pitch 2 midi and/or synth

[steve-bbb]

just had a quick search on here and there are a couple of threads regarding pitch 2 midi and analog synth pedals but the topics are 4 years plus old

as the technology has moved on has anybody managed to successfully gig a pitch to midi converter to drive bass synth? i recently bought a sonuus g2m and tried it with my irig pro. it works but the latency and tracking is appalling and certainly not giggable

our keys player has a kronos so we are going to give the sonuus g2m a run through the kronos to see how it behaves - anybody tried this or similar with other brand pitch 2 midi converters?

failing a workable solution i might have to learn a few songs on keys and just play them as synth bass lines  😆

 

ta muchly

[paul_c2]

I'm very much a couple of steps behind you but I'd be keen to know a workable solution too.

My observations so far are that, with the possible exception of the ~£500 Future Impact, bass synth pedals are all a bit of a gimmick (tried two so far....). And that tracking a bass to trigger MIDI, or to trigger anything else really (which is what all synth pedals need to do) is fighting something of a losing battle against the laws of physics. Two non-ideal solutions I tried were to play everything an octave up; or to play basslines on a normal 6 string electric guitar. But hardly ideal in either case.

The other aspect is that the "thing" that the bass guitar brings, in addition to the familiarity of physically playing it, is the nuances such as slides, ghost notes, dynamics etc and these don't translate well into synth bass lines - you need to play really 'cleanly' to do the synth stuff justice. Combine this with the fact that even the most basic keyboard synth FAR outclasses even the best pedals for control of the tone and range of usable sounds, it just makes sense to play the keyboard rather than trigger it through a bass (or even guitar).

[Owen]

I suspect that to access it properly you would be better off using a guitar as a trigger and whacking the synth down an ovtave. Those low notes are tricky to read and translate. Believe me, I have tried. 

[itu]

So plain physics, low notes take time to be recognized. Several vibrations, that is. If you need really fast tracking, tune your bass two octaves up and then shift the sound down low during the synth process. P2M is possible but not very good technology for us bassists.

My dream choice would be an Industrial Radio but as I am a poor bassist (in every sense, maybe), my second solution was to buy a Misa Tri-Bass. It is somewhat odd... but the tracking is not. I first tried an Alesis nanobass with the Misa but it has not any ADSR settings (read: only ON/off) and I turned to BassStation II.

[Owen]

I use a YOUROCK game controler guitar sometimes. Midi in on USB. Hours of fun. Plectrum and slight technique change, but it is a different instrument. I would expect to. 

[pete.young]

I tried a lot of pedals, and none of them were much good. The Korg G5 was the best of the bunch, wish I'd kept it. Roland VB99 works, but has other issues when used live - my stress levels went through the roof every time the singer went near the 13-core cable in her stilettos!

[Owen]

I also wish I kept my G5. I have a Future Impact which is superb. The G5 was a lovely piece of kit and a different flavour of great. 

[noise_art]

I've sold my SY300 couple days ago because I am not a really synth player and didn't use it much.
Had V-Bass before and what I need to say is the SY300 is the best of all. It takes some time to get in habit with these OSC's. But actually will miss this unit.

I am not sure but would go rather into analog-path rather than midi out.

G5 is cool also, pitty that''s quite expensive nowdays.

[BigRedX]

As others have said the laws of physics are against pitch to MIDI conversion for bass guitars, because you need a MINIMUM of one and half cycles of a CLEANLY played note in order to accurately detect the pitch of the note being played which will already introduce too much latency for the typical bass line before you figure in additional delays for MIDI conversion etc.

Tony James of Sigue Sigue Sputnik who has been doing this for decades uses a guitar controller which halves the latency (being an octave higher) and still has had to learn to play slightly in front of the beat for his bass lines to be in time.

There are alternatives such as the Industrial Radio MIDI Bass that uses fret sensing to deprive pitch information and guitar-like controllers from Starr Labs etc. but they all remove much of the immediacy of playing a stringed instrument.

One of the things I quickly discovered when trying various guitar and bass synth controllers over the years is how much almost every player relies on things like ghost notes, full and partial muting, harmonics and tonal nuances from altering the plucking position, all of which cause havoc with pitch sensing and are completely meaningless on other controllers.

In the end I founded it simpler, quicker, cheaper and far more reliable to develop some rudimentary keyboard "chops" and buy a decent keyboard synth than to try and force my guitars and basses to produce synth sounds with any degree or reliability and repeatability.

[Quatschmacher]

The G2M sucked for me, even when playing straight into a hardware synth. Just too much latency.

Industrial Radio is the lowest latency possible. The Imprint software takes the string energy information and imprints it into the MIDI signals so that one gets a more nuanced and bass-guitar-like feel, though this needs to be done via something like Ableton Live. I’m still considering going down this route.

There’s the Meris Enzo which sounds good but I haven’t tried. Envelope options are a bit limited but seems capable of some great sounds and is polyphonic.

I didn’t like the Boss SY-300. The oscillators sounded a bit crap and editing was a pain on the tiny screen.

Octavius Squeezer sounds fantastic. Rare, though there’s a used one on eBay right now. Editing is pretty cumbersome to say the least though. 

The Future Impact is very good. I just bought one after renting one last year. It’s much better than I remember. Perhaps tracking is better on my Precision bass (I only tried it with a Sterling and Jazz last time). Some patches track better than others but it’s pretty satisfying. Patch creation has to be done on a PC or Mac and loaded onto the pedal. One can coarsely (settings of 1-9) tweak a few parameters of any given on the pedal itself; these are attack, decay, envelope depth, dynamics (envelope follower sensitivity),  filter cutoff, resonance, balance (between synth and bass), level and effect level.

I’d still recommend buying a synth too though. There are some great and cheap analogue synths our there for under £400, some under £200. Check out Novation Bass Station II, Korg Monologue and Minilogue, ARP Odyssey, Behringer Model D, Roland SE-02. A used Moog Sub Phatty or Little/Slim Phatty can be had in the same price bracket.

I’m still getting some great synth-type sounds from my Octabvre, Mastotron, Manta and Enigma together.

Also, Source Audio are working on a pair of pedals which cover octave, filter and synth oscillators and that ought to be pretty good. 

[itu]

Meridian has the Funk-u-lator and Iron Ether has FMeron. The first is probably closer to an envelope but the FMeron surely is synth.

[Quatschmacher]

On 09/12/2018 at 14:05, paul_c2 said:

My observations so far are that, with the possible exception of the ~£500 Future Impact, bass synth pedals are all a bit of a gimmick

Just for reference, the Future Impact is under £340 new from Thomann; used they go between £250-275.