Guitar Synth as a Controller for Live.

CSewell · Post by **CSewell** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:57 pm

I just got an Axon AX100 MKII Guitar Synth and Im curious is anyone uses a guitar Synth as a controller. It seems perfectly capable of triggering various functions. The cool thing about the Axon, is that I can seperate strings, frets or even picking regions and set them up on different channels, tunings, presets etc. It appears limitless.
Im going to clear some time this week to experiment with this concept.
Anyone else do this?

studiesinsound · Post by **studiesinsound** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:10 pm

you know I thought about that a while back but never had the scratch to buy it.

Don;t you also need some sort of midi translator interface to get this to work?

Let me know how it goes.

I was also thinking of the Brian Moore iguitar and a roland or edirol midi translator
if I win the lottery.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:24 pm

studies - the AX100 MKII is a guitar-midi converter

CSwell - I have that same midi unit as well as a Brian Moore i9.13, very nice setup (RMC piezo pickup), I'm very happy with it. the problem with midi guitars is that they send out a LOT of information constantly. it's difficult to assign a note from it to a control in Live because soo many notes hit Live at once, even with careful muting of the strings, it's nearly impossible.

I haven't really messed with the Axon unit, set it and forget it. midi guitar still trips me out, with patches that don't allow pitch bend the guitar ends up being _perfectly_ in tune because the VST can't be out of pitch.

have fun!!

bgc · Post by **bgc** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:26 pm

You should check out how Christopher Willits uses the guitar. He works with Max/MSP and kind of slices up samples relative to fret positions and then mangles them and makes them do his bidding.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:39 pm

bgc wrote:You should check out how Christopher Willits uses the guitar. He works with Max/MSP and kind of slices up samples relative to fret positions and then mangles them and makes them do his bidding.

thank you very much for posting that, I think I found my new guru.

dj superflat · Post by **dj superflat** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:50 pm

does willits use a midi guitar? i thought it was audio manipulation.

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:53 pm

Awesome! So, how does the Axon unit compare to other midi-guitar setups in terms of triggering, latency, tracking, etc?

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:11 pm

dj superflat wrote:does willits use a midi guitar? i thought it was audio manipulation.

he uses a strat with the roland system

the axon is supposed to have the smallest latency and best tracking. I played a roland strat once with the roland GR20, the latency was there, it wasn't unplayable but IMO the piezo based systems are much better and you can get a clean tone from them (giving you 3 outputs to use at once, an acoustic piezo tone <sounds very nice>, a pickup tone and midi notes, tons o' fun.)

CSewell · Post by **CSewell** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:53 pm

Wow, it works. Because the strings are all on a different channels, I get very little midi remnents to trigger weird things.
I was playing around with it last night, theres a couple of ways to do it. One way is to assign the lowest string its own patch with a very slow attack time. The midi note is transmitted but you hear no sound. This is using the Axons internal sounds. The other is to assign actions to midi notes and incorporporate these into the compositon. This takes far too much organization for me. But still very usable.
Using just midi out form the Axon and using sounds in Reason via reWire, I assigned each of the higher 5 strings there own instrument and the lowest string is used only for arming and triggering sounds.
Now as cool as this is, it still seems easier and more intuitive to use a foot controller, but for limited use, its totally cool.

philipc · Post by **philipc** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:09 pm

bgc wrote:You should check out how Christopher Willits uses the guitar. He works with Max/MSP and kind of slices up samples relative to fret positions and then mangles them and makes them do his bidding.

That guy is friggin' brilliant

CSewell · Post by **CSewell** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:24 pm

What does he mean "folding back" of audio?

bgc · Post by **bgc** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:55 pm

CSewell wrote:What does he mean "folding back" of audio?

http://christopherwillits.com/pollen_int.html

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:04 pm

bgc wrote:
CSewell wrote:What does he mean "folding back" of audio?
http://christopherwillits.com/pollen_int.html

omfg that guy is tooooooo wrapped up in his own bullshit.

<--- x 1,000,000

seems that folding means 'delay feedback turned up'.

I'm still on the max end of the tutorials, I look forward to getting into the msp end of things, I'm sure his stuff is based on a particular tutorial.

fatrabbit · Post by **fatrabbit** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:43 pm

I think it's ironic (and reflective of a Max user) that Christopher Willits name on iTunes is not capitalised. Anyone who uses Max (or knows someone who does) should get what I mean.

thekillingtree · Post by **thekillingtree** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 11:06 pm

some vids of him doing more stuff...

http://www.xlr8r.com/tv/42
http://xlr8r.com/tv/46