Re: drums with a guitar(need MIDI?)

[SoundFNR@aol.com]

playing drums with a guitar.
The electric guitar doesn't  allow all those
drum sounds that Rick gets from an acoustic guitar.

I found it possible to program FX patches which, with
use of suitable  electric guitar techniques, allow various
drum sounds to be approximated.

bass drum: envelope controlled lo-pass filter. resonance quite high
   and frequency around 100hz
    .....thump muffled strings over bridge p/u

snare: vocoder, where noise is modulated by guitar and release 
    time is quite long.
   .....damp strings and strum

hi-hat:  ring mod with envelope control on the carrier freq 
    .....damp strings and tap lightly over p/u


and so on, there's a lot of variation to be had by using different 
techniques with theses FX patches, mostly useable percussive type
sounds, although less conventional.    

takes a bit of practise to get the sounds nice and clean. 


Second possibility is holding toy "drum machines" against the guitar
p/u. As the magnetic field of the toy's speaker is directly activating
the gtr p/u the sound can be a bit better than the acoustic sound 
of the toy.
...just waiting for the small "drum machine" with usable 
sounds to become available in the local discount stores.


To go the MIDI way the Yamaha G50 looks like one of 
the better options. I wouldn't usually recommend Yamaha 
for anything musical, but in this case they bought the design
from a company called Axon (units available?).
The tracking is based on a neural net system, and seems 
pretty good. 
Allows you to send a different MIDI channel with each string.
...and a mono input for MIDI convertion of any signal without the 
split p/u.


I've tried one of the newer Roland guitar synths, 
(whichever is the current production model, I don't remember the 
name )
and while the tracking 
is OK it seemed to be designed for use with mainly the onboard
sounds. Certainly couldn't assign different strings to different channels.

I reckon that Roland/Boss gear generally doesn't have high
sound quality, ( and personally I find the preset patches 
to be useless).  


andy butler