Thoughts on the Sonuus G2M guitar-to-MIDI device...
Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 9:50 pm
After careful consideration and research, last week I ordered and received the Sonuus G2M. So far, I'm enjoying it -- even with its well-documented limitations. For me, as always, the truly interesting part was what I learned in the process.
First, a bit of Science.
When I first saw the Sweetwater demo video, I was amazed and excited. I recently acquired a Moog Little Phatty (the subject of a future long-winded "Thoughts on..." post) and I thought something like this would make for an awesome alternative way to play it. Because the G2M is only capable of processing one note at a time, I figured it would be a nice pair with the Moog LP since it is only capable of playing one note at a time. While this is mostly true, I didn't want to limit myself with a monophonic pitch-to-MIDI device since I have another synth (Alesis Micron) that is capable of beautiful polyphony. I decided to look into other solutions that I believed would work.
The Roland GK series pickups were the first thing I looked into, because for some reason I always believed they were "MIDI pickups" and would work as a direct drop-in and output MIDI information; I realize now that this is stupid, and that they are simply hexaphonic pickups. A hexaphonic (or divided) pickup is really just a special magnetic or piezoelectric pickup with six individual outputs -- one for each string. The GK pickups are primarily designed for use with Roland's guitar synthesizers, which process each string separately and allow for fascinating things like adding a chorus effect to only the A string or something. While interesting, this is not a solution that would get me any closer to being able to put something on a guitar and bash out an open E chord to play a Mellotron flute patch on the Micron. Even more disappointing is that some great MIDI guitar forums have done the legwork and determined that, while they have certain MIDI capabilities, no current or past Roland guitar synthesizer -- except for one old model, I believe -- does the pitch-to-MIDI translation necessary to output MIDI Note On information. There are other specialized hardware solutions that process that output of a hexaphonic pickup and output pitch-to-MIDI, but they're way beyond what I feel is worth spending on what essentially amounts to a fun gimmick. It appears it would almost be cheaper to outfit one's guitar with a Roland GK pickup and build a simple breakout box to send the six individual outputs from the 13-pin output cable to six mono outs, then send them to six Sonuus G2Ms and merge the MIDI output. Again, this is pretty fucking ridiculous unless you're Mike Oldfield -- and presumably Mike Oldfield could afford a proper system.
So, the point here is that there doesn't seem to be an in-production, commercially-available product that does what the Sonuus G2M does with the simplicity and price at which the Sonuus G2M does it.
Moving on, here's a bit about my experience with it.
On one end of the G2M is a 1/4" mono input for analog audio and a boost switch for lower-output pickups; on the other end is a 1/4" mono output that passes the analog audio, and a MIDI OUT. Also, the G2M is powered by a 9-volt battery, but if you have a 9-volt clip for your power supply of choice you should probably use that instead of toxifying the world's soil with battery waste just so you can guitar wank on your synth.
The first thing I did was grab the Micron, Jaguar, a guitar cable, and a MIDI cable. (I chose the Micron because it just happened to be out of the case and the Moog LP was in the case on another floor of the house.) After hooking up the G2M, I chose a random patch and just started going at it. I found it to track very well, but I'm no stranger to the requisite detached playing style needed for proper tracking of monophonic devices like the EHX Micro Synthesizer, DigiTech Whammy, and Boss harmonizers. Because it's not an effects pedal, when you really crap on the notes the G2M doesn't fail in a relatively musical way like the aforementioned devices -- but it is pretty neat as it struggles to pluck a note seemingly at random when hitting a chord. Also, because the G2M attempts to translate whatever input pitch (or pitches) you give it into a single MIDI Note On output, you can't do something like set your synth to Low Note Priority and expect it will just follow along with an appropriate bass root note. It would, however, be pretty sweet to affix a hexaphonic pickup to the guitar and send only the sixth string's output to the G2M. I imagine that would be pretty sweet indeed.
Anyway, using that setup, I had the most fun using a polyphonic string patch on the Micron that had a slow attack time and a long release time. (Dan from Sweetwater does something like this in his demo.) I would play a note and wait for it to reach full sustain, then play another note, and another; the effect is sort of similar to doing single-string swells with delay on guitar. This works on polyphonic patches on the Micron and not on the Moog LP because the LP has only one voice. With a similar patch on the LP, a nice swell happens, but as soon as you pluck the next note and send it down the pipe, the voice is stolen from the original note to supply the voice for the new note.
The big test was with the rig I've been using for a project we're calling "ELLO" (no relation to Electric Light Orchestra, the East End greeting, or the side project of Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Tommy Lee, and Billy Ocean that I just lost five minutes fantasizing about), which is: CP Jaguar into pedalboard (slightly modified since photo) into Fender Vibrosonic, and Moog LP into EHX Memory Toy into huge PA with two 18" full-range speakers with tweeters. I really cannot overstate the size of the erection I have while hearing the Moog come out of that system.
On Monday, I placed the G2M before my pedalboard so I was just feeding it plain, dry guitar signal. On the other end, the analog out went into the first pedal in my chain and the MIDI OUT went to the MIDI IN on the Moog. With this setup, I can play single-note riffs on the guitar and it'll go through the effects and out the amp and also trigger that note on the Moog and come through the PA. This setup works well because I can also just play the Moog normally using the keys (after turning the guitar volume down so as not to trigger extra notes with my hands or my erection banging against the guitar), I can get just guitar and amp by turning the LP's output off using the button on the synth's front panel, or I can mute the analog guitar signal with the TU-2 if I just want to play the Moog with the guitar. I believe by the end of the night I was using the Jaguar's rhythm circuit exclusively, as the darker sound really seems to help tracking by removing a lot of the harmonic overtones and focusing on the fundamental pitch; this way, I could also keep the volume down on the lead circuit and flip the switch down to mute the guitar signal entirely and keep it from triggering notes on the Moog. (I tend to use the rhythm circuit a lot anyway during normal playing, so it works out well.) The only issue seemed to be that the full-on, balls-out rocking style of play that I usually employ when playing with the band is a bit more sporadic than the style required to give the G2M the signal it wants for optimal tracking. Tomorrow at practice I'm going to try using a compressor in line before the G2M to try and smooth out the transients a bit to see if it has any effect; if not, I'll just have to pull back a little when playing the few parts so far that make use of the G2M.
One thing I forgot to mention is the built-in tuner. It was a smart idea to build in, as it's pretty important to ensure proper pitch tracking -- but it's a bit hard to work with, especially live. I'm sure that with a little more time it would be easier to use, but I really don't care because I have it inline before a pedal tuner. There's an LED that works by flashing faster the closer you are to the correct pitch, finally staying solid when at pitch. I had great success roughing it in with the (soon-to-be-replaced) TU-2 and finishing off with the G2M.
All in all, I'm confident in the investment. For the cost of Yet Another Pedal, I have a device that can turn my beautiful Moog Little Phatty into a giant version of the EHX Micro Synthesizer pedal. I'm also really excited to try it with a microphone instead of guitar as demonstrated in the Sweetwater video, with the Korg Monotron, with a violin pickup, and with anything else I can dream up. There's a bass version -- the Sonuus B2M -- as well, but I don't know exactly how suited the bass guitar is for an application where extremely fast pitch recognition is required. I imagine the latency is higher, as the device would need more time to lock on to the lower frequency. (For the record, I tried the G2M with a bass, and the fourth string is barely recognized.)
As a final note, during my deep dive into the MIDI world, I learned that the original MIDI 1.0 spec was published in August 1983 by Dave Smith (yes, that Dave Smith) and has remained relatively unchanged for 27 years. It is fucking fascinating to me that an electronic device that complied to the MIDI spec almost thirty years ago can still wonderfully interoperate with something purchased right off the shelf today. The Atari ST was released in 1985 as the first home computer with MIDI capabilities, and there's still a collective of folks that swear by it and claim it's faster than any modern computer for extremely complicated sequencing. Adrian Utley said he used one to program the drums on "Machine Gun" from Portishead's Third.
So yeah. MIDI is pretty great.
First, a bit of Science.
When I first saw the Sweetwater demo video, I was amazed and excited. I recently acquired a Moog Little Phatty (the subject of a future long-winded "Thoughts on..." post) and I thought something like this would make for an awesome alternative way to play it. Because the G2M is only capable of processing one note at a time, I figured it would be a nice pair with the Moog LP since it is only capable of playing one note at a time. While this is mostly true, I didn't want to limit myself with a monophonic pitch-to-MIDI device since I have another synth (Alesis Micron) that is capable of beautiful polyphony. I decided to look into other solutions that I believed would work.
The Roland GK series pickups were the first thing I looked into, because for some reason I always believed they were "MIDI pickups" and would work as a direct drop-in and output MIDI information; I realize now that this is stupid, and that they are simply hexaphonic pickups. A hexaphonic (or divided) pickup is really just a special magnetic or piezoelectric pickup with six individual outputs -- one for each string. The GK pickups are primarily designed for use with Roland's guitar synthesizers, which process each string separately and allow for fascinating things like adding a chorus effect to only the A string or something. While interesting, this is not a solution that would get me any closer to being able to put something on a guitar and bash out an open E chord to play a Mellotron flute patch on the Micron. Even more disappointing is that some great MIDI guitar forums have done the legwork and determined that, while they have certain MIDI capabilities, no current or past Roland guitar synthesizer -- except for one old model, I believe -- does the pitch-to-MIDI translation necessary to output MIDI Note On information. There are other specialized hardware solutions that process that output of a hexaphonic pickup and output pitch-to-MIDI, but they're way beyond what I feel is worth spending on what essentially amounts to a fun gimmick. It appears it would almost be cheaper to outfit one's guitar with a Roland GK pickup and build a simple breakout box to send the six individual outputs from the 13-pin output cable to six mono outs, then send them to six Sonuus G2Ms and merge the MIDI output. Again, this is pretty fucking ridiculous unless you're Mike Oldfield -- and presumably Mike Oldfield could afford a proper system.
So, the point here is that there doesn't seem to be an in-production, commercially-available product that does what the Sonuus G2M does with the simplicity and price at which the Sonuus G2M does it.
Moving on, here's a bit about my experience with it.
On one end of the G2M is a 1/4" mono input for analog audio and a boost switch for lower-output pickups; on the other end is a 1/4" mono output that passes the analog audio, and a MIDI OUT. Also, the G2M is powered by a 9-volt battery, but if you have a 9-volt clip for your power supply of choice you should probably use that instead of toxifying the world's soil with battery waste just so you can guitar wank on your synth.
The first thing I did was grab the Micron, Jaguar, a guitar cable, and a MIDI cable. (I chose the Micron because it just happened to be out of the case and the Moog LP was in the case on another floor of the house.) After hooking up the G2M, I chose a random patch and just started going at it. I found it to track very well, but I'm no stranger to the requisite detached playing style needed for proper tracking of monophonic devices like the EHX Micro Synthesizer, DigiTech Whammy, and Boss harmonizers. Because it's not an effects pedal, when you really crap on the notes the G2M doesn't fail in a relatively musical way like the aforementioned devices -- but it is pretty neat as it struggles to pluck a note seemingly at random when hitting a chord. Also, because the G2M attempts to translate whatever input pitch (or pitches) you give it into a single MIDI Note On output, you can't do something like set your synth to Low Note Priority and expect it will just follow along with an appropriate bass root note. It would, however, be pretty sweet to affix a hexaphonic pickup to the guitar and send only the sixth string's output to the G2M. I imagine that would be pretty sweet indeed.
Anyway, using that setup, I had the most fun using a polyphonic string patch on the Micron that had a slow attack time and a long release time. (Dan from Sweetwater does something like this in his demo.) I would play a note and wait for it to reach full sustain, then play another note, and another; the effect is sort of similar to doing single-string swells with delay on guitar. This works on polyphonic patches on the Micron and not on the Moog LP because the LP has only one voice. With a similar patch on the LP, a nice swell happens, but as soon as you pluck the next note and send it down the pipe, the voice is stolen from the original note to supply the voice for the new note.
The big test was with the rig I've been using for a project we're calling "ELLO" (no relation to Electric Light Orchestra, the East End greeting, or the side project of Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Tommy Lee, and Billy Ocean that I just lost five minutes fantasizing about), which is: CP Jaguar into pedalboard (slightly modified since photo) into Fender Vibrosonic, and Moog LP into EHX Memory Toy into huge PA with two 18" full-range speakers with tweeters. I really cannot overstate the size of the erection I have while hearing the Moog come out of that system.
On Monday, I placed the G2M before my pedalboard so I was just feeding it plain, dry guitar signal. On the other end, the analog out went into the first pedal in my chain and the MIDI OUT went to the MIDI IN on the Moog. With this setup, I can play single-note riffs on the guitar and it'll go through the effects and out the amp and also trigger that note on the Moog and come through the PA. This setup works well because I can also just play the Moog normally using the keys (after turning the guitar volume down so as not to trigger extra notes with my hands or my erection banging against the guitar), I can get just guitar and amp by turning the LP's output off using the button on the synth's front panel, or I can mute the analog guitar signal with the TU-2 if I just want to play the Moog with the guitar. I believe by the end of the night I was using the Jaguar's rhythm circuit exclusively, as the darker sound really seems to help tracking by removing a lot of the harmonic overtones and focusing on the fundamental pitch; this way, I could also keep the volume down on the lead circuit and flip the switch down to mute the guitar signal entirely and keep it from triggering notes on the Moog. (I tend to use the rhythm circuit a lot anyway during normal playing, so it works out well.) The only issue seemed to be that the full-on, balls-out rocking style of play that I usually employ when playing with the band is a bit more sporadic than the style required to give the G2M the signal it wants for optimal tracking. Tomorrow at practice I'm going to try using a compressor in line before the G2M to try and smooth out the transients a bit to see if it has any effect; if not, I'll just have to pull back a little when playing the few parts so far that make use of the G2M.
One thing I forgot to mention is the built-in tuner. It was a smart idea to build in, as it's pretty important to ensure proper pitch tracking -- but it's a bit hard to work with, especially live. I'm sure that with a little more time it would be easier to use, but I really don't care because I have it inline before a pedal tuner. There's an LED that works by flashing faster the closer you are to the correct pitch, finally staying solid when at pitch. I had great success roughing it in with the (soon-to-be-replaced) TU-2 and finishing off with the G2M.
All in all, I'm confident in the investment. For the cost of Yet Another Pedal, I have a device that can turn my beautiful Moog Little Phatty into a giant version of the EHX Micro Synthesizer pedal. I'm also really excited to try it with a microphone instead of guitar as demonstrated in the Sweetwater video, with the Korg Monotron, with a violin pickup, and with anything else I can dream up. There's a bass version -- the Sonuus B2M -- as well, but I don't know exactly how suited the bass guitar is for an application where extremely fast pitch recognition is required. I imagine the latency is higher, as the device would need more time to lock on to the lower frequency. (For the record, I tried the G2M with a bass, and the fourth string is barely recognized.)
As a final note, during my deep dive into the MIDI world, I learned that the original MIDI 1.0 spec was published in August 1983 by Dave Smith (yes, that Dave Smith) and has remained relatively unchanged for 27 years. It is fucking fascinating to me that an electronic device that complied to the MIDI spec almost thirty years ago can still wonderfully interoperate with something purchased right off the shelf today. The Atari ST was released in 1985 as the first home computer with MIDI capabilities, and there's still a collective of folks that swear by it and claim it's faster than any modern computer for extremely complicated sequencing. Adrian Utley said he used one to program the drums on "Machine Gun" from Portishead's Third.
So yeah. MIDI is pretty great.
.
