[LAD] Potential MIDI headaches?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 18:31:29 -0800 (PST), Len Ovens wrote:
>Being able to pitch change each note separately. Having many more CCs.
>Just to name a few. Guitar to MIDI can make good use of it.

I'm playing a Roland GR-55 guitar synth. It has got a MIDI input, but
it does not recognize note numbers. The rational for this might be
related to the way the synth is able to use the signals of the hex
pickup and that apart from the PCM tones, the patches could contain
modeling. Modeling doesn't just mean guitar and amp emulations, it's
also for modeling an analog synth. The MIDI output provides all MIDI
data, but that data can't compare to the data used by the synth. OTOH
the MIDI settings provide to turn chromatic output on and off, actually
it's turned off, but the output is chromatic, IOW I don't understand
this setting for the MIDI output. The chromatic switch for the PCM
tones is interesting. The tones are played in chromatic steps, even if a
string is bend, the pitch will change in semitones, when turned on. If
it's turned off, the PCM tones follow the real pitch of each string.
This is very cool, but hardly usable, since each noise a string does
produce has got impact, when turned off. Even the most accurate guitar
player can't avoid e.g. fret noise of new strings. IOW if the
sensitivity settings of the hex pickup are chosen to track nuances of
the guitarists playing, it requires to turn chromatic on, since if it's
turned off, it's nearly impossible to avoid unwanted notes. The current
generation of guitar synth does not allow practicable usage of all
provided abilities.

While MIDI 2 might be able to transmit the real data that is produced
when chromatic is turned off, it's not much usable and regarding
modeling MIDI anyway is the wrong interface.

To replace my keyboard by the guitar, MIDI 1 already does the job. At
the moment I play synth most of the times via a 12.9" touch screen,
usually just to produce regular MIDI 1 data. A touch screen could also
produce MIDI 1 incompatible data, but it's very seldom useful.

The MIDI we know has got several pitfalls and indeed some
improvements are very good, but all in all it already does everything a
musician does need. Yes, to control a mechanical monstrosity, such as a
robot piano MIDI isn't an adequate interface and I doubt that this
would change by a new MIDI standard.

A guitar synth does use the guitar as an input device, via a hex
pickup. It isn't a robot guitar, there are no stepper motors picking,
slapping, muting etc. the strings for playback.

It's not the MIDI standard that fails to play a robot piano, the
designers are idiots, if they use MIDI to control this kind of robot.

MIDI 2 could be useful for guitar synth, especially for guitar synth of
the next generation. A new MIDI standard could also be useful to get
rid of a few pitfalls, but it unlikely will become a robot interface.

-- 
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