Harry's Rant was: Guitar synths (Don's rant)

[Don Tillman]

   Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 23:06:56 -0400
   From: Harry Bissell <harrybissell at prodigy.net>

   If you *Imagine* what the fretboard would look like with only a
   single string, at one fixed tension, and enough frets in a row to
   get the 2+ octave range of the guitar... it would be exponential
   (but of course, inverse because the frets get closer together
   instead of farther apart... I was not referring to the string
   length vs resistance, but the relationship of pitch.

On a guitar the fretted string length is proportional to 1/frequency.
And the electrical resistance of a resistive string is going to be
proportional to length.  Thus each time you go up an octave the
length, and resistance, halves.

Or are we talking about different things?

   No, most guitar synths do SUCK. That's not the manuufacturer's
   fault. Its Physics. I demanded that it still be a Guitar, and
   working with that limitation, they have done as best as they can.

Nope, the guitar synth manufacturers are tightly wedged in a bunch of
severely limiting preconceptions.  Just like most current keyboard
makers.

   "Playing a particular note not all that important?" Come on... :^) 
   Its of VITAL importance. 

I'm serious.  When you hear Miles Davis playing trumpet, are the
specific pitches he's playing the thing that sends shivvers up your
spine?  I doubt it.  

   What I DON'T WANT is to have that added note 30mS late. So I think
   the thread is right on. I doubt anyone is going to suddenly come up
   with some new magic bullet. But the problem is... pitch detection
   is always going to be late.  

[singing...]  No it's not...

Look at what Roland did with their original technology guitar synth.
I forget the name of it, but it's the one Pat Metheny uses.  It uses a
distorted guitar tone as the VCO signal until it figures out what note
you're playing and then it switches over to the real VCO.  That guitar
synth has 0 time delay.

  -- Don

-- 
Don Tillman
Palo Alto, California, USA
don at till.com
http://www.till.com