Harry's /Don's / Harry's / Goto 10 / rant

[Harry Bissell]

    Yeah I'd agree with that.  The Gr-300 is the starting place. I don't
care if it were to
take a whole rack module per string. But none of the "midi" etc synths of
later years have
what it takes. The main problem that I see is that the guitar waveform is
so time variant, that it is mostly impossible (or very hard) to stabilize
it to get the fundamental period.  The
circuit I'm playing with will get the fundamental with reasonable (but not
fade to black) sustain, no octave hopping, and just a phase reversal every
now and then (much less obvious than the octave jumps...).  This leaves us
with the fact that a guitar wave is stable only over a full cycle, not a
half cycle. Thats why almost all P/V converters divide by 2. I think you
could do the divide by 2 with multiple P/V circuits, and get fast response
by the end of the second fundamental cycle... OOPS that 24mS late, worst
case...

Sorry for the "ivory tower" arguement (re: synth as toy)... but you gotta
admit everytime
someone brings up "Pat Metheny" the arguement becomes valid.  That guy
could make a
cigar box and bailing wire guitar into a platinum album !!!

BTW be careful with the Pat Metheny Group.... A LOT of the synth work is
courtesy of Lyle Mays (keyboard) unless you are watching them live, it can
be real hard to tell them
apart at times...

H^)  harry (who will NEVER again use his name in a subject line... its
pretty freaky to get
about 30 e-mail with your name as subject...)

Don Tillman wrote:

>    From: WeAreAs1 at aol.com
>    Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 21:35:05 EDT
>
>    For some reason, I can't seem to find the original message of Don's
>    from which this was paraphrased.  I hope I didn't carelessly delete
>    it - I'm really enjoying this thread, and I'm always interested in
>    Don Tillman's thoughtful posts.
>
> Gosh, thanks.
>
>    However, it should be noted that the Roland GR-300 floor module
>    doesn't quite work exactly that way.  It does indeed use a
>    distorted and lowpass filtered version of the guitar's string
>    output to analyze for pitch-to-period conversion, but it doesn't
>    put that distorted string sound into the audio path either before
>    or after the VCO has settled on a stable pitch.
>
> My understanding of the GR300 is limited.  Thanks for supplying the
> details.
>
>    Nevertheless, Don is quite correct that the GR-300 system has
>    essentially zero delay (taking into consideration its slight attack
>    ramp in its VCA/VCF envelope).  If you ever get the chance, try one
>    sometime.  You'll be amazed at how much it's like playing a
>    "normal" guitar, especially if you've been beating yourself up
>    playing any of the modern-day MIDI guitar synths.  It's no wonder
>    that Pat Metheny, one of the truly great musical geniuses of our
>    time (and a very savvy and demanding techno-nerd), still uses it on
>    every recording and in every concert.  If you've ever seen him play
>    his orgasmic masterpiece "Are You Going With Me?" on that axe, you
>    know just how emotionally expressive and incredibly musical a
>    guitar synthesizer can be.
>
> I'll say.  This is where Pat Metheny takes a guitar synth and stands
> up and testifies.  It's scary when a musical performance can control
> your breathing.
>
> (Everyone else, the album is called "Offramp".  It's great.)
>
> I think those of us looking to build a better guitar synth should
> think of the GR300 as a reference.  Do something that's even better
> than this.
>
>   -- Don
>
> --
> Don Tillman
> Palo Alto, California, USA
> don at till.com
> http://www.till.com