Hello boys and girls,
If I wanted to build a midiguitar, meaning a guitar synth with an onboard Rpi to play several vst by the strings of the guitar, so bein able to for instance play saxofoon on the strings, would the pisound be usefull?what would be the right direction? I am a complete dumbass, and want to find a way to convert audio directly to midi in a polyphonic way.
Zen Q for your attention and advice
You’d need to use some software that processes the raw guitar audio input and converts that to MIDI signals. If you’d have that, then you could easily route the resulting MIDI data out through the Pisound’s DIN-5 MIDI output.
Have a look at JamOrigin Midi Guitar 2? And some DAW’s like Reaper (easy to try for free) have audio-to-MIDI converting options. There’s some software for converting the output of a Roland hexaphonic pickup (individual strings output) called 2Syn (https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=439603) that the author has discussed in detail as he’s developed it …
Food for thought?
Hello Toby. Zen Q for your reply. I have downloaded midiguitar2 and think it is very impressive. But I think this will not run on a raspPi? It is a windows application. But impressive, in fact I love it and it does exctly what i want,…but would it work on a Pi with Pisounnd?
Hi Zac.
It won’t run on a Pi, no. But you wanted to build this sort of thing you said. So I thought it might be useful for you to look at how some others have approached and developed this idea, and how (for instance) they have managed or avoided the complexity of polyphony because even mono isn’t straightforward to analyse the incoming signal (.wav?) and determine a note from that, to then be used by some other software. It’s why instrument makers like keyboards … one switch on or off is how they started. I think the Pi Sound has the potential to be the interface … I only just got the new one so not delved deep yet … and Orac and/or Pd might be the tools to develop the software … better coder’s than me may have some ideas for you.
I’m glad that MIDI Guitar 2 is useful, and something to aim towards?
Sorry for the late reply. The easiest way is to use an audio/guitar to midi converter. There are several options depending on your requirements.
Monophonic (tracks single string thus not suitable for playing chords): Sonuus G2M V3 or Sonuus I2M (USB).
Hexaphonic pickups (tracks each string separately, utilizing one pickup per string): Roland GK-3 or Fishman Triple Play or GraphTech Ghost system. The Roland pickup and the GraphTech Ghost system still requires an converter unit that converts the audio into midi.
The PiSound would do fine in playing synthsounds that are tracking incoming midi from such abovementioned guitar to midi converter. It may not be sufficient if you are expecting i e realistic saxophone sounds. I´m not sure but I don´t even think that there are any GM (General Midi) sounds in any of the software synths in the patchbox OS.
If you on the other hand would like to try to make the sound from a guitar to sound more like a synth there are possibilities in using several effects to get to something sounding similar (by using Modep).