Anybody got any experience of using MIDI on the bass side or on both sides? It seems that most people just go for the single GK3 on the melody side but I know it's possible to get 2 GK3's fitted.

I notice Kevin Keith uses 2 GKs in the Roland demo video.

There's a picture in the Hot Shots gallery on the Stick website (although I don't like the way the 2 GK units are mounted onto the stick... there's not really enough room for two!)

I'm considering options for ordering my first stick and being used to keyboards and computer recording I will definitely want to experiment with MIDI from the outset. Just wondering what reasons people have for generally not MIDIing the bass side? Doesn't it work as well? Is it just down to cost?

--David

I don't have much midi experience but my guess is that lower frequencies will cause longer latencies when doing pitch to midi conversion...


Daniel.

Ive seen the units mounted on the back of the bottom of the stick, opposite side to the bridge. This way there was room for two, but that was the Gk2 which may have fit better together.
Im planning to get a midi pickup put on the bass side when i have the money and another stick. Right now i've just started using midi on the melody side and its going pretty well.

I have the GK pickup on the bass side on my SG12. I didn't want it on the melody side, because my duo partner Mark already has his set up that way. I wanted to keep the melody au natural and solo over nice pads and synths in the left hand. So far, I haven't experienced any latency or glitches, even with fast chord progressions. This is probably due to the bass side of the SG12 being a 5th higher than standard Stick. I'm liking it

Matt,

Curious to know what devices your bass-side GK is feeding. Are you driving one of the VG units or doing actual pitch-to-midi conversion.

Thanks,
Karma

Just using a Roland GR-20 for starters; I thought it would be a good way to get up and running with midi quickly. I plan on using soft synths live, as soon as I get a dedicated laptop and decide which software suits me best. At that point, I could still use the GR20 to control the patch changes and volume/expression.

That's a good plan with lots of room for expansion. I've done quite a lot of midi guitar over the years driving any number of hardware and soft synths. The two things to watch out for when driving external synths are;

1. Making sure the pitch bend range of each patch matches the pitch bend range your GI-20 is sending. This is the root of all evil.

2. For softsynths, a realy good audio interface with excellent ASIO drivers. These days, you can easily run latency in the 5ms or lower range with good hardware.

Personally, I like to use Reason for softsynths just because there are so many great sounds in one package, the performance is great, and their system is STABLE!. But of course, there are a zillion other great sounding soft synths as well...

Best!
Karma

Karma,

Thanks for the heads up on the pitch bend issues; that probably saved me in advance from numerous headaches!

I just wanted to note, however, that I'm not using the GI-20 interface. I'm using the GR-20, which is the interface and synth module combined. My plan was to route the midi output of the GR20 (disabling its own internal synth programs) to a midi-to-usb box to go to the laptop. That way I could use the expession pedal on the GR20 to bring the synth in and out, and use the footswitches to change patches. Would this work? Thanks again!

Oh sure.. that would work. "GI-20" was just a typo (my bad).

You may also want to check out Cantabile as a VST host if you go with a softsynth that does not run standalone.

http://www.cantabilesoftware.com/

Even the free "lite" version is excellent. Saves you the overhead of running some sort of DAW.

Best,
Karma

I had dual pickups on a 10 string Teak that I used to own. I had a lot of fun with it. I used the bass side with a GI-20 as well as my V-bass... You will get better performance (less latency) driving the sounds in a V-Bass or VB-99 since you're not doing an audio-to-midi conversion for the VB's internal sounds. I did experience latency however when driving synths - both hardware and software types. I just used slower attack pads and it worked fine.

I didn't care for having to mount controllers on the back of the instrument - not easy to get to.

Dave