Re: peterson sonuus

[andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk>]

hi Rick,

mark francombe wrote:
> I would guess that it DOES track a glissando.. but a bit badly... It 
> will be of course be only monophonic (which is cool IMHO) 
from their website:-
"the nuances of your performance are captured with fast, accurate 
pitch-bend data."

Which means it will only track glissando up to the max range of pitch bend,
which may or may not be an octave. (could be a maj 2nd)
There doesn't appear to be much user interface (aka hardly any knobs) on 
the unit,
so it would be a case of programming the Midi sound generator module to 
have
a pitch bend range that matches the Sonuus.

They also say:-

"Striving to improve MIDI note accuracy, encourages clean picking and 
accurate 
fingering, with good control over non-sounding strings by damping them."

Now that's the disadvantage of not having the special midi-pickup like the 
Roland GK series.
The damping technique described is (afaik) one that is not commonly used by
guitarists, one I've only rarely heard mentioned.
Solution would be to damp the strings at the nut in the same
way a tap shredder would.


An equivalent device is the Yamaha G50, which has the Axon(the best) 
technology
on board and also offers a mono input.
These are rare now, but can be very cheap if found.
The mono input will never track as well as when a special pickup is used,
and from my G50 experiences it's indeed a bit slower.

This looks like an excellent product, and from the numerous YouTube
vids it seems to track very well, although the latency is noticeable.
If I didn't have the G50 already (unused) I'd be ordering one today.
..However, I thought their demo of using it to create notation with
Pro Tools was somewhat faked.


I remember Mark Sollitaro's comments on this subject...he ended up
simply using a keyboard to trigger his midi synths.
It's far easier, more reliable, no big latency, and there's plenty
of cool cheap key controllers available.
...or Midi Wind instruments!


andy butler