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Subject: Re: [korgpolyex] Re: guitars

From: "electrohead2000@..." <electrohead2000@...>
Date: 2009-01-08

Sorry if this off topic, just wanted to add my two cents. I started playing guitar in 1974 or 1975. Back then synthesizers were these rare ungodly expensive wonder machines. You could buy a Les Paul and a Marshall stack for the price of an inexpensive synth  Chances were that the only way you were gonna get near one was to record in a really good studio. As prices came down in the early 80's i bought every one I could. Not being a keyboard player, I tried all of the guitar synths and pitch converters. The tracking and pitch recognition was always horrible. It was like playing a big concert hall with a wireless. When u are in the back of the hall the delay between picking a string and hearing the note makes it almost impossible. 
I tried every new system when it came out and always had the same problems with tracking and latency. By this time I had learned to play keys and gave up on the midi guitar control idea. 
Many guitarists are like keyboard players, we prefer analog (tube) over digital (solid state). The same goes for our effects rigs. Sure there are fx processors out there with midi controllers and I've used most of them. Having instant access to 1000 sounds doesn't matter when none of them sound as good as a tube screamer or a rat pedal. 
I spent most of the 90's playing in a pretty successful industrial band. Unfortunately the midi guitar integration promise just never worked or sounded right. I traveled with a fairly primitive guitar rig. Marshall stacks and individual fx pedals in a board.  At the same time my keyboard rig was completely state of the art racks of synths, samplers, even an ADAT running time code that synchronized our sequencers, lights and pyrotechnics. 
In the end it was easier to practice keys than to try to force my guitar to be a synth. It definitely made me a much better musician and ultimately increased the demand for my skills. 
The newest crop of guitar players are way more tech saavy than most guys of my generation. There are plenty of amps with integrated midi controls now. Most young players I talk to don't really like the way they sound, so they stick to the classics. There's a lot to be said for rugged simplicity in your setup when you tour. 
Ever have the plastic light encoder strip on an ART pedalboard pop out of place....in front of 10,000 people?  
Thanks for the soapbox 
Electrohead 


On Jan 7, 2009, at 5:45 PM, Atom Smasher <atom@...> wrote:

On Wed, 7 Jan 2009, zoinky420 wrote:

> C'mon this isn't 1979 and we're considering burning our Boston albums
> because the keyboards make it too much like disco. The musical-genius
> playing all the instruments on his album isn't exactly an unusual
> senario anymore. In fact, that could be why midi-guitar never took off.
> Doing midi on guitar is just silly. You have to play so slow and
> deliberately for any of them to track accurately that you'd end up
> looking like the worst guitarist around even if you're not. The only
> useful application of midi for guitarists is program-change footpedals
> to cycle through amp-modelling/ effects patches. Those pedals can also
> be useful for players of other instruments and usually when the
> instrumentalist reaches the limitations requiring it, he finds out about
> it. So I'm not so sure there is a significant marketing problem.
============ ====

i'm not talking about midi-guitars, as such... i mean more generally
guitar things that use midi; switchers, effects, etc. there have been some
great midi controlled switches that have been exclusively marketed to
guitarists (who, FTMP, don't even want to understand MIDI and stop
listening as soon as they hear "MIDI") but they would also be of great
value to a lot of people doing synth or studio work. i always asked the
guys in the guitar shops why there isn't more stuff like that, and why so
many different companies seem to come out with first generation stuff and
then drop the line... the only good answers i ever got, and this from the
guitar guys in the guitar shops, was that 99% of guitarists don't know
about hi-tech, and don't wanna know about it.

combined with the deservedly bad reputation that was earned by the early
"pitch tracker" guitar->midi converters, most guitar players have an
instinctive aversion to ∗anything∗ MIDI.

i'm also sure that the people on this list who make music with strings
tied to a piece of wood are among the 1% who do not fear the technology.

--
...atom

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