Pitch to CV, or to MIDI

The MOD’s Audio to CV plugin seems interesting:

Can it convert incoming guitar notes into their corresponding CV?
Can the resulting CV be routed to the MOD’s synth plugins?

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No and no.

You misunderstood what this plugin does (though the description does not make it very clear too)
The plugin only converts the type of the signal, it does not modify it in any way.
It is basically changing the signal meta-data, so to speak.

Oh, I see. Thanks.
The MOD contains a tuner which displays the pitches we play into it:
https://wiki.moddevices.com/wiki/MOD_Duo_User_Guide#Tuning
Would it be possible to create corresponding CV/MIDI messages?
Then, whatever pitches we play into the MOD could be simultaneously played by the synth plugins?

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I remember the Duo (original) didn’t have enough processing to do pitch to midi. or at least have a usable plugin with minimal lag… so I used a sonuus G2M. You just can’t beat the dedicated hardware. I wonder if the Duo X would have enough processing power to have a usable pitch to midi plugin and still have room for all the other plugins I want to use.

Oh, OK. Thanks. I’m using the Duo.

I’ve read about the Sonuus G2M, but I guess it can’t handle the Chapman Stick’s stereo signal.

Jam Origin’s MIDI Guitar 2 is considered better than dedicated hardware. It doesn’t run on Linux, so I got a Windows laptop to run it on. Check Nima Rezai’s video, in which he plays the Chapman Stick into a PC running MIDI Guitar 2.

I suppose it might. We’ll wait and see.

Ok. I’ve been corrected. Lol

Yeah. I heard it works great. It would be so awesome to have it as a plug-in in the Duo X.
I don’t want to carry a laptop on to the stage.

Oh I’ll be really happy to have this plugin for the DWARF MOD.
Ideally with note recognition that is based on a quarter or half of the frequency cycle, which would allow low latency, including for those who want to use this plugin with a bass guitar (like me :)).
I have tried quite a few solutions present on the current market and nothing satisfies me (except the C4 of source audio but which remains limited in terms of configuration compared to what can be done with the DWARF).

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This is actually something quite requested.
I can tell you that there were already a few tests, but, although they were quite good, it was not in a stage good enough to make it into the platform. Hopefully that will change in the future.

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Just having discovered this thread, now I know why all my Audio-to-CV attempts prompted such unsatisfactory results…
Please keep developing this - it will definitely get used!

Cheers!

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Both the C4, the Future Impact – as well as the Electro Harmonix boxes – do not do MIDI conversion.

Several pieces of hardware and software demix multiple strings and output polyphonic midi, but that usually lacks Pitch Bend data per channel, so it has limitations for chord playing and when driving external synths. Other solutions employ per-string processing, but that entails using dedicated pickups, multi-channel cables and so on.

The patent for early transient recognition employed by the Axon (and I assume also by the Triple Play, since both were developed by the same person) is now under public domain, so technically anyone can use it. The main drawback is that it tends to work badly with finger picking…

That being said, pitch to midi conversion is an Everest by itself, so fully developing one such solution to a good result is a monstrous task.

After the last update (3.50), the Future Impact has a LOT of options and is nearly an analog module by itself. Tracks nicely on guitar too. But, again, no MIDI out.

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Thank you for your reply ! I didn’t know the Future Impact, huge crush, I will get one !! Thank you !!!

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Well, I stated the ‘goods’, now let me tell the ‘bads’ too: it is not as easy to program as the C4, the editor is rather cumbersome, and the learning curve is steeeeeeep. I’m less than halfway there. Besides, oscillators do NOT have sine wave! :astonished: Lastly, connecting it to the computer requires a 5-pin Midi to USB adaptor and two midi cables! (In my case, my audio interface also does MIDI so I didn’t need the adaptor, but had to get midi cables)

They have been on sale for 300 Euro (shipping included) since last year, but I highly recommend you watching all the videos and reviews out there. (Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Pandamidi).

That being said, the point to me – in regards to this thread – is that pitch-to-midi is a hellhole and it doesn’t matter how good one interface is, guitarists whine about them all the time. It is quite a niche market, and even Roland doesn’t put as much effort into making it better because if they do it will still not sell well and get bad reviews, which is why they invest more in the modelling/dynamic synth technology.

I’ve been in the midi guitar arena since the mid-90s. When the Axon came out it was infinitely better than any other existing system – and it’s in fact still the second best pitch-to-midi system – but most guitar players were displeased and complained about everything. It never saw widespread adoption, only a few top players toured with it, most notably Pat Metheny with his Orchestrion in the mid-2000s and John McLaughlin with the Guitar Trio in 1996.

More recently, when DSP chips became powerful enough to analyse audio signals and parse individual note information, new software and hardware came to life – such as Jam Origin and the C4, respectively – and the need for individual pickups for each string was gone. Still, very few people are happy with those. (Paul Bielatowicz has been touring with Jam Origin, you can see the video in Jam Origin’s website.)

More recently, even Reaper has a plugin to convert pitch to midi, so you can actually run your hexaphonic guitar into it and use one channel for each string, but you won’t find a midi guitar player that will say two good things about it.

Therefore, I hope MOD comes up with one such solution and – who knows? – blows up the competition. But I must say that, if I were part of the MOD team, this isn’t where I’d put my money. It is a humongous task and chances are 80% of users will not ever approve of it. (I know my fellow midi guitar players quite well, they aren’t and will never be happy).

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Iam pretty sure MOD develops monophonic solution. Cause everything Youve said about polyphonicsies is 100% amen. So I recon it is going to be good working G2M type of thing on the MOD platform, which still is really cool thing and Iam looking for it 100%. Anyway, thanks a lot for shaing Your great insight. Tom

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Or another plugin dev ports some code that can offer polyphonic tracking, but probably a dedicated solution for guitar-to-midi is indeed the best way to do this kind of stuff.

Then you can still use your MOD for 2 channel effects on the rest of your gear :wink:

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Welcome to the forum, @TOMPER and thanks for your kind works.

Indeed, even a monophonic solution – if not too taxing on hardware and not too convoluted for the dev team – could be a nice thing. The Future Impact I mentioned before is monophonic for guitar/bass, but I get a lot of fun out of it.

My hope/dream/wish is that, when the MOD ecosystem is fully mature and more developers port their software to ARM architecture – which they will have to do at some point due to Apple’s Mx processors, some of the software currently available could be translated/ported over to LV2 or any other standard MOD may accept in the future. That way we could have either Jam Origin’s Midi Guitar or Migic’s EVO available for it.

(Of couse, that will be possible only if such plugins do not overload the system. This is hard to tell as it is, since very few are already in ARM architecture. But Guitar-to-Midi is a processor hog, so we’ll need to wait.)

That being said, I agree with @dreamer that, for the time being,

and that also takes that processing burden away from the MOD, specially for polyphonic purposes. I myself use the TriplePlay connected via USB to the MOD.

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For proper tracking you really want to have individual sensors for each string. You get way lower signal-to-noise ratios and doing the fft and pitch analysis is so much easier and indeed would save a huge resource burden on the MOD so it can focus on synths and effects instead.

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Agreed. I’m actually not convinced that the “Everest” of Pitch to Midi will ever be conquered with current technology. What fingers and picks do to guitar strings just involves way too many important variables and I really don’t think filtering out those “distracting signals” helps to keep the playing experience feeling natural. Guitar is tactile to the extreme! Every little noise, every little scratch and “ping” is part of the whole playing experience. Perhaps dynamic synth technology is where Mod should put their efforts into. It might mean dedicated plugins that take in the guitar signal and provide built in sounds to replace or mix in with the guitar sound.

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Sometimes I feel that I have an uncommon approach to guitars and MIDI controllers. I really like both and I really like both together, but I hate the thought of using my guitar to play piano (for example). I don’t really love the idea of MIDI pickups. Although recently I’ve been thinking to build a guitar with one. And I did so because I would like to use it to layer my guitar sound with some synth sounds. Layer, not replace.
Up to now, my approach on joining both is simply to “play with the sound without loosing the freedom of the guitar”. Meaning, my guitar has a bunch of extra sensors and interfaces (but doesn’t feel/look like a spaceship xD) that are part of a built in MIDI controller and I assign it for controlling filters, reverb dimensions, delay feedbacks, pitch shifters, etc.

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I’m with you there. It just doesn’t look right and sometimes gets in the way when you’re playing.

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Monophonic would be plenty useful to get started.

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