GUITAR SYNTH
Roland GR-1 was one the first guitar synth on market. Despite its age, this unit works great, and i used it many times during the recording of my masterpiece "Alchemy of Life - Soundtrack A.D.1312" and in many other works.
The guitar synth is able to "transform" your guitar (equipped with an exafonic pick-up) in a MIDI instrument, able to produce MIDI notes exacly as a keyboard. It is then possible to connect it to a PC sampler and play, for example, a violin or a bass with your guitar! Is is fantastic, and if you can, try it!! Your MIDI parts will aquire a new feeling: playing a MIDI bass with the guitar is much better than playing the same part with the keyboard (expecially if you are a guitarist and not a keyboardist, like me!), because the guitar synth produce messages like pitch bend and some ghost note which enrich your part, and are nearly impossible to produce with a keyboard.
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When you play a MIDI guitar you must be a extremely clear touch and you must be extremely precise (a real problem for me!!). While you play, the notes are registered on the sequencer, along with a lot of "pitch bend" events: the pitch band can be set on GR-1 in a range of 0-24 semitones, adapting it to one's need. Naturally, you have to set the same range on your sampler or synth! the best thing is that you can edit your take after you record it, cleaning it from all the imperfection of your playeing and even modify it!
Here you can listen to some example (MIDI and audio) realized with my GR-1. The MIDI files are the original takes, "as recorded" by my sequencer: i didn't make any additiona editing:
Bass Demo1 (MIDI) (mp3)
- recorded with pitch bend=2
Bass Demo2 (MIDI) (mp3)
- recorded with pitch bend=12
Violin Demo (MIDI) (mp3)
- recorded with pitch bend=12
Drums (MIDI) (mp3)
If you download the MIDI, be sure to match the pitch bend of your instrment with the one i set on my GR-1!
Bass patch is loaded on gigasampler, and every guitar strings play the same patch on a different channel. In this way, i'm able to handle the pitch bend independently for each strings. You can also see how i did program my bass patch on Gigasampler, starting from "Will Lee Bass Library" by reading my tutorial!