Category: Sound Design

In the last meeting with my project’s supervisor, two ideas where proposed and it was concluded that both ideas should be examined further.

Thus, the momentary goal is to do further research in both areas and, in so doing, to establish, which idea is most suitable to act as the main topic of the project and, beyond that, of the Master’s thesis.

Idea #2 is described in the following section:

The essence of the second idea is to equip a guitar with additional sensors, especially accelerometers, that register movements made with the body of the guitar and/or the pick and sends them to a PureData patch for example that uses the incoming parameters to activate and modulate certain effects. Consequently, a guitar performance can be additionally enhanced by the (natural) movements of the player and give a life performance a whole new dimension.

Setup

As already touched upon, accelerometers will be attached to the body of the guitar. Here, especially the neck appears to be a good position since it is a part that can be moved quite easily while playing. Another sensor could be fitted upon the pick to pick up either its natural strumming movements or to pick up specific movements of the player to modulate an effect.

The data gathered by the sensors will then be conveyed to a computer – ideally via wireless means to not restrict playability.

A specifically designed PureData patch will be used to convert the incoming signals into parameters to activate and modulate certain effects.

The effects can either be made from scratch in PureData itself or the PureData patch is integrated into a DAW via VST to trigger commercial effect plugins.

A major challenge will be to come up a suitable solution to detect the movements of the pick. Since it is so small, a correspondingly small sensor will be needed in order to not impair playability. Battery and wireless sender will probably be fitted on the wrist.

A potential solution is a certain ring, a commercial product, that acts as a kind of accelerometer. Of course, further research will be done in this area.

As it is the case with the first idea (Guitar Drum Map), a cooperation with other guitarists is possible and desirable. They could provide valuable insight into their natural playing movements, which effects they would use and, furthermore, can provide feedback on playability and feasibility of the setup.

Plan of Action

• Research setup possibilities
• Find a working setup
• Examine natural movements of guitarist and identify convenient movements that do not limit the guitar playing itself
• Identify suitable effects that may be triggered by the movements
• Learn PureData
• Create a patch to modulate incoming guitar audio signals

In the last meeting with my project’s supervisor, two ideas where proposed and it was concluded that both ideas should be examined further.

Thus, the momentary goal is to do further research in both areas and, in so doing, to establish, which idea is most suitable to act as the main topic of the project and, beyond that, of the Master’s thesis.

Idea #1 is described in the following section:

Idea #1 – MIDI Drum Map for guitar

Introduction and Problem Statement

The General MIDI (GM) Drum Map sets standard key assignments for the drums and cymbals in a typical kit, as well as assigning keys to a variety of other common percussion instruments. The main advantage of such a standardized map is that MIDI drum parts can be played on instruments from different manufacturers in the same way, with all the correct drums being triggered.

However, the GM MIDI Drum Map is mainly conceived for pianos or MIDI controllers featuring a keyboard. If one were to use a guitar to play MIDI drums, the standard drum map may prove inconvenient and unnatural when approached from a guitar style of playing.

This drawback leads to the first potential project idea, namely, to create a GM MIDI drum map suitable for guitar and, consequently, to provide guitarists with the possibility to adequately play MIDI drums triggered by a guitar which may be more intuitive for them.

Setup

The first challenge is to find or come up with a system that allows notes, played on guitar, to be converted to MIDI in a way that is accurate, reasonably fast and polyphonic. It is important to ensure at least two-voice polyphony since a kick or snare drum and a hi-hat are often triggered simultaneously.

A possible solution could be the GK-3 hexaphonic pick-up by Roland. It picks up the signal from all six strings individually and thus makes polyphony possible. A major disadvantage is that the pick-up needs a special designed cable that fits only Roland guitar synthesizers.

Another solution may be the MIDI Guitar 2 software by Jam Origin which also promises polyphonic guitar-to-MIDI conversion.

Both solutions will be further investigated and tested.

Guitar Drum Map

Once a working setup is found, practical experiments will be performed in order to come up with a drum map suitable for guitarists. These tests will be done by myself and potentially in cooperation with other guitarists that can give valuable feedback on playability and feasibility of the drum map. As a result, the concept of the drum map can be successively refined until an optimal solution is achieved.

In the theoretical part of the Master’s thesis the cooperation with guitarists could be taken one step further by incorporating interviews with guitarists, asking for their opinion and an evaluation of the guitar drum map created. Additionally, interviews could establish if and how guitarists would use the guitar drum map in their music production workflow.

Plan of Action

• Research setup possibilities
• Find suitable setup
• Start experimenting with drum map concepts
• Find cooperating guitarists