Jam Synth GK and the future possibilities of hex software

[jassy]

I'll do some more digging with it. For me it's all about the quality of the oscillators. The SY1000 has got quite gritty oscillators on the dynamic synth which is very much like the SY300. This is great for some stuff and but not others. The ADSR on the Jam Synth one is good

The best oscillators I have used that are based on the guitar strings themselves are the mono synth blocks on the Axe FX ii. They have very pure sounding tones but they are mono. They would have be great if those algorithms (or something like them) could have been used in the SY1000 as it would have removed the need for the glitchy OSC synth.

I could not agree more, the Axe FX oscillators are surprisingly fat and analog synth sounding, track very consistent and with very low latency.

[dreamless]

It's been a year since the last update! It isn't vaporware - it's just very ambitious? I have improved the tracking and started putting the UI together. I don't want to add any new features until the beta is out. Improving the tracking may have increased the latency a little but it is still very playable with very little glitching.

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[admin]

Any links to try,  or beta test?

[dreamless]

Not yet, I just have to tie up some loose ends and add some settings like pickup orientation (normal or reversed) and buffer size (up to 128 feels alright).

[Chrismiami]

I'm actually pretty excited about this. Unfortunately I am going to need much better technique to be able to take advantage of individually mapped strings (thinking horn section or string quartet or even a 3-piece jazz combo)!

[dreamless]

You don't need to alter your technique for Jam Synth GK. You can just play it like a guitar. Which is the whole point. The other guitar synths and especially guitar to MIDI conversion is flawed and requires you to play as perfectly as possible to prevent tracking errors. The side effect of being able to play it like a guitar is that even with horns or woodwinds it's still pretty clear that it's being controlled by a guitar because of the voicing and pitch bending. It's very high resolution compared to the utter barbarity of guitar to MIDI.

It's going to take some time to get a physical modeling synth in there to really emulate real instruments. Right now I need to release it with the CZ and FM synths just to get it out there for testing. The FM synth can sound kinda brassy or flutey but you know... it's a typical FM synth. Like from the 80s. It's all about the tracking right now - really high quality sounds will be added later. I have a wavetable synth about halfway done for a future update.

I'll see if I can put together another demo this weekend. I just need to finish the pickup reverse feature and then reverse the GK pickup on my guitar to confirm that it actually works. I have a new job in the medical software industry that is taking up a lot of my time but also enabling me to put some money into this project. I just want it to be really good. Sorry for the long delay after announcing it.

[Elantric]

Fwiw, you do not need to alter your technique when playing VG-8, VG-88, VG-99 - the "VGuitar Systems, which do not employ any guitar to MIDI Conversion for their internal sounds

[Chrismiami]

I understand what you guys are saying and for the most part I'm on the same page.  However, if you read through Pat Metheny's User Guide to the Synclavier Guitar Adapter, there are some interesting points he makes about cleanliness, articulation, and pitch.

But that's not exactly what I meant.  What I was referring to was a Joe Pass on steroids style, maybe like some complicated classical fingerings.  Using the regular Joe Pass style, where he plays a walking bass line on strings 6 and 5, and the melody and harmony on strings 1-4, having those strings assigned 5, 6 = Upright Bass, 1,2,3,4 = Rhodes piano is really a cool performance. But --

If I'm assigning a different instrument to each string: 6=Cello, 5=Viola, 4=Violin, 3=Violin, 2=Trumpet, 1=Flute - then making that work is not just strumming bar chords.  I'd need to work out voicings, fingerings, voice leading, muting, and probably some pedal work to sequence the strings while I jam on the flute!

Probably un-doable but I was just imagining...

[dreamless]

Fwiw, you do not need to alter your technique when playing VG-8, VG-88, VG-99 - the "VGuitar Systems, which do not employ any guitar to MIDI Conversion for their internal sounds

That's the idea but in practice they don't really work that way. They're kinda finicky. Much better than guitar to MIDI but still not even close to "play it like a guitar". I have a VG-88, GP-10 and SY-1000. I have to alter my technique to get them to work properly. The SY-1000 is the best but still struggles even with some pretty basic guitar playing. I demonstrated this in the original video that I posted. The SY-1000 is also a wave shaper and doesn't really sound like a typical synth - very crusty sounding. Not very clean. I'm only talking about the synth of course. The amp and pickup modeling and alternate tunings are a whole different subject. Jam Synth is just a synthesizer that tracks your playing.

After talking it up so much I sure hope I didn't miss anything obvious... I've tested it with the original GK-2 (weird looking one) and current GK-3. I've tested both pickups with the GP-10 and SY-1000 with great results. The SY-1000 can do 96k while the GP-10 only does 44.1k sample rate. I can't really feel a difference between the two.

[Nobulusprime]

This sounds great, look forward to it. I really hope the hex audio from a guitar will one day be able to do some really effective instrumentation modelling, something like Modarrt do with Pianoteq. The SY1000 lends itself to reed and wind instruments but less to pianos

[dreamless]

Here is one more update before I wrap up the beta. I decided to add good old guitar to MIDI because I have improved it a lot since the old app. I had originally planned it to output MPE but I quickly found that the sheer volume of pitch bend and volume cc data on 6 channels would overwhelm any synth I tried. One compromise is thinning the data so that it doesn't overwhelm the synth, but this resulted in a clunky, disconnected feeling under the fingers for me. The other compromise is to output each string on a different MIDI port - the caveat being that you always have to use 6 instances of your soft synth. This isn't as bad as it sounds once you feel how well your playing is translated compared to current G2M methods. I'm using an M2 Pro and it has no problems running many soft synths.

Is this type of setup too strange? It tracks quite a bit better than the GP-10 this way.

[Nobulusprime]

Looking forward to this - will you be looking at updated mono version for IOS (ipad) as well as for Mac?

[dreamless]

Looking forward to this - will you be looking at updated mono version for IOS (ipad) as well as for Mac?

Yes it's all the same code. The only thing stopping the GK version from appearing on iOS at the moment is the lack of GK -> USB connectivity for mobile devices.

[Elantric]

Yes it's all the same code. The only thing stopping the GK version from appearing on iOS at the moment is the lack of GK -> USB connectivity for mobile devices.

Many ipads /iphones support 8 in /8 out USB Class Compliant audio interfaces
( see list here)
https://auriaapp.com/auria-interfaces

And many here own  RMC Fanout Box, Bill Bax Separate Strings box , etc to connect GK 13 guitars to them

[dreamless]

Many ipads /iphones support 8 in /8 out USB Class Compliant audio interfaces
( see list here)
https://auriaapp.com/auria-interfaces

And many here own  RMC Fanout Box, Bill Bax Separate Strings box , etc to connect GK 13 guitars to them

I have an audio interface for my iPad also but it's a hassle to connect every string to a different input manually. There needs to be a GK -> USB dongle that makes this easier. I want a plug and play guitar synth with some real power. 

[Elantric]

If hassle free was a requirement, our site would not exist.