FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: How To Play Guitar Video

Question:
I've been messing around with my midi set-up a lot lately now that I have reassigned my 175 from alto duty to midi-guitar duty. I don't have any intentions to go out of the house with the thing, but I do find it very interesting to play with some of the different sounds. Hearing the sound of say a piano or rhodes out of my guitar makes me perceive everything in a way I don't normally. One of my continuing goals on guitar is to develop more two voice independence, a pianistic left and right hand if you will. I find that hearing the sound of an instrument which I associate with such technique compels me to connect with that approach more. Have any of you experienced the same thing messing around with midi? the last couple of days I did something I hadn't done before which was to record some of this midi stuff. Now hearing it back without the sound of the actual guitar influencing my perception it sounds even more, I don't know, revealing maybe. One thing I notice is that it's easier for me to hear the musical content objectively and detached from my memory of having played it when there's a different instrument sound. I may still not be detached enough to judge, but it sounds fairly successful to me. I've just finished posting a short video of two heads played with the midi guitar on a piano setting. It Could Happen to You and Gone with the Wind. (tied together in same video). For some reason the tracking which sounded fine while I was playing, crapped out through a lot of the soloing so I snipped it down to just the heads. There still are a few tracking splats here and there but it mostly captured it cleanly. Any feedback?

Answer:
My midi rig is my es175 with a Roland Gk-2a pickup fed into a Roland GI-10 interface. I bought this stuff nearly 8 years ago I think. I used to mess around off and on with it, but for the last two years that guitar was my alto so I've enjoyed a rediscovery of the midi recently. The GI-10 was discontinued for a few years but I think they recently came out with an updated version. The tracking seems to be very good, there's really not any delay at all and everything picks up when I play, moving chords, fast lines, all of it.. but for some reason it didn't record as cleanly as it sounded live. I feel like I should be able to fix that though with more tweaking. You're right about the percussive quality of the piano, I think of the guitar as being very percussive too but in a different way. But hearing that piano percussive quality is what I'm talking about, it causes me to articulate more appropriately for that sound.