tnob wrote:Easiest would be to grab a mike, a stand and my acoustic tenor banjo and record tracks directly in Audacity or Ardour; I totally agree. But because my acoustic instrument is very loud and the separation between me and my next-door neighbour wafer-thin, this never was an option.
Ohhhhhhhhhh.... and I guess telling the neighbor to fuck off is not an option either.
Have you considered MOVING?
I know, monetary constraints and all... but really, if you're going to play banjo, fiddle, bagpipes, etc, you need a better place. I bought a house 8 years ago, married a girl who likes rock & roll, problem solved. Can't really afford it sometimes but it's worth it
MIDI guitars do exist. Peavey is supposedly selling one for $600 now or soon. They use a 'hex pickup' to measure the frequency of *each* string in 'almost' realtime, using a small onboard computer.
tnovelli wrote:MIDI guitars do exist. Peavey is supposedly selling one for $600 now or soon.
Do you have a link to Peavey getting into midi guitars. There are other manufacturers with hex p/u's in their guitars (to connect to Roland products and the Axon) but I'm not aware of Peavey doing it.
War, crime, disease, starvation, extreme poverty; these are serious things.
Music? Not so serious. Have some fun!
It's not midi conversion, it uses midi but it doesn't convert the audio signal. Roland's VG-99 has the same capability, plus a lot more. It's also a lot more expensive and you need to supply your own guitar. The VG-99 does midi conversion, albeit poorly, but that's a different process.
War, crime, disease, starvation, extreme poverty; these are serious things.
Music? Not so serious. Have some fun!
Confusion breeds confusion. And I, slightly confused already, seem to have created even more.
Apologies for that. Especially to AnthonyCFox. So let's get back to basics.
1) What I aim for is changing the guitar sound of my electric tenor guitar (tuned as a tenor banjo - CGDA) to a tenor banjo's by means of sample. The electric tenor is thereby to function, via preamp, as controller.
So far, I have been under the impression that monophonic means only one note at the time - in playback, to wit. In other words: equal to allowing only "Irish" playing style (i.e. single string melody). What I'd need, however - in playback, once more - is all four strings sounding together. Hence, i used the term polyphonic.
Monophonic and polyphonic are also applied to the way samples are recorded, though, as I realised later. This, obviously, wasn't what I was referring to: what my tenor guitar comes out as in playback what I'm mostly interested in. But I figure this rather muddled the discussion.
2) So, having established that there is a marked difference, apparently, between how, let's say, banjo sample is recorded and how it emerges, in playback, from speakers or headset, tenor banjo chords is what I'd like to hear coming out of my headset. In other words: 'guitar-ish' from my electric tenor guitar controller passed on - as it were - through preamp, to sample/sequencer, to headset; in that order.
What I'm still not getting, though, is that, although sample is almost always recorded in single notes - as (I think) raboof says - some will be suited to chord playback, some not. What also boggles the mind is the conclusion that Philharmonia material, as referred to earlier, is, strictly speaking, no sample at all, but actually single note mp3 sound file. Still, Philharmonia presents this as proper sample, in my impression.
So if this is not sample in the "true" sense, what use does it actually have - and in what manner?
3) Set-up.
There's no money available for new investments, at the mo. Listed below is what I have to work with.
- electric tenor guitar;
- Behringer Guitar Link (found it back today!);
- preamp;
- IBM Intel (R) Core (TM) i-5 3470 GPU @ 320 GHz 3.20 GHz; 3.81 RAM usable; 750 GB HDD;
- operating system: Ubuntu DreamStudio 12.04 LTS, with Windows 7 Home Premium as auxiliary in VirtualBox;
- Picknbuy USB MIDI interface (if of any use)
- M-Audio MIDI Keystation Pro 88 (never used - but there might be some way of employing the Pro 88 as MIDI interface for the electric tenor as well. Just guessing).
I'm still missing suitable tenor banjo sample, though. But if that were readily available, what course would be realistically feasible, with this lot?
- Digital Audio Factory Old World seems suitable. I tried to find it as free(ware) download - but no luck. Torrents will not be of any use to me, because my internet host's provider doesn't allow it. Any ideas as to where else to go?
Whilst considering the above, I was also thinking of a suggestion from AnthonyCFox, In another thread of mine (but related to this one: Reproducing Traditional Instruments Digitally in Ubuntu):
I recommend NON (Non-Sequencer, Non-Mixer, Non-Timeline and Non-Session-Manager), Carla and a decent sf2 font (Digital Sound Factory has a nice freebie). You will need a USB interface to record your electric guitars, Bheringer Guitar Link is probably the cheapest. I have one and it works fine for me.
[...}NON is designed around how computers actually work and is much more intuitive for anyone who doesn't have any experience with other DAWs.
[..] I suggest starting with a fresh install of KxStudio because it will give you all the tools you need and it's well supported here. NON will make things a bit simpler but there is still a lot to learn so be patient. I would start with just messing around with the sequencer and Fluidsynth (Carla will use Fluidsynth to load an sf2 font) and slowly build from there.
This is indeed in the back of my mind. But:
- Does the above have a bearing on reproducing samples, too? Or is this just about recording (i.e. requiring a sequencer in the mix)?
-Is KxStudio a substitute for DreamStudio 12.04 LTS? Or, on the other hand, an application within the DreamStudio 12.04 LTS frame, after installation?
- KxStudio is not in the repository. Where do I find it?
Thanks for all your help. And sorry, once again, for the muddle caused.
tnob
PS to tnovell: what is a banjo player to do with a MiDI guitar?
Last edited by Veerstryngh Thynner on Tue Oct 29, 2013 6:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
tnob wrote:1) What I aim for is changing the guitar sound of my electric tenor guitar (tuned as a tenor banjo - CGDA) to a tenor banjo's by means of sample. The electric tenor is thereby to function, via preamp, as controller.
Right. So this approach requires taking the electric tenor guitar sound and processing it to turn it into discrete MIDI events, then using tenor banjo samples to turn those MIDI signals back into sound.
sample is almost always recorded in single notes - as (I think) raboof says
Correct
some will be suited to chord playback, some not.
I'm not aware of any instrument samples that aren't suited to chord playback.
What also boggles the mind is the conclusion that Philharmonia material, as referred to earlier, is, strictly speaking, no sample at all, but actually single note mp3 sound file. Still, Philharmonia presents this as proper sample, in my impression.
I think it makes sense to make a distinction between 'samples' and 'soundfonts'. Indeed it looks like Philharmonia provides individual sound files for individual notes. Strictly speaking, those are 'samples'. However, indeed to use them in practice, you want to have them as a 'soundfont' - which is basically a specific way to bundle all those individual samples together. Indeed, when you say you're looking for instrument 'samples', usually you're usually looking for a set of samples bundled using some kind of soundfont format such as sf2, rather than a loose collection of sound files.
So if this is not sample in the "true" sense, what use does it actually have - and in what manner?
I guess they assume other people will take their samples and make soundfonts out of them. Not sure. Haven't seen Philharmonia soundfont-ized yet, though.
raboof wrote:Right. So this approach requires taking the electric tenor guitar sound and processing it to turn it into discrete MIDI events, then using tenor banjo samples to turn those MIDI signals back into sound.
... so to return to the original question: did you find any Banjo samples? Is the difference between a 'Tenor Banjo' and a 'normal' Banjo so big that you specifically need a 'Tenor Banjo' sample? Did you try the one in the Fluid R3 soundfont?
raboof wrote: [...] when you say you're looking for instrument 'samples', you're usually looking for a set of samples bundled using some kind of sound font format such as sf2, rather than a loose collection of sound files.
Yes. Exactly.
The banjo (and all the other) samples on the Philharmonia site are merely a loose collection of sound files, apparently, with no sound font at all involved. As tenor banjo virtual instrument, AnthonyCFox suggested Digital Audio Factory Old World, containing reasonable, sound font related tenor banjo instruments that can actually be accessed with Fishman TriplePlay interface, using tenor guitar as controller. I think this is the one you're referring to (with respect to Fluid R3 sound font). But since there is no money available for a TriplePlay, I was thinking that maybe my M-Audio MIDI Keystation Pro 88 could fill in, in some way or other, as interface/guitar-to-MIDI converter.
What do you mean by 'normal' banjo?
There are 9 different types of banjo on the planet, varying in size (long neck/short neck), number of strings (4-9) and tuning. 5 string (blue grass/C & W) banjo, for instance, sounds much sharper as plectrum-, cello- or tenor banjo; banjolele has yet an entirely different feel. So yes, there is a rather wide variety in pitch and approach. So something as close as possible to my kind of instrument (tenor banjo) would improve matters significantly.
In this sense, Digital Audio Factory's Old World offering is not bad. And actually my sole option.
tnob wrote:As tenor banjo virtual instrument, AnthonyCFox suggested Digital Audio Factory Old World, containing reasonable, sound font related tenor banjo instruments that can actually be accessed with Fishman TriplePlay interface, using tenor guitar as controller. I think this is the one you're referring to (with respect to Fluid R3 sound font).
Right. So this means you're basically OK on the soundfont front, but you still have to tackle the audio-to-MIDI part.
But since there is no money available for a TriplePlay, I was thinking that maybe my M-Audio MIDI Keystation Pro 88 could fill in, in some way or other, as interface/guitar-to-MIDI converter.
(the Keystation will not help you here, as it produces MIDI output, but cannot process audio input, just keypresses )
I haven't seen any good software audio-to-midi pitch detection software yet - certainly not polyphonic. One thing that might make the search easier for you is that you probably don't need real-time: you can first record a guitar track, and then turn that into a MIDI track later, right? Still, I don't have any software to recommend.
Interesting, but not *quite* there yet . Attaching input and output of a quick test. A lot of spurious notes, inaccurate timing, no velocity changes, no quantization (that I could notice).
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