My dad plays rhythm guitar. He is looking for a module that will allow him to have accompaniment as he plays. He doesn't want a pedal board, he wants something that will track with the chords he plays on the guitar. Does such a thing exist? Something with good styles. He does mostly country music.

I'm guessing he'd need something that would convert the notes of his guitar to midi. Then hook that into some kind of arranger module. And then this arranger would need to understand guitar chord voicings so that it doesn't play the wrong bass notes or whatever, because guitar voicings tend to have different notes on the bottom, and the arranger would need to not be confused by muted strings. I'm sure you all get my drift by now. How would we go about this?

Roland makes a midi-guitar device. Not sure of the details, but I've seen them work pretty well.
DonM

Post I sell either the Roland midi guitar pickup or there are guitars that have this type of pickup already installed (Godin nylon or steel acoustics and electric models. Fender has a strat with Roland ready electronics too).Then, you need a Roland GI10 midi convertor or a Roland GR20 synth module which then gets plugged into either a keyoard with styles or a Ketron XD3 or other arranger modules. Now, you can play chords on the guitar and the style will follow your chord playing and if you solo on the guitar, the style will only change chords when it recognizes three note chords. Many of my customers do this.


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George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com

My dad plays an ovation 12-string. I'm sure he's not going to want to switch to a different guitar. Will Roland's GK2 pickups work on a 12-string? I have a Roland Ready Strat that i use with a VG-8, so I'm very familiar with that. But, Roland doesn't make any sort of GR unit that has styles in it? Dad would never ever have any use for lead voices, because he cannot solo.

So he would need 3 pieces of kit. First, we'd need to see if one of these Roland GK pickups will work on a 12-string. Then, we have to convert that GK signal into midi, and from that device into an arranger module.
There is no way to get around the Roland GK system and get a direct midi connection from his guitar to an arranger module?

I'm afraid that accurate MIDI guitar tracking relies entirely on getting a good, clean, single note for the electronics to figure out. As such, I doubt very much that it is in any way possible to track a 12-string (at least without a LOT of 'glitches').

I'm afraid your father will have to bite the bullet and move down to a 6-string, and, in all fairness, anyone who has ever played a MIDI-fied guitar will tell you how clean and accurate your playing has to be to avoid a lot of 'glitch' and wrong notes coming out. In the context of simple sound replacement, the occasional glitch isn't too big of a problem, but to trigger an arranger accurately? The arranger doesn't know if a note is a glitch or the real thing, and is likely to produce unwanted chords if he is not careful.

His mileage may vary, and a lot depends on how well, and cleanly he plays in the first place, but if I were him, I would want to try one extensively, first, before he bought anything.

For simple backing generation, it might be easier to just play an arranger, use the sequencer (or find an older Roland with the Chord Sequencer function) to memorize the chords, and then play guitar on top of it....... but if he needs realtime transcription of his guitar playing, it's going to be a challenge.

This is what i was thinking. What i was afraid was the case. Just thought I'd check in and make sure something revolutionary hadn't happened that I should know about. Dad plays totally by ear, he wouldn't know how to sequence. I mean, he knows the names of the chords, but he wouldn't be able to tell you that the C chord is held for 2 bars then G for a bar. He just changes when he knows it's time to change. He plays good solid rhythm, but he comes at it from a totally self-trained, no theory, non-technical approach.

If anybody else has any words of wisdom, chime right in. I'm stilll trying to brainstorm.

What brought this all about was a rather ingenius maneuver he came up with. My parents have an old Yamaha keyboard that I used to have back when I was about 10. Has some fairly cheesy rhythms and drumbeats in it.
So dad puts a capo on the end of the headstock; creating a little appendage that he can use to push the key on the keyboard which will trigger the chord changes as he plays. He's only worked up a couple songs this way just for fun, but it is rather amusing. This is when he asked me if I knew of a module he could buy to have his accompaniment without guitar acrobatics.

Something else he might try is to have an arranger, and hook MIDI bass pedals into it, then use them in One-Finger mode (so two notes - or feet! - can create most chords he needs). Kind of like what he was doing with his headstock, except with his feet.

Maybe an older Roland RA-90 (or similar) module if he doesn't want to lug around a keyboard and a set of PK-5 bass pedals. Just make sure they are polyphonic, not monophonic pedal triggers. Alternatively, if it is polyphonic (I'm not sure, right now), Roland make a Midi foot controller, the FC200, that can send midi notes. Maybe that is cheaper.....?

Or, even more off the wall, I once saw a OMB guitarist using a set of bass pedals (custom made, probably) that was all buttons, laid out in a grid just like a bass guitar's neck, so hand's and feet were doing essentially the same thing. Very clever......

I think Dikki has probably the easiest solution, using a set of bass peds since he is using triggering with one finger already, just would have to get used to using one and sometimes both feet.

I've seen a stick on midi pickup (not sure who sells them) that could go right behind the bridge on the 12 string, but I also don't think it would be a easy chore to get it to recognise because of the acoustic resonance of all those strings......pose

I have one of the GK2ah's on a Telecaster that I use for this.

To answer some of the Q's. They do not make a 12 string pu only 6 and for bass.

I use the GR20 interface from Roland and it works great. It's not the only game in town though Axon also makes a higher end setup.

The setup, which in fact does convert the signal to midi works great when dialed in for single notes and better on some instruments than others.

It does not work as well for chording or styles. Here's why ..... think about how a guitar chord is actually strumed, i.e. a note at a time. So what happens is the pickup reads it as such and changes the chords / notes accordingly.

Example 1st position open G strummed it plays G>B>D>G>B>G that's what the midi module will do as well change chords for each note.

Terry

Hi, Rory..

I used an Auto Orchestra for years. It was made by a predecessor of Solton, and consists of a module(a la, an arranger model) and a set of 13 note pedals. You set the rythems on the module and simply held the appropriater bass note. The volume pedal had four switches you used for minors, sevenths, etc.

You can get the updated version of this from Ketron. It would consist of an arranger module and the bass pedals. AJ can hook you up and supply literature, etc. It takes very little time to learn, and is extremely effective for a 12 string rythem player. There's a 60 plus year old guy in town that still works frequently using this set-up.


Your Dad would love it.

All the best...


Russ