SY-300-Reflections on the SY-300 - Why the Balance of Guitar Synths has Shifted

Started by Rhcole, July 01, 2017, 12:48:58 AM

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Rhcole

I have played guitar synths for the better part of 35 years. I figured sooner or later somebody would develop a flawless MIDI pickup and I would be able to play a synth as well as a keyboard player might.

It was the wrong way of viewing the issue, though. Only recently have I been able to reframe this in a way that I could consider what my personal right solution for a "guitar synthesizer" should look like.

If you think about it, NO MIDI solution would in theory ever allow a guitar player to "catch" a great keyboard player. Ten finger polyphony and easy access to controllers with the inherent simplicity of voltage control for keyboards are elements that tilt the playing field for synths heavily into the keyboard realm. Solutions such as wired frets and alternative fretboards create new instruments that may get closer to closing the keyboard gap, but you could argue that a Z-tar (for example) isn't actually a guitar at all.

The FTP is a great product and the best MIDI pickup you can buy today. But even with low latency, it just doesn't feel right to me- it absolutely feels like I am triggering an event happening elsewhere instead of directly under the control of my fingers. Too bad, I sure love Omnisphere for amazing atmospheric patches.

But here's where the SY-300 IN COMBINATION WITH OTHER PRODUCTS has shifted the balance for me. I have written elsewhere about my preferred combination of the SY, Mel9, Synth9, and recently the Digitech Mosaic. These boxes in combination can produce surprisingly complex patches that can even be remarkably clean polyphonically if you know how to set them up the right way. So, here I am mucking around with them all, and I had a moment- "I am playing an INSTRUMENT." Not a sample, not a synth module, a living breathing organic instrument full of surprises and eccentricities.

Take your favorite guitar- does it play and sound exactly perfect on all strings up and down the neck? I have bought some pretty expensive guitars and they are NEVER perfect or even 100% consistent. In a way, that's why I love them. They have quirks and oddities that you fall in love with and learn to use to communicate feelings to others.

And that's what I realized- a great guitar synth isn't some MIDI controller; it's a GUITAR that is informed by the sounds, textures, and potentials of synthesizers. A really good guitar synth will play BETTER than a keyboard synth, because you can hammer and bend strings, make noise with the strings, change the tones depending on where/how you play it, and countless other stylistic variations. And it will use the strings themselves to produce sounds outside of the typical vocabularies of keyboard synthesists.

It won't sound like a keyboard synth- it will sound like ITSELF.
Cool, huh?

Up to this point, the closest I've ever come to this was playing the VG-99. Phenomenal concept, it really needed a follow-on product, but we all know how that worked out.
Well, this hybrid bunch of boxes I've cobbled together for me has turned the corner. It's like a band where each member separately is just OK but when they play together you get magic.
A guitar synth that is rich, complex, and most certainly still a guitar. Amazing, and it is only going to get better!  :D


lumena

Lately I have been working on a project for a friend and I was very excited to think that I would be using all guitars for it.
I was planning to use some samples and omnisphere patches triggered by ftp with the Sy-300. After spending a couple of days playing I kept asking myself why the omnisphere patches were feeling off to me. This conversation is really pretty spot on with how I have been feeling lately, every time I start to use the ftp I feel like I should just use a keyboard controller so that I can more easily interact with things that omnisphere does easily.
I love the flow that my guitar has when I am using fx and the sy300. I also like the no effort editing of sounds and that all the buttons work without be configuring some midi event or pedal.I find that when I just use guitar lots of sounds from the guitar end up being sampled and even though I plan to trigger them with the ftp (think Derek Bailey) - I have been just dropping them in the sampler and using pads to trigger them because it's faster to set up and the ftp software has really not caught up to even the Simpler in Ableton for getting things done.



I totally agree with RHcole about this post and find that just processing guitar with boxes or even digital fx in Ableton is so much more direct and keeps my flow happening.
( I also hate that he mentioned yet another box I may want to buy-
but I have been avoiding buying boxes as I really want to add a Gypsy Jazz guitar to my sounds and so have a buying freeze until I find that)

chrish

 yes the promise of guitar pitch to MIDI never really fulfilled its objective, however it still does have its uses. At least it better have because I sure have a lot of that kind of gear. :)

It turns out that Roland was on the right path all along with the introduction of the 1980s gr 300. The guitar string has to be the oscillator for a guitar to be a true guitar synthesizer

However the guitar synth concept is best realized with the use of a hex pickup.

The VG 99 is an example of the ultimate guitar synthesizer up to this point for the digital world. Of course the sy-300 may have stolen that title if it had included hex processing along with the quarter inch input.

However both those Roland products are modeling analog synthesizers. There's really no need to do that.

With the hex analog gr 300, Roland demonstrated that analog synthesizers are the best match in using the guitar string as the oscillator.

With analog there's no need to sample the guitar string and have it mimic an oscillator.

With analog there's very little if any tracking latency issues and false trigger issues.

I've only just reached this conclusion after acquiring a hex distortion pedal ie the spicetone 6appeal.

Today I played a patch on the spicetone where the LFO was controlled by a midi clock and the internal envelope was triggered by the vg-99 pitch to MIDI. The patch was set up so that the lower strings would run the Spectrum between a clean tone and distorted tone according to Tempo(40 bpm) set by the midi clock input via the Roland RC 300 Looper.

Digital control of analog circuits is where it's at for me at the moment.

I'd like to be able to do that same sort of analog modulation patch with variety of synth waves, such that is found in an analog synthesizer like a moog. Kind of like the original gr 300 crossed with a minimoog. I'm hoping that is spicetone's next hex pedal concept and release.

Analog keeps the guitar in the realm of turning light into music.








chlorinemist

What i'd really like to see is the technology of the SY300 applied hexaphonically. Combining the power of a hexaphonic pickup with these powerful fx processing algorithms seems like it would has incredible potential. Independent control per string is just too powerful a feature to be cast aside just because it's not completely required.

I get that people's first instinct is to think it's redundant, or that a main part of the appeal of something like the SY300 is eliminating hex pickups, but what people arent taking into account is that the existence of polyphonic-capable pitch shifters and synth fx means that suddenly, minimizing string crosstalk at all costs is no longer crucial. Therefore, it's safer to move hexaphonic pickups further away from the bridge*, which means you can use polyphonic pickups that are shaped like and sound like normal pickups and install them in your normal pickup slots. So the ugly GK hanging off your guitar can still be eliminated, and you can still enjoy your fast tuning changes, autotune-stabilized intonation, hexaphonic distortion, and all the myriads of other wonderful things multitimbrality makes possible.

*This was actually already true before (Cycfi Nu pickups go in normal pickup slots and have 3x better string isolation that a GK), but awareness of this development seems practically nonexistent in the guitar tech industry and community at the moment

Brak(E)man

Quote from: chlorinemist on July 02, 2017, 04:24:27 AM
What i'd really like to see is the technology of the SY300 applied hexaphonically. Combining the power of a hexaphonic pickup with these powerful fx processing algorithms seems like it would has incredible potential. Independent control per string is just too powerful a feature to be cast aside just because it's not completely required.....


See https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=20024.0
swimming with a hole in my body

I play Country music too, I'm just not sure which country it's from...

"The only thing worse than a guitar is a guitarist!"
- Lydia Lunch

Rhcole

Seriously, I wish the SY had hex in as well. I have a great guitar that would plug right in. I just don't know if anybody major is going to step up for hex anytime soon. I kind of doubt it personally.

But even if they don't, I love what I'm getting out of this setup. And I'm 100% certain that 1/4" boxes will keep getting better and better. Pitch shifts will improve until nobody cares anymore. The gritty qualities will get more rounded and pure sounding. And, if EHX can make a guitar sound like a Tron choir, somebody can make a serious synth with wavetable partials. It's more likely this will all be 1/4" gear unless it's software on a MacBook driven by hex or something similar.

Brak(E)man

I'm sure you're right.
At present I'm not happy with the 1/4" input
& I don't want more boxes to get the gear working
So the SY is gathering dust for now.
swimming with a hole in my body

I play Country music too, I'm just not sure which country it's from...

"The only thing worse than a guitar is a guitarist!"
- Lydia Lunch