Piccolo Bass

[NoirBass]

Right, heres my thinking:

I have a VB-99, which is great and provides any effects I need when recording. One aspect of it that has always left me wanting was the Bass to MIDI feature. It would be really useful to be able trigger MIDI accurately using a bass, as its the instrument I'm most comfortable on. Whist the Bass to MIDI feature tracks well for a bass to MIDI converter, its still a bit laggy and latent even with tight technique. My understanding of this is that trying to track such low notes is awkward and will always have some inherent lag. So, how about using a Piccolo bass with a hex pickup to capture the note? - once i'm in the world of MIDI I can then just shift it down an octave again to get it back to standard bass range.

My question really is to anyone that has done this or is using a Piccolo bass. Is it better to have a shorter scale length to stop the strings being super tight? or is it better to have tight strings in order to keep the feel of the bass. I'm thinking of using these strings:

[url="http://www.stringsdirect.co.uk/strings-c1/bass-guitar-strings-sets-c34/daddario-daddario-daddario-exl280-nickel-wound-piccolo-20-52-long-scale-bass-strings-p881"]http://www.stringsdi...ss-strings-p881[/url]

...and popping them on something like a Squier SS Jaguar bass. If need be I can then blend the signal from the Mag pickups back in.

Or, should I stop carrying out experiments in MIDI, accept the fact I need to become a better keyboard player and spend the time practicing that instead.

Edited April 22, 2016 by NoirBass

[spectoremg]

Bear in mind that a piccolo bass is an abomination that the likes of Stanley Clarke will burn in hell for (wink).

[BigRedX]

IME pitch to MIDI is unlikely to ever satisfy any half-way decent musician. The laws of physics dictate that the pitch detection circuitry needs at least one full wave cycle to have a good guess at the note and preferably more in order to properly eliminate inaccuracies caused by sharpening of the attack portion of the note. So the lower the note the longer it takes to detect the pitch.

Swapping to a piccolo bass is at best going to halve the latency time. Whether or not that's going to be good enough only you can say. However Tony James of Sigue Sigue Sputnik who has been playing bass lines using pitch to MIDI for probably longer than anyone else, says that even with using a Roland MIDI guitar instead of a bass he still has to play ahead of the beat in order for the synth sounds to be in time with the rest of the music.

Also be aware that the conversion to MIDI data adds further latency to the sounds.

If you are serious about using a stringed instrument to generate MIDI data for synths then you should look at the [url="http://www.industrialradio.com.au/products/pro-4-midi-bass.html"]Industrial Radio MIDI Bass[/url], which uses sensors in the frets to dictate pitch and only uses the actual audio data for trigger information. They also a do a MIDI guitar with the fret sensing mechanism so obviously they don't believe that pitch sensing alone is fast or accurate enough even when the notes are an octave higher.

Alternatively brush up on your keyboard skills. I developed enough of a keyboard technique to far eclipse anything I could get out of pitch to MIDI systems in about a week.

Edited April 22, 2016 by BigRedX

[NoirBass]

Thanks to both of you for your responses, I think I've been convinced this is a bad idea.

[Rich]

IIRC Bunny Brunel uses piccolo tuning on his hex-equipped basses.