MIDI-guitar (was: Touch Switches/TS instruments )

[Harry Bissell]

Absolutely right.

They were a passing 'fad' for a while. They were very expensive, the price of a
good
ORGAN as opposed to the price of a Guitar...

They had to have clean frets, new strings, and a careful touch to play. Jazz
cats usually
had the chops to play them, Rock & Rollers usually did not ! They would not
tolerate
sloppy playing.

OTOH, what guitar synth WILL tolerate sloppy playing. I've never been able to
come
up with the clean technique of let's say... Pat Metheny. (that's cause he's a
jazzer and I play rock and roll.)  But I'd argue that if you are going to play
a guitar and synth at the same time, the ONLY useful sounds will be strings and
organ. Anything else is likely to
tip off the listener that the synth is lagging WAY behind the guitar.
(25-30mS). This has been the bane of Guitar synths from the beginning. I ran my
guitar through a digital delay of 25mS, so the sounds would come out in sync.
All the rest of the band LISTENED to
me and followed in sync. Except the drummer, who WATCHED me. (good technique
that eliminates the 1mS / foot delay in sound. So HE was 25mS early, and
b!tched all the
time about the delay.

At least the guitorgan was right on the money, time wise.

I'm playing with synthesis directly from a hex pickup now... no VCO's no delay.

H^)

terry michaels wrote:

> Message text written by Harry Bissell
> >1) check out the "Guitorgan". sorry I don't know where but i bet
> its out there. It was a guitar - organ that worked by cutting the frets
> inot 6 pieces... and wiring to all of then.<
>
> I played one of these in the mid '70s when I worked at a music store.
> Playing it  took considerable getting used to.  For example, the pitch
> would not change if you were bending notes, until the string crossed to the
> next segment of fret, when it would suddenly  jump by a fifth.  Also, since
> it depended on the electrical contact between the frets and the strings,
> momentary connections, say from "fret buzz" were very audible, the audio
> level in that situation was undimished, unlike a real guitar, where
> unwanted sounds are held to a minimum by player skill.   The dependence on
> this electrical connection for note production was far more unreliable than
> you would first think.  I seem to remember the lack of range in sounds,
> basically just organ sounds, along with the lack of expression and dynamics
> usually available on a normal guitar, made for boring music once the
> novelty wore off.
>
> Terry Michaels