I use Roland GK-Pickup. That works very fine. But the reason I’m searching for an alternative: the cable is a very special one and it’s fragile for clicking. At Mod Duo I hoped to find a smoother way because the connection is with a common instrument cable (Klinkenkabel).
At Musikmesse you played some very exiting Synthsounds, Gianfranco. How did you do that?
At the Musikmesse I was using the Sonuus G2M. It is a Monophonic MIDI but it works quite well for the level of easiness it offers.
In the past I also used to play the GK pickup plus the GI-20 GK-to-MIDI device from Roland but, as you said, the GK cables are very expensive and I find this solution to be too cumbersome.
Regarding an internal solution - like a note-to-midi plugin - I doubt very much we would be able to offer a solution tupeior to the Sonuus ones, after all, the Sonuus is actually one plugin like this running directly on a dedicated chip.
I’m trying to find a copy of the article I wrote about MIDI bass about 15 years ago for Bassist Magazine - at the time, it was the most complete exploration of the options that had been written… My experience at the time was that the latency was mostly unacceptable for ‘normal’ playing, but with laptop processing getting us all more used to latency, it might be less of a problem now… The Roland pick-up was the best of the widely available ones, though RMC did a piezo pickup that Alain Caron was using that was fabulous. Axxon’s convertor was the fastest, no idea if it’s still available.
Unless I was needing to generate MIDI data to then edit, or for programming, these days I’d choose modelling over MIDI every time… the VB99 is pretty damn cool.
There’s a software based solution by jamorigin (www.jamorigin.com).
They have three products, guitar, bass and violin.
It’s a vst/au plugin, so not compatible with the MOD but i guess it’s still worth looking into. A licence is 100$ but i think you can download a trial version without any limitations in the functionality.
EDIT: They say on the page that they have an algorithm that uses very little cpu and can even run on an ipod. Maybe the linux community (i have no idea what i’m talking about ) could reach out to them, maybe collaborate on a solution for the MOD.
Lowest note on a regular bass guitar is ~41 Hz, ~30 Hz for a 5 string. So detecting the fundamental takes at least ~30ms.
Granted by setting some constraints (e.g. standard tuning only, no pitch-bends etc) and adding dedicated pickups per string one can do a few tricks to lower that latency. Just don’t slap the B string
I’m also curious if there’s product that works well
@gianfranco
Which G2M are you using. The current (Version 3) can be set to use with bass, guitar, or voice.
I have the G2M V3. So far, using with the MOD generated sounds, it’s got a bit of latency so I wouldn’t use it for replacing my sound but I would use it for pads (synth or strings) playing behind the bass. (I really wish the fluid synth pads didn’t take up so much CPU…)
my unit has been actually missing for some weeks
I am pretty sure it is not V3 as it was only set to guitar but I can’t tell you if it is v1 or v2. I bought it in 2014.
it had a bit of latency though. what I did a lot was to always use both the audio through and the MIDI simultaneously.
i am very curious to use the I2M, also from Sonuus. It is said to be poliphonic.
Since last June I’ve got a guitar with the Fishman Triple Play and it has been by far the best MIDI solution for guitar I’ve used. Had it the pitch bend as the Sonuus, it would be perfect for me.
) could reach out to them, maybe collaborate on a solution for the MOD.