Forum rss-feed

Forum

General Discussion: Using Arranger w/ Guitar Synths as Strummer

Most Recent

written by: faye

Just wanted to add a note that you have an hour or two to pick up both GS-1 synths (Electric & Acoustic) for $150 combined thanks to a 50% off thanksgiving sale. Only just found out.

written by: jsn

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 09:56:34 +0100 BST

Inspired by Geert's excellent "Wish You Were Here" cover I decide to try out the approach using Applied Acoustics Strum Acoustic GS-1 (its free to download a demo version - try b4 u buy!). It worked really well - I set up my Tau in keysplit 3 with 4 being chord and 6 being the higher keys that allowed me to pick and control strumming. Neat! (didn't go as far as using the lower keys like Geert, but possible)

But that got me thinking...

I want to play another voice separately over the guitar (unlike Geert my singing has been banned by international treaty), but with this approach I am at least one hand short.

What I'd like to do is use the Arranger to set-up/control the pick/strum pattern for the guitar synth. i.e. Make it so I use the arranger interface to set up a pick pattern so that when I play a chord in, say, keygroup 3 the arranger automatically picks the right notes. (I know it won't trigger like a true arp but that's not what I'm looking for)

But I can't get the Tau to do it because the Arrangers use S3 and AU4 and these are not accessible to play on the keygroups ??? (so I can't make the arranger and a keyset play the same voice, although two keysets can). Is there a way of doing this on-board the Tau?

I am about to try using MIDI to do it which should work, but surely there must be a way of doing this? Something in Belcanto I could do?


written by: jsn

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:51:00 +0100 BST

The MIDI approach does work - with a bit of Belcanto jiggery-pokerry.

See my blog entry

Still feel it should be possible inside EigenD & Tau itself. Don't know Belcanto well enough. Can anyone help me with the set-up, or if not some good doc on Belcanto?


written by: jsn

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 01:35:49 +0100 BST

BTW Any Pico players out there with Strum - add the following scale to ~/Library/Eigenlabs/Scale Manager/User Scales.txt


[Strum major]
;This is a major scale at top with lower 8 keys set for strum/pick
intervals=0 2 4 5 7 9 11 12 28 29 24 26 31 33 35 36 0


This allows you to use the top 8 keys to play chord shapes and the bottom eight to strum/pick. (two bass notes are under right thumb, four arp notes under fingers on far course, up/down strum at bottom - comfy I find)

This is in the major scale - change the first 8 notes to match other scales. Use Eigentab to find chord shapes.

Brief demo on YouTube


written by: sfellner

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:56:20 +0100 BST

Neat idea! Strum produces very good sound and is easy to play. Tried this over the last days with the Pico and had a lot of fun - sitting on a train, strumming a tiny shining guitar - using earphones, so nobody threw coins at me ;-). Apart from a nasty lockup issue (caused by the plugin?) after some minutes (long before the demo timeout) it works very well. Now got the full version and hope for some fix, just contacted AAS.

@jsn: your strum major scale works fine, thank you for sharing!

It is obvious that the lower keys have to be moved for any other tonic than C to trigger the same notes C4-C5. Here is my Scale for A bebop minor:

[Strum A bebop minor]

;This is a bebop minor scale at top for tonic A with lower 9 keys set for strum/pick
intervals=0 2 3 5 7 8 9 10 19 20 15 17 22 24 26 27 0


written by: jsn

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 09:00:21 +0100 BST

Cool. Had similar experience.

EigenLabs guys: Is there a way of splitting the Pico keyboard into two zones w/ two scales?

BTW There is a fix for the AAS Strum lock-up - its a patch in the AAS code. Testing it at the moment - hopefully will be released as fix soon.


written by: sfellner

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:04:20 +0100 BST

Got the fix from AAS, Strum Version 1.0.3, and it works for me. Feels even more responsive. Nice.


written by: faye

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 02:31:31 +0000 GMT

Just wanted to add a note that you have an hour or two to pick up both GS-1 synths (Electric & Acoustic) for $150 combined thanks to a 50% off thanksgiving sale. Only just found out.



Please log in to join the discussions