electric bass midi interface

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
4am
Posts: 575
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 12:36 pm
Location: switzerland
Contact:

electric bass midi interface

Post by 4am » Mon May 04, 2009 2:39 pm

hi,
i'm considering buying a midi interface (with pickup) for electric bass.
i have seen the roland GI20 and another model by axiom (terratec)
does anyone have experience with this?
is it reliable? what about latency?

LoopStationZebra
Posts: 10586
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2009 5:57 pm
Contact:

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by LoopStationZebra » Mon May 04, 2009 2:55 pm

Check this out. New. Seems cool. There's a thread around here somewhere. Mono only.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/G2M

Image
I came for the :lol:
But stayed for the :x

4am
Posts: 575
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 12:36 pm
Location: switzerland
Contact:

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by 4am » Wed May 06, 2009 8:05 am

hey thanks!
that looks interesting
still looking for the differences vs a standard midi pickup with interface
does this one recognize only monophonic notes and a standard midi inteface also chords?
am i right?

MrYellow
Posts: 1887
Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:10 am
Contact:

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by MrYellow » Thu May 07, 2009 4:41 am

I found a Yamaha G50 cheap on ebay.

Tracking isn't great tho, will work for setting frequency on a ring-modulator or something.

Setup of the pickup can be half the battle, slight changes in position relative
to the strings can drastically effect tracking.

Richard Bona on a Roland V-Bass - tracking seems perfect!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5JUnCve ... re=related

These Teflon saddle pickups look great, however they told me it wouldn't work with the G50.
http://www.graphtech.com/products.html?CategoryID=2

-Ben

MrYellow
Posts: 1887
Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:10 am
Contact:

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by MrYellow » Thu May 07, 2009 4:49 am

LoopStationZebra wrote:Check this out. New. Seems cool. There's a thread around here somewhere. Mono only.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/G2M

Image
monophonic pickups won't work so well with bass..... These devices can work ok on guitar where
the frequency means that the wave peaks pass more regularly and thus it's faster for the software
to time them and figure out the frequency. With bass being so low the software has to be
specifically tuned for bass or wait longer to get an accurate count on the low frequency.
Multi-pickup devices do better but bass is always harder then guitar to midify properly.

15-pin basic MIDI guitar brains are ok but really you need a dedicated bass-synth like V-bass
to get all the best features like after-touch and other parameters.

If you want to play smoothly, fast, naturally, without having to play extra careful, you'll need
to spend big bucks. If you want something that just "works" then you can get away with a split
pickup and a $250 device somewhere off ebay.

-Ben

4am
Posts: 575
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 12:36 pm
Location: switzerland
Contact:

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by 4am » Thu May 07, 2009 9:25 am

thank you for the precious information

gp23
Posts: 225
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2005 12:58 pm
Location: UK

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by gp23 » Thu May 07, 2009 10:01 am

The Roland V-Bass isn't a MIDI converter. It internally effects the input signal to create its sounds. What you really want for using your bass to control MIDI is an Axon AX-50/100mkII, as they are practically universally considered the fastest guitar-MIDI converters available.

littlepig
Posts: 567
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2005 7:48 am
Location: UK, London

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by littlepig » Thu May 07, 2009 12:00 pm

I own one of the Sonnus converters discussed earlier in this thread. So far I have only used it on guitar for which it is very satisfactory. But I think there may be a little lag on the lowest notes.

I am on holiday at the moment but I will give it a try on bass next week when I get back but I suspect it may suffer too much lag.

4am
Posts: 575
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 12:36 pm
Location: switzerland
Contact:

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by 4am » Thu May 07, 2009 12:59 pm

littlepig wrote:I own one of the Sonnus converters discussed earlier in this thread. So far I have only used it on guitar for which it is very satisfactory. But I think there may be a little lag on the lowest notes.

I am on holiday at the moment but I will give it a try on bass next week when I get back but I suspect it may suffer too much lag.
if you could check this and let me know it would be great!

MrYellow
Posts: 1887
Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:10 am
Contact:

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by MrYellow » Fri May 08, 2009 12:32 am

Problem is the lag gets worse faster the lower it goes.....

20Hz is 20 cycle resolution per second vrs the 10,000 or so cycles to count on a guitar per-second.
It might take the firmware a few cycles to figure out the frequency so at low frequencies latency becomes increasingly noticable (or locks onto higher harmonics).

V-Bass doesn't output MIDI but it is a spilt pickup synth + effect processor.....

-Ben

littlepig
Posts: 567
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2005 7:48 am
Location: UK, London

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by littlepig » Thu May 14, 2009 3:32 pm

I just tried this with the bass. I got it to detect the pitch down to D on the A string (hmm, don't know what midi note number that is). Any lower and the pitch it recognised wasn't stable, it jumped around the place. I just got the instructions out and it claims a note detection range of E2 to E6.

As mentioned earlier the lag increases the lower you go. I will scan the instructions and send you them if you like, PM if interested.

4am
Posts: 575
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 12:36 pm
Location: switzerland
Contact:

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by 4am » Fri May 15, 2009 9:43 am

thank you so much for testing
in the meantime i found the manual here
http://www.sonuus.com/downloads/sonuus-G2M-Manual.pdf
would it be a stupid idea to put an audio effect (inverse to the boss octaver) that pushes the sound one octave up, then send the sound to the sonuus box and the midi out to live, where with the midi transpose plugin i could get the right octave back?
it is the only workaround i can imagine...

gp23
Posts: 225
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2005 12:58 pm
Location: UK

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by gp23 » Fri May 15, 2009 10:19 am

I don't think you would have a lot of success with that setup. Any pitch shifting would introduce artefacts into the sound that would cause the pitch detection even more trouble.

From what littlepig says, the Sonuus tracks bass about as well as the mic input on my Roland GI-10. OK in the upper registers, but not at all on the low strings.

Your best bet really is something designed to work well with bass, like the Axons or perhaps the GI-20. You can sometimes see reasonable bundles with MIDI pickups on Ebay.

However, there are a few pitch-to-MIDI VSTs out there. Have your tried those?

Gab
Posts: 280
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2009 2:38 pm
Location: France

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by Gab » Fri May 15, 2009 11:27 am

gp23 wrote:However, there are a few pitch-to-MIDI VSTs out there. Have your tried those?
Can you name a few of them (preferable ones which offers a demo/trial)?

edit: no need for a lmgtfy link :p I found Sinodeia, gonna try this one.
'If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit.'

4am
Posts: 575
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 12:36 pm
Location: switzerland
Contact:

Re: electric bass midi interface

Post by 4am » Fri May 15, 2009 11:39 am

yeah... i imagined it was not the best solution :?
thanks for the good tip! will also try this one
http://spyro.mediashift.net/klanglabs/f ... odeia2.htm
looks promising
will try it this week end

Post Reply