That's not entirely accurate. The Roland GK pickup is a "Hex" pickup which basically means the unit is split into six discreet pickups (one for each string) with six discreet outputs. So the audio is already split per string and fed to whatever unit you're connecting to via a proprietary GK cable. The unit is then free to process it as audio or convert it to some manner of signal that can be used to trigger a synth. For all-in-one Roland gear, that signal is proprietary but for outboard gear, it can be converted to MIDI. Of course that last part is somewhat complicated and there are a myriad of settings that allow you to tailor how that conversion is done and how clean it is.

It occurs to me that while it looked like you were asking about the GK gear, you may have been asking about the SY gear which is a different beast entirely.

Yes, I was asking if gear that only has an audio feed as source could now differentiate between strings?

There are demo versions of the software on that jam origin site. You can plug a guitar into it and see how it goes, to possibly answer your question (while you wait for your Stick).
Maybe also tune the guitar in 4th's (or 5th's...).
It's an item on my own to-do list to check out. Only so much time on the day, sigh.

There are different SY models. If they don't have GK inputs then they are single audio (1/4") channel input. Many Roland/Boss boxes of these sort allow for both GK and 1/4" inputs, but the 1/4" signal is sometimes routed to effects only, and not the synth or COSM modeling. It's a matter of downloading the various manuals and sussing it all out. If you haven't ordered a GK pickup for your Stick, you should do all of this homework ahead of time, as it would add on extra time to ship the Stick back to SE to retrofit it with the proprietary spaced pickup, and then send it back to you.

I already do (& have ever since I started).


Thanks for your thoughts. I think it will be a good long while before I'm proficient enough to think about anything beyond just getting a reasonale sound from the basic instrument! By the time I reach that point, if ever, the technology options will most likely have moved on?

Possibly a method for a mono audio input detecting individual strings would be to fingerprint each note (all of its harmonics). i.e. the (over)tone(s) on one string's Bb is not the same on the next string over. So possibly you would have to sample all the dry notes on each string for re-detecting. With fast processors possibly only a few msec's detection to playback lag would be possible.
So that's 288 notes for a Grand stick with 24 frets. But - there would probably be all sorts of degradation problems with string age, gauge, tuning and other slop, etc.
An earlier method for the pitch to MIDI detection for hexaphonic pickups was to use all same pitched light gauge strings. That was for pure MIDI playback only, obviously. lot of drawbacks.
There have been all sorts of attempts for sensors and surfaces in use for tactile reproduction, but somehow it seems to always work its way back to the GK type pitch to MIDI thing.
I was/am hoping to see a ROLI Seaboard surface type of tap guitar attempt. The Ztar was an earlier sort of attempt like that - but to me that sort of thing becomes accordion-like button pushing for playback. Which points again towards people just really like playing strings, and for good reason.
GK Pitch to MIDI does work, sorta, kind of - it's just sort of maddeningly inconsistent. One has to be an exacting player. Or not be in a rush. Or not care. It's a lot of fun when the pitch detection is behaving to one's own liking, and one great advantage is that it adds a sustain pedal into the equation. I use MIDI with the Stick a lot but for everything but pitch to MIDI. i.e. patch changes, patch editing, rocker or momentary pedal...for me MIDI is an indispensable tool. So are the GK's.

Hi Hang 12,

Thanks for the detailed info and experience sharing! For what it's worth, I've managed another day of SY-1000 experimenting here and got things a little better. Maybe 85% as good as the GI-10 for my purposes? Feel like I may still improve things there by further settings experiments, but we'll see. My main goal with it is to mostly use "normal input" patches coming from the melody side pickup with occasional gtr to MIDI layering.

I'm intrigued by your suggestion of using it in poly mode. I've always done mono, but what you said makes sense. What are you actually using though to do that? My normal live rig for decades (or is it centuries, hah!) has been the GI-10 going to an XV-2020. The XV-2020 certainly has performance modes that could be set to do poly... is that all you would do? And set a pitch range on each channel? Seems like a good idea if you can afford the homework time!

One interesting "maybe" find... I ran the MIDI out of the SY-1000 to the MIDI in on the GI-10 for easy back and forth comparing to trigger an XV-2020. My sense is that notes from the SY were a little louder... like maybe from its sensitivity still being higher, thus higher MIDI velocities being output? I haven't done it yet, but I thought I might record the MIDI data from both the GI-10 and SY-1000 simultaneously in Pro Tools to see what I might see.

On a related note... any suggestions on a MIDI librarian program? I discovered MIDI Quest online which looks good. Any others? (The XV editor from Roland is long dead).

Thanks again for the insights!
Tom

Hi David,

Sorry, but I think the answer is no. The SY-1000 has two inputs, a normal guitar jack and a Roland GK-13 pin. Each patch is set to look at one or the other as a source. But... in "normal input" mode, it can still see the GK-13 input to do pitch to MIDI conversion. The only way to see separate strings is to use the hardware GK pickup, but you can do synth-like sounds from the guitar input (the older SY-300 only has a guitar jack input, so its essentially that). The advantage to the GK apart from somewhat questionable pitch to MIDI tracking is that you can do more "analog" type things like alternate tunings. For a guitarist, its setup to make the GK pickup sound like different types of guitars. For a Stick player... something like a nylon string guitar patch sounds pretty (ahem) "interesting" when tapped. But if I strum the Stick I get what they're after

Best,
Tom

Thanks for the detailed reply Tom..

Sorry Tom - I can't figure out how to address various points via the quote mechanism on this forum - too many embedded thingies. I hope I can address your thoughts here.

The jam origin site looks interesting, and you'd have to try it to see if it works for you.
That is supposed to deal with poly interpretation. Some other folks on this forum seemed to think it was so-so. Very subjective thing.

GI-10 wise - I would go with mono, multi-timbral operation. each string on its own channel. set the individual note ranges on the XV-2020. I have an XV-2020 still, and the only Roland dedicated editor runs on an ancient Mac operating system, They didn't make it a VST so it's dead.
MIDI-QUEST says they have a XV-2020 profile, I think. I still have not tried MIDIQUEST - that's on the bucket list as well, as I still have a lot of older synths.
I would -not- recommend the old fashioned POLY operation (like on the GI-10) for MIDI, if you're doing any pitch bends.

To be honest my SY-1000 has laid fallow for a while. It's in the queue for a re-visit soon. Been playing more 1/2 fretless NS/Stick in the interim, and it is a good candidate for the 4 string fretted side.

The Roland Integra-7 has a current OS compatible (VST/AU) plug-in editor, and is like an XV-2020 on steroids for sound capabilities. Unfortunately, all of this requires a lot of fiddling (patch changes, ranges, transpositions, etc.) across multiple MIDI channels - and I actually built a MAX based editor for making changes across 6 channels or more (using single controls or patch changes) with the Integra-7. That was a lot of sys-ex homework and effort, and I can't say that I ended up using it a lot because I felt that the Integra-7 balked (glitched) when it received too much MIDI from the Stick and my pedals, sending it e.g. pitch bend and multiple types of CC MIDI messaging. Bottleneck problems...
(incidentally, after doing the Max patcher for Integra-7, I looked at the XV-2020 MIDI sys-ex spec and it was very very similar. and it's a simpler box. I just ran out of energy towards that endeavor)

(edit: I did want to add in that the reason for glitching is because many of the parameters for the older Roland gear are not assigned to specific MIDI CC's and so sys-ex messages are required instead, which hog a whole lot more bandwidth when addressing say the same parameter (like volume or transpose or filter resonance or envelope release) at one time on 6 different MIDI channels)

Comparitively speaking - MPE instruments like Roli can produce multiple MIDI channels of note. pitch bend, aftertouch, and filter (CC74) with one hand of playing and at least two other X-Y pad axes of CC messaging using the other hand, and the receiving software apps (Cypher, Strobe, Equator) don't glitch. If you send an Integra-7 gobs of messages like that (even over USB) it's just not as reliable.

Point being maybe using an MPE plug-in may be better suited in some or most cases for MIDI guitar applications. The new Mac M1 laptops look pretty powerful and many of the music apps are now M1 compatible. pricey though. I'm waiting for the next gen M1 Mac mini which is supposed to have more ports than the current offering. And I got to say, a lot of the softsynths these days sound pretty amazing.