Up all night was: guitar synth

[WeAreAs1 at aol.com]

Harry "Krishna" Bissell wrote:

<< Pre-bent strings are still a problem >>

EVERY note you ever try to play on a guitar is "pre-bent" to some extent.  
Furthermore, just by virtue of minute changes in finger pressure as you 
continue to hold the note, the pitch of the note is constantly in flux, even 
when the player is not intentionally bending or vibrato-ing (although those 
also certainly are important factors).  This, of course, is as it should be, 
and for a guitar synth to be truly successful (IMO), the synth's pitch should 
continuously follow all of these minute (and large) pitch changes.  MIDI is 
definitely a crappy way to do this, although most of the MIDI units try (by 
cramming the MIDI cable with six channels worth of spurious Pitch Bend 
messages).  I think a continuous analog pitch control signal is the better 
way to go.

Even notes played on open strings are not exempt from this, since the pitch 
of the string always shifts up a bit when you pluck it, then settles down 
into its "real" pitch - Just like a well-tuned tom-tom will, when you hit it 
hard (actually, this attack-bend phenomenon is usually even MORE apparent on 
open strings than on fretted notes).

I think a guitar synth should accurately interpret and reflect this stuff, 
and not try to mask it, if it is to really feel like a guitar to the player.

Michael B.