Hello from Mark Smart

Started by marksmartus, June 15, 2012, 09:13:45 PM

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marksmartus

Hi all.
I just got a good deal on a re-stock GR-55 from Musician's Friend and it arrived today. Way cool! In the past I used the GR-50, the GP-16, and the VG-8. This box seems to be a combination of all those and an improvement. As is usually the case with Roland, a lot of really nice sounds are in there buried within the way over-done presets. I spent some time today going through the sounds. I LOVE the GR-300 emulation, the Rhodes pianos and the vibes. If you're interested in hearing some things I've done in the past you can check out my web site:

http://www.marksmart.net/

I have some Roland stuff up:

http://www.marksmart.net/sounddesign/bysynth/gr50/gr50.html

http://www.marksmart.net/sounddesign/guitarsounds/GP16/GP16Sounds.html

http://www.marksmart.net/sounddesign/guitarsounds/VG8/VG8Sounds.html

http://www.marksmart.net/gearhack/gr300/analogmods/395report/Report.html

I will be going through here reading notes and downloading patches. Hopefully I can contribute some. I plan to use the GR-55 mostly for playing jazz. I've had some fun using the VG-8 to transpose strings while playing block chord solos a la Wes Montgomery. The GR-55 is perfect for doing that, it will be great! Very excited to be on the forum!

Mark Smart
Mark Smart
mark@marksmart.net

Toby Krebs

Welcome Mark! The GR55 is great for jazz as a stand alone unit. Probably what I use it the most for is jazz gigs. Use the floorboard editor if you have a computer that will run it. Have Fun!

tekrytor

Welcome Mark! Good to have you here. You're among friends...
I remember you well from the GR-50 Yahoo group. For those who do not know Mark, he is a true GRuru of the GR-50 and if I remember right, he also designed several mods for the GR-50. I'll check out your VG links next....
I hope you enjoy your new GR-55. Check out the top things to know about the GR-55 page for the quick cliff dive into the unit. It is extremely helpful, as are our very knowledgeable and helpful moderators and members. I know you will bring a lot to the party too! Welcome!!
SY-300/BeatBuddy/VoiceLive 3/GR-55(v1.50)/33/1/50/700/VGA-7/V-Bass, Yam-G10, GPK-4, DIY X-Bee HighlyLiquidCPU "Cozy-Lil-Footie", FCB-1010, other MIDI stuff, Godin Freeway SA and various other GK equipped controllers, Sonar X1, Audacity, KXstudio, Misc devices

marksmartus

Thanks for the welcomes and compliments. Yeah, a long time ago I designed a mod to allow a mode on the GR-50 where the synth sustains notes held when you hit the pedal, but does not play any new synth notes with the pedal down:

http://www.marksmart.net/gearhack/gr50/gr50mod.html

This mod is unnecessary on the GR-55 since it has that mode available already, but someone on the Yahoo Group for MIDI guitar was asking about something like this for the GI-20. It might work on synths other than the GR-50, although I've never actually tried it.

It's cool to get back into this. My GR-50 died several years ago, and even before that I was not using any MIDI guitar because I was working on other things like the Continuum Fingerboard:



And Tesla coils!



I've spent a lot of time working on Continuum sounds in Native Instruments' Reaktor, and it just occurred to me that modified versions of these sounds would be useful for MIDI Guitar with each string on a separate MIDI channel. The Continuum sends each note on a separate MIDI channel so you can bend the notes individually, just like a MIDI guitar. The "front end" I built squashes the notes from the different channels into signals that can all be controlled by one control panel in Reaktor. Any Reaktor users on here? Since I just got my GR-55 yesterday, I haven't had a chance to hook its MIDI Out up to anything yet. I LOVE Reaktor. It's like audio LEGOs.

Man, I am having a hard time reading these verification letters I'm supposed to type in every time I post. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Mark Smart
Mark Smart
mark@marksmart.net

Elantric

Mark,
Welcome to the community here,

Thanks for the tips in NI Komplete, I'm just getting my feet wet with that running on a Mac mini for live use.

tekrytor

RE: Man, I am having a hard time reading these verification letters I'm supposed to type in every time I post. Any sugges....

That goes away after a few logins, five I think.


SY-300/BeatBuddy/VoiceLive 3/GR-55(v1.50)/33/1/50/700/VGA-7/V-Bass, Yam-G10, GPK-4, DIY X-Bee HighlyLiquidCPU "Cozy-Lil-Footie", FCB-1010, other MIDI stuff, Godin Freeway SA and various other GK equipped controllers, Sonar X1, Audacity, KXstudio, Misc devices

PD FX

Thanks Marc, for the electrifying Tesla performance! Was the tesla sound amplified or was it loud by itself?
I'm sort of a fellow hacker, so i'll be following you. the GR-55 is just one chip.. there's not a lot you can hack by simple reverse engineering. But it has 8 assignable controllers, so you can do weird stuff if necessairy, using external controller generators.
I play with reaktor quite often, so I'm very interested in your ideas and stuff

greetings,
GP


Machh_2

very coooolllll !!!

congratz...

Elantric

#8
Welcome Mark

Glad you located us and joined our community.

i very well remember reading your efforts here: 
http://www.marksmart.net/gearhack/gr300/analogmods/395report/Report.html



Your Tesla Coil playing music reminded me of this :


-------





http://gizmodo.com/5617443/building-the-worlds-first-lightning+proof-midi-guitar

Building The World's First Lightning-Proof MIDI Guitar


The folks of ArcAttack—a crazy group of performers who use singing tesla coils to create incredible melodies—have built a lightning-proof guitar for a performance on America's Got Talent. They've decided to tell us how they constructed the instrument and how it works:

The fret board is 72 optically isolated switches. The fret board, instead of frets has 6 brass contacts per fret. When the string is pushed down to the contact, it makes a connection.
From there the signal is optically isolated, to protect from EMF and sent to a micro controller thats only job is to priority encode the fretboard, and keep tabs on which string is pushed down to each fret.
So priority encoding means this basically: if you are playing the 6th string on the 12th fret, then the computer ignores if say the 11th and 10th frets are pressed on that string also, since the 12th fret needs to take priority - just like a real guitar.

Now there is a second computer that is located on top of the fret board underneath the metal box. This computer detects when the strings are strummed, and is also updated by the first computer whenever the fretboard changes state.
It is also the second computer's responsibility to process the fretboard and strumming data, and output midi messages accordingly. The midi signal is converted to a fiber optic light pulse, and is sent down as optical data to the Tesla coil's main computer, which is responsible for processing the midi commands and outputting a pulse rate modulation signal to control the pitch of the tesla coils.
The end result: The most rock and roll display ever. Real lightning guitar, while the player plays the guitar, he is being struck by lightning that produces the melody that he is playing.

At this point, most educated people think we were just holding it as a prop, or deeming it fake. Hehe. I guess I'm flattered. NOPE. It was real. Most everyone else just doesn't get it.
The entire time that Tony (the first faraday suit performer) was in the spark, he was in full control of the tesla coil melody until he walked out of the spark, at which point our control computer took over and played the solo of the song. It's rather difficult to play the guitar with chain mail gloves on, so we had to keep it fairly simple for him.
The guitar is protected from the lightning via optically coupled switches, and exceptionally clever shielding.


http://gizmodo.com/5617439/lightning-proof-guitar-gallery












drjoness2001

Hey Mark!

I just posted a video that includes a brief demo of your Reaktor guitar synth ensemble:



The clip is a long, I show your Reaktor module at 6:06, with your name and the ensemble's name in the video.

I used my GK Expander, and with the proper string settings for the input filter, it works great.

Wayne



Quote from: marksmartus on June 15, 2012, 09:13:45 PM
Hi all.
I just got a good deal on a re-stock GR-55 from Musician's Friend and it arrived today. Way cool! In the past I used the GR-50, the GP-16, and the VG-8. This box seems to be a combination of all those and an improvement. As is usually the case with Roland, a lot of really nice sounds are in there buried within the way over-done presets. I spent some time today going through the sounds. I LOVE the GR-300 emulation, the Rhodes pianos and the vibes. If you're interested in hearing some things I've done in the past you can check out my web site:

http://www.marksmart.net/

I have some Roland stuff up:

http://www.marksmart.net/sounddesign/bysynth/gr50/gr50.html

http://www.marksmart.net/sounddesign/guitarsounds/GP16/GP16Sounds.html

http://www.marksmart.net/sounddesign/guitarsounds/VG8/VG8Sounds.html

http://www.marksmart.net/gearhack/gr300/analogmods/395report/Report.html

I will be going through here reading notes and downloading patches. Hopefully I can contribute some. I plan to use the GR-55 mostly for playing jazz. I've had some fun using the VG-8 to transpose strings while playing block chord solos a la Wes Montgomery. The GR-55 is perfect for doing that, it will be great! Very excited to be on the forum!

Mark Smart

whippinpost91850

#10
Re  Building The World's First Lightning-Proof MIDI Guitar

I saw them play this and was allways curious if it was real or not. Very ingenious.

marksmartus

Quote from: Guitarpolson on June 20, 2012, 01:50:16 AM
Thanks Marc, for the electrifying Tesla performance! Was the tesla sound amplified or was it loud by itself?

The coils actually make the buzzing sounds. The rest is a pre-recorded backing track. Each arc makes a pop sound, and if you do many pops per second, you get a musical tone. Yeah, ArcAttack is pretty cool. Steve Ward, the guy who designed the MIDI system and built one of the coils in that video I liked to, is now touring around the country with them.

After we did that 2008 concert, Scott Wyatt, the directory of the Experimental Music Studios here at U of Illinois, asked me to co-compose an electroacoustic piece using the Tesla coils. Steve Ward and I worked out a system where an audio track from my computer could control when the firings of the individual arcs happened. That way I could do a lot more different kinds of sounds with the coils. Here is a video of us performing the piece in 2009 at Krannert Center in Urbana:



One thing that system allowed is the "oscillator synch" effect, so I HAD to do an arrangement of "Let's Go".



Quote from: Guitarpolson on June 20, 2012, 01:50:16 AM
I'm sort of a fellow hacker, so i'll be following you. the GR-55 is just one chip.. there's not a lot you can hack by simple reverse engineering. But it has 8 assignable controllers, so you can do weird stuff if necessairy, using external controller generators.
I play with reaktor quite often, so I'm very interested in your ideas and stuff
greetings,
GP

Yeah, I don't plan any hardware hacks with the GR-55, but am having a lot of fun digging into programming it! And the Reaktor possibilities are endless.

Mark
Mark Smart
mark@marksmart.net

marksmartus

Hi all.
I just got back into using the GR-55 again after multiple years of not programming it. I haven't posted here for 5 years. LOL. What happened in between: I played keyboard, Continuum and guitar in a classic rock cover band from 2011 to 2015, just using the GR-55 to do some guitar sounds. It was great for "Time for Me to Fly" by REO, making a 12-string tuned down a whole step from normal pitch. From 2015 till now, I concentrated heavily on the Haken Continuum, getting better at playing jazz on it. I have been working on a one-man jazz orchestra using Reaktor:



But the last few weeks I got the GR-55 out and have been working with it for jazz looping using only the guitar. I bought a Boss RC-300 and the combination of the two is really powerful and much easier to transport than the whole rig with the Continuum.

I was using an Ibanez "lawsuit" Les Paul with an internal GK-2a kit in the band. At my last gig with the band in 2015, a storm blew up and knocked my large speaker onto the guitar while it was on the stand! It got some big gashes in it. But I had it repainted black and it looks really cool now. Recently I have worked on getting the internal GK-2a up and running so I can play the GR-55 again.

So, I will probably be posting some patches, recordings, and/or videos on here after my long hiatus. I need to check out the patches, etc that have been posted here while I was gone.

Mark Smart
Mark Smart
mark@marksmart.net

Elantric


chrish

After reading your website and Wayne Joness website, and having acquired a spicetone 6appeal, I got  excited about purchasing a GR300, which I did (And really excited about analog gear again).

I sent a link to your website and Joness site to the Spicetone people and asked if they would have any interest in cloning a gr300 with updated features such as digital control of the analog circuits, extended waveform selection and outputs for the tracking system so other analog synths can be triggered. Gee where did I get that idea   ;)

To my surprise the guy at Spicetone said he would take a look at it for a potential hex product.

I have a poll up on this site  to see if there would be Market interest, even though it would be a small sample of the potential Market.

https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=21269.0

I'd sure be interested if you had any comments on the matter.


marksmartus

Elantric, that is really cool!

Mark Smart
Mark Smart
mark@marksmart.net

marksmartus

Crish, that sounds like a pretty interesting project! But I am really impressed with the GR-55's digital emulation of the GR-300 and hex fuzz. It feels like the real thing to me! That might affect the popularity of an analog GR-300 clone, I dunno.

Mark Smart
Mark Smart
mark@marksmart.net

chrish

Yes I did hear a youtube demo of the GR55 synth trumpet sound that Metheny uses and I thought that the GR55  has a more realistic GR300 emulation than either the VG 99 or the GP10.

I have the VG 99 and the sustain just isn't there for that particular sound.

Prices seem to be coming down on used GR55 and I may get one of those someday.

admin

#18
Quotehave the VG 99 and the sustain just isn't there for that particular sound.

The VG 99 FAQ

https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=13.0


has a link to


Optimal GK Hex Pickup Settings (Assigning different GK String Sensitivity Levels for specific patches) 
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php/topic,1060.0.html


That goes into details on a strategy we use to get better GR-300 emulation on VG-99 by setting up a separate GK profiles to the task at hand.

Create a custom GK  with higher string sensitivity levels , which tends to improve the GR- 300 emulation for many folks

=====

https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php/topic,138.0.html

Optimal GK Hex Pickup Settings.     

1) Verify your GK PU installation meets factory specs. 
http://roland.com/V-Guitar/howto.html
Follow the steps outlined on your specific GK compatible PU installation, verify your GK hex pickup string height physically meets the suggested factory settings in the GK pickup installation manual, or meets your Guitar Manufacturers published specifications.

2) Go to Page 42 of the VG-99 Owner's Manual - "Inputting the Divided Pickup Settings", and choose your specific Divided Hex PU type.

3) For GK-3 users, realize that the VG-99 allows you to install the divided PU in "Standard Position" (with cable emerging near the Low E string)  - or "Reverse Position" ( with cable emerging near the High E string) Mount it which ever way suits your playing style. Follow the steps in the VG-99 Manual to enter all the divided PU settings for your instrument. (Guitar Scale length, Phase Match with Normal Pick up, Setting S1/S2.

Distance between Bridge and PU.

The PU Distance setting impacts the COSM Guitar Modeling  - specifically the tone of the COSM Strat Modeled Neck PU, Neck + Middle PU positions is where you hear a correlation of the impact of the GK PU distance setting and scale length.
For accurate  COSM Modeling on Roland V-Guitar systems, it relies on a hex PU no Closer than 10mm ( 20mm is ideal) and no further than 30mm distance away from the bridge and have this specific distance specified in the GK settings.
Its for this reason I'm not a fan of alternate mag hex Pickups for guitar. If you get the Mag Hex PU further away than 30mm, typical string bending creates problems with string volume drop outs and trouble with DSP alt tunings. 
And remember if you set the GK Type to PIEZO, the GK Distance setting is irrelevant and ignored

4) Go to Page 45 of the VG-99 Owner's Manual - "Adjusting Sensitivity for Each String", and Rotate the F1–F6 knobs to adjust the
sensitivity. Play each open string with the maximum force you'd use in an actual performance, and set the sensitivity such that the meter
registers a level just before reaching the maximum level.

* If the large segments at the right end of the level meter appear, it means the level is set too high. Lower the sensitivity setting.

* Pressing [F1]–[F6] initializes each string's value to 65.

* Depending on the guitar you use, the level meter may move to the maximum level even when the sensitivity is set to the minimum
setting. If this occurs, adjust the clearance separating the divided pickup and the strings so the distance is slightly greater than specified.

Now go to page 46  of the VG-99 Owner's Manual and find "Using Different Guitar Settings in Each Patch" Follow the Steps for "Patch"

{The GK Settings can be specified individually for each PATCH. Use this setting when switching among multiple STRING SENSITIVITY SETTINGS as you perform.}


With the release  of the VG-99 firmware Rev 1.04 - we now have 4 additional GK PU type "memory slots" to store alternate string sensitivity levels with a new 2 band EQ for GK PU. these "Piezo PU Memory slots" can be useful  regardless of your actual GK hex PU type ( Roland GK-3 Mag Hex , or RMC or Ghost  Piezo Hex)

Many longtime VG users have realized that unlike its predecessors ,  the VG-99 is extremely sensitive to the hex PU String sensitivity, and quite often its desired to have separate unique string sensitivity settings that can by called up on the fly for specific patches when trying to get the best performance from the VG-99.

For example, the Roland factory in Japan ships the VG-99 with a default string sensitivity of "65" for the Roland GK-3 PU. On my Strat with .010 D'Addarrio round wound strings  this yields MisTracking of Guitar to MIDI ( Due to Adjacent string crosstalk) lack of headroom, lack of dynamic range, and lack of definition for most patches, specifically the Steel String Acoustic Guitar emulations - which will sound "rubbery" and nothing like an Acoustic guitar.   By lowering the Roland GK-3 PU String sensitivity down to the "20-30" range - suddenly the factory Acoustic guitar patches come to life, and have dynamic response, and timbre much closer to the targeted emulation. Most of the patches suddenly take on new dynamic range and respond to subtle changes in picking dynamics. which is something I like. 
A query of our Forum Members shows that majority of us with Roland GK-3 use a Sensitivity setting in the range of "20-30" for all strings. 


# Hot Tip -  However note that Many VG-99 Patches may work better with a hotter string sensitivity. Often the GR300 emulation functions, or two handed EVH tapping styles respond better with a hotter "GK String Sensitivity" than "20-30" -  - more like "80-100"  - so the trick is  USE A DIFFERENT GK PU Memory Slot, and assign a different GK String Sensitivity setting for each GK PU memory slot. Use those PIEZO PU type memory slots  (even with a GK-3) and program several unique string sensitivities for the same guitar add 2 band EQ to taste.
The GK Settings can be specified individually for each PATCH. Use this setting when switching among multiple STRING SENSITIVITY SETTINGS as you perform.As with everything on the VG-99 - Adjust to taste! There is no wrong way - if it sounds good it is good.



chrish

Quote from: admsustainiac on October 26, 2017, 07:25:16 PM
Which is why we explained in the VG 99 FAQ that you can get better GR-300 emulatipn by setting up a separate GK profile with higher string sensitivity levels , which tends to improve the GR- 300 emulation for many folks
yeah I read that and I tried it, I also tried various placements of the compressor in the effects chain and checked the gain levels for Distortion.

It's kind of weird because the GR 300 emulation on my VG 99 Fades out into a kind of digital garble and yet all the guitar models sound fine.

I even tried a couple of factory resets.