Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

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tramp
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by tramp »

Just go and try it, before you lean yourself to wide out of the window. :lol:
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by AnthonyCFox »

tramp wrote:Just go and try it, before you lean yourself to wide out of the window. :lol:
On this you base your condescension? That explains your refusal to educate yourself on the subject.

Your false sense of superiority would be shattered if you recognized the sheer volume of information available, not only on the Triple Play but the iterations of the technology leading up to it. That the Triple Play works as well as it does is no surprise to anyone who's been following this subject for the last 20+ years. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Pretending it isn't possible to get an accurate idea of the quality of a product without firsthand experience is the epitome of ridiculousness on an internet forum. You have heard of Amazon.com haven't you? If not, I can tell you from firsthand experience that is the business model it was built on and it flourishes by today. You should check it out. Welcome to the 21st century. :)

Well, I'm done with you now. Feel free to have the last word. I sure you can come up with something to convince yourself you've scored some "points" and bolster your flagging ego some. Good luck ...
War, crime, disease, starvation, extreme poverty; these are serious things.
Music? Not so serious. Have some fun! :D
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by tramp »

AnthonyCFox wrote:Welcome to the 21st century. :)
Thanks for your warm welcome. :)
AnthonyCFox wrote: I sure you can come up with something to convince yourself you've scored some "points" and bolster your flagging ego some.
Well, I wish I could, but unfortunate I'm unable to top your rants. :(
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by ssj71 »

Not to comment on any particular technology, but I add my voice the many statements that real-time audio-midi conversion is difficult. I'd highly recommend you try any of these converters with some other sample pack or midi synth before deciding whether to buy an expensive sample pack. If guitar is a feasible way for you to control midi using one of these, awesome, but don't buy then try. Also, my banjo was only $500, and these sample packs are halfway there... I guess that doesn't help with the vintage jazz guitars though.
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by raboof »

Hey guys, let's keep things friendly :)
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by forestandgarden »

Hey,

after recently asking for note-to-MIDI plugins in #opensourcemusicians, I got pointed to this old thread, and particularly this
autostatic wrote:It's possible with [...] the GxTuner LV2 plugin that can convert audio to MIDI too. Load the plugin in an LV2 host [...] and select SEND MIDI, SINGLE NOTE and FAST DETECTION.
helped me perfectly.

I have experimented a lot in the last weeks, limited, though, by the scarce availability of solar energy. I'd like to share a not-yet-too-polished result of this tweaking, the One Man Band v. 3.0 . It basicaly is a rather complex patch/session file for the Carla plugin host, and is supposed to be run within stock 64bit 2018 AVLinux, since that is what it was created under - in theory, it might be portable, if all required pkgs are present. You'd best have a look at the copy of the README file below.

What you'd have to do is clicking the link above, downloading the tarball, extracting it and navigating into the folder it contained. The launcher script will find the folder anywhere under /home, /media or /mnt and its subdirs, for that reason, launching may take time. Make sure you read the README first.

Enjoy, ask me questions, and tell me if it worked for you.

Code: Select all

Listen to demo.mp3 to get the idea of One Man Band v.3.0

You will need your JACK configured, preferrably at a low latency (mine runs at 
128 frames/period and 2 periods/buffer), and best running already.

You can launch this custom carla patch either by clicking launch.sh, or by 
clicking OneManBand, which is the same, but as a launcher and has a fancy icon. 
It will only work from this directory 

You will be asked for your admin password, avl64admin (or avl32admin) if you 
didn't change it and are running this on 2018 AVLinux, the distro this was 
made with, and likely the only one it will work on (1). This is because bind-
mounting a custom hydrogen.conf onto the one under ~/.hydrogen was the only 
way I found working to temporarily make hydrogen start with the needed config 
automatically.

What you will still have to do manually, is choosing the 'Transport' tab at 
the left in Carla's sidebar, pick a nice tempo (I like 105 BPM), check the 
'Use JACK Transport' box, and press the Play button in the 'Playback Controls' 
above. You may have to play with the last two steps a few more times until 
hydrogen loops the small song without hickups while following the sync.

Next, you could open the 'All Input VU meter' GUI at the bottom of the rack. 
It is connected to both system capture 1 and 2, you can adapt that. The whole 
setup responds well if a strong chord (which you won't use anyway) brings the 
meter a little over 0dB, and single notes (which you will use) are around -7dB.
It is meant for a raw guitar, and playing with Volume, Tone and Pickup may
bring improved response.

Basically, 5 different and parallel things are happening with the signal now:

1) the guitar is run through a Tube Screamer and a delay synced to the host 
BPM
2) the guitar triggers a solo synth with some extra portamento, giving a 
'Pat Metheny Effect'
3) the guitar triggers an arpeggiator also synced to the beat, it uses all 
the notes that got played so far, until there is a little silence, which 
will reset it

Then comes the 'Bass' compartment, which is special:

-it only accepts low notes, I think up to the B you find on the 4th fret on 
the G string or the 9th fret on the D string
-it only accepts notes, for the duration of 1 beat, when the 'gate' pseudo 
instrument in hydrogen triggers, and holds them until it is fed a different 
note in the same way. In the song that is loaded, this happens every 2 bars 
and goes with the Crash cymbal. The best way to follow this, is to open the 
'Bass Recognition Time Window - ZamGate' GUI.

4) the guitar bass part triggers a pad-like continuous bass
5( the guitar bass part triggers a bass that is getting pulsated with the 
low portion of the drums, basically the kick drum

One word of caution regarding hydrogen when managed as a 'Jack Application' 
from within Carla: you can close the 'Mixer' window, but be careful to only 
open and close the main hydrogen window with the gui buttons in Carla, 
otherwise YOU TAKE DOWN HYDROGEN. Roll the window up if you need to get it 
out of the way quickly. 

(1) IF this patch is going to work on anything but a recent AVLinux, the
following need to be present: JACK Carla Helm Hydrogen ZynAddSubFx Zam plugins
x42 plugins Gx plugins and whatever is providing 'lpf' from the LADSPA Example 
plugins and whatever I may have overlooked.

and I've spotted an oversight already: LSP plugins are also needed, AVLinux 2018 has them already. In any case, downloading AVLinux and running it from a pendrive isn't hard.
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by tramp »

Hi

Haven't give it a shot for now, as I miss some used packages here.
But I've download it and listen to your demo, Very, very impressive, very good use of existing software.
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by forestandgarden »

Hey, a big THANKS for writing this stuff in the first place!

<rant> I find it a bit sad how the lack of cohesion and standards in audio linux makes sharing creative work done with more than one piece (or even different versions) of software difficult, and have seriously thought about turning my diverse project files into installable pkgs with dependencies, or bundeling all used fx plugins' binaries with them and let some wrapper extend the library path(s) to point to them. I've even mused about making some sort of (audio) puppy linux derivate that can export projects as self-contained, remastered, bootable puppy .iso s with just the packages needed or wanted. </rant> However, the short way to trying out this setup, is getting the AV Linux .iso and running it live from a pendrive. (I encourage you to gently nudge GMaq and all distro makers into looking at running a distro 'live' as something that can work as a full solution rather than a test-before-install feature. Did I already mention Puppy?)

Part of the discussion had here 5 years ago, is totally beside the point, in my view: how, not whether or not linux FOSS guitar-to-midi could be used in a live context, is the question. Whatever the limitation may be, if an artist has a good grasp of its nature, he can use it in a creative way. You will certainly not turn a guitar into a banjo, but if, for instance, you want the sound of your lead guitar solo notes to morph into something else when they are held long enough, that's perfectly feasible.

Latency, of all limitations, is an interesting one: over at #opensourcemusicians, holstein is always ready to jump at anybody who's getting obsessed with tweaking kernels & configs until they hopefully get sub-zero latency, and he has a point. Every meter you're standing away from your amp, is giving you an added 3.3ms of latency, and if you're a live performer, you've probably adapted to this without your conscious mind even participating. The mind & body of a drummer need to anticipate entire hit sequences tens up to hundreds of milliseconds before performing them. Being able to make reliable predictions is the key. In my home studio, I mainly use an electro-acoustic guitar, and low monitoring levels. In that setup, latency can drive me bonkers - and I think that's because I can hear the real guitar before the processed one, and my brain has a hard time picking the proper reference. As soon as I turn up the volume or use headphones, and take some time to 'warm up' with a given setup, latency becomes much less of a problem.
In that sense, one of GxTuner's virtues is that the time it takes to recognise a note seems to be relatively constant, as opposed to faster for higher frequencies and slower for lower ones. What I did, at least, to make my patch sound 'good', was adding a delay for extra latency at the beginning of the FX chain belonging to the guitar sound that is not converted into synths later, and manually adjusting it so that the note onsets of the raw guitar did match the note onsets of the synth that's supposed to follow the melody - and the good news is that this worked.

If you want inspiration for using guitar synths live, what better than this 30 year old concert video of 'The Al Di Meola Project', note analysis speed must have been pathetic back then. You will find examples for the two most fruitful approaches: playing slow lines (appx. min. 13), or using the synth sound as an extra together with a real guitar sound, in which case you can go fast (appx. min. 50). I recommend watching the whole show, though, featuring Kei Akage doing one of the most smashy Piano solos in the known history of Fusion Jazz.

A contemporary Jazz guitar player also taking the 'layering' road to incorporating synthesizer guitar would be Kurt Rosenwinkel, who has managed to turn the resulting latency into part of is hallmark sound - not absolutely my favorite, but a clear example for 'it can be done'.

The IMO top-ranking genius for creatively working with the limitations of guitar-to- well, trigger and CV actually in his day, would be Pat Metheny, whose brilliant idea of using a dose of portamento in order to have the synth portion of his sound 'zoom in', pitch-wise, onto the real guitar sound, I have borrowed for my patch. Talking of which: the GxTuner plugin actually lends itself to imitating another creative invention of Mr. Metheny: turning 'Single Note' off (and setting the receiving synth to polyphonic) allows you to pile note upon note in a sort of 'hold' effect.

The intention of my patch definitely is to show that experimantation is worthwhile, and to encourage others to take it from there and play with the possibilities themselves. An honorable mention is also due for Carla, audio linux' most versatile plugin host & patch bay, I'd have grown old & bitter trying to wire up pre-existing software with such ease and liberty inside anything else.
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by tavasti »

Demo sounds interesting! I started to think if I could use that arpegiator setup with Roland GR-33, so that note input would be coming from gr33 to arpegiator. Or maybe mididings might be proper tool for doing this. Anyway, thanks for great example!

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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by forestandgarden »

The arpeggiator is the one the Helm sythesizer has, it needed a midi quantize plugin before it in order to make sure that the arpeggio was not only getting it's BPM from the host, but was in sync with the beat itself - otherwise, if the note played that starts the arpeggio is off the beat, the whole arpeggio will be. Would not see any reason why that could not get triggered from a GR-33. Middings isn't a thing I know :)
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by forestandgarden »

another little demo of the one man band patch, 7/8 signature.

https://linx.li/gitfap.mp3

What I can do, you can do, too (was actually the title of an obscure Roman Bunka song, coincidentally also using a 7 signature), the fx patch is there, I just tweaked synth sounds a little and made a different hydrogen loop
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by glowrak guy »

I did a quick guitar to midi test with Yoshimi and aubionotes,
and it's working pretty well, faster playing than last time I checked.
I enabled two sounds from the excellent Folderol Collection bank,
Soft Choir and Simple chimes, set them both to mono on
channel one, I usually set yoshimi velocity between 25 and 40,
but mileage and chosen sounds will help determine your choices.
Quite usable for fast 1/8th notes in this config, using my
deanbeater guitar into a Fender GT40 usb amp,
qjackctl settings at 44100-256-3

I have qjackctl audio tab with (usb guitar) Capture 1/2 connected to aubio in_1
yoshimi connected to playback 1/2
and in the midi qjackctl midi tab,
aubio midi_out_1 connected to a2j yoshimi

Your pickup choice may also effect note accuracy.

Screenshooting this post, as my previous one vanished :?
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by glowrak guy »

Since the Mustangs are modeling amps with presets and editing LED,
you can send it's audio output to Rakarrack, while Yoshimi keeps playing,
so you can get a lot of audio creativity on a single pluk.

If you can reach your midi keyboard and sustain pedal
while playing guitar, and a sustaining synth pad fits your project,
alsa_in can be used to add the second audio source,
hit the keys every so often while slow-shreddin'
Goooooddd times! 8)
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by forestandgarden »

I'm still faintly hoping for feedback from somebody who actually managed to get my example patch from a few posts up to fully run, not only because I love my patch so much, but also as a general exercise in portability of creative ideas involving more than 1 piece of software - but I'm happy that the general vibe of 'experimentation definitely worthwhile' carried over :)
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Re: Guitar-to-MIDI conversion in Rakarrack/Guitarix?

Post by glowrak guy »

Since it's midi data, and not acoustic vibration to be sent,
have you tried a custom string set, with giant high E,
and tiny low E, and so on for the middle strings,
minimizing the difference in gauges? And also using
flat-wounds on the low strings to further minimize errant vibrations?
And two 3-stringed guitars, every-other-string in place,
might produce fewer artifacts, after getting used to to the playing.
Any extra song-level editing time would probably just equal
the ordinary editing of unwanted notes that get triggered.
Cheers
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