillions of them, will increase the likelihood of actual usability. Tracking won't be perfect, but not everyone can afford
or master a Roland Guitar Synth. Anything you do to limit variations in guitar output, including guitar playing skills, will be of benefit.
