Quick test of rock band 3 squier stratocaster guitar midi

[timhulio]

This is really promising. You can hear it clicking away at the beginning, but once Squier figure out that musicians will buy this as well as gamers the glitches might be ironed-out. That or there outta be a DIY fix.

Courtesy of Matrixsynth blog:
http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2011/03/quick-test-of-rock-band-3-squier.html

[youtube][/youtube]

[endsjustifymeans]

very promising...

[Mages]

so is he saying that the clicks and other problems only come through the regular audio? so if you just are doing straight MIDI you won't hear it? I don't understand why you would hear clicking otherwise.

it's a really interesting instrument nonetheless. the pitch detection method is really cool.

[Doog]

This is really promising. You can hear it clicking away at the beginning

Isn't that just a metronome?

[sp3k]

The good thing about this is instead of using a keyboard to play with vst on abelton you can now use a guitar right?

[Sloan]

The good thing about this is instead of using a keyboard to play with vst on abelton you can now use a guitar right?

yes, you can control any midi enabled VSTi!
could be very cool, down the line they might figure out a way to have the midi picked up bending strings - to me that's one of the things that makes a guitar a guitar.

[George]

That would be quite hard wouldn't it?

Combining a pitch bend wheel with a trem system would be more realistic.

[timhulio]

That would be quite hard wouldn't it?

Combining a pitch bend wheel with a trem system would be more realistic.

In case anyone isn't familiar with this rare Hagstrom/Ampeg item, the patch 2000 uses a pitch bend foot pedal, and the same pitch detection (via the frets) as the new squier controller. It's from the late 70s!

[sp3k]

So, why is this better then a midi pickup?

[timhulio]

Because the pitch detection is an electrical connection through the fret it's a much more reliable system. Midi pickups barely work, even after 30 years.

[jcyphe]

It's crazy how well made and cheaply priced technology can be when they have a bigger sales audience and how that applies to music making

I was reading about a touch screen music company that made dedicated touch screens for music performance and they have basically been wiped out by the iPad. Eventhough the iPad was not specifically designed for music performance the technology is so good and the price is so low compared to the multi-thousand dollar dedicated music controllers.

[avj]

So, why is this better then a midi pickup?

There's really no such thing as a "MIDI pickup". The things typically referred to as MIDI pickups are hexaphonic pickups that are essentially six individual pickups, one for each string -- hence, hexaphonic. They are not something you can just plug into a MIDI IN jack somewhere and start playing. I had no idea what the difference was until I started looking into ways to control my Moog with a guitar, a process I outlined with a lot of stupid words here:

Thoughts on the Sonuus G2M guitar-to-MIDI device...

As Tim pointed out, I also think this guitar is a great leap because it's not doing any pitch-to-MIDI conversion like typical MIDI guitar setups. There's latency associated with pitch-to-MIDI because of Science, which this system essentially removes.

The fact that the guitar isn't reliant upon pitch-to-MIDI also offers up a killer opportunity to tune the strings on the guitar to something other than standard tuning and use both the analog audio out with alternate tuning and standard-tuned MIDI in parallel during a live performance. Shit, that'd be cool.

[sp3k]

Thanks for the explanation guys

[Mo Law-ka]

That would be quite hard wouldn't it?

Combining a pitch bend wheel with a trem system would be more realistic.

In case anyone isn't familiar with this rare Hagstrom/Ampeg item, the patch 2000 uses a pitch bend foot pedal, and the same pitch detection (via the frets) as the new squier controller. It's from the late 70s!