Steel Guitar PRO by Yonac Inc.

maxwellhouser

@McD said:

It would be nice if they made bar slanting an isolated control and then applied finger damping as "one more finger" than is currently configured.

Can someone explain how they use bar slanting? I wiggle it one way and the other and it just doesn't seem like something a pedal steel player might do on purpose. A novice maybe.

For slide guitar that involves subtle blues bending maybe?

Bar slants are (mainly) a lap steel technique allowing you to hit notes together that aren’t possible when the bar is straight across and you can also bend the notes into other chords/harmonies similar to using the pedals of pedal steel guitars.

I just looked into the user guide and bought this app because it allows you to set up gestures or use midi controller to control the pedals of the pedal steel models. Pretty awesome and no wonder why the midi is seeming complicated with this app.

McD

@maxwellhouser said:
Bar slants are (mainly) a lap steel technique allowing you to hit notes together that aren’t possible when the bar is straight across and you can also bend the notes into other chords/harmonies similar to using the pedals of pedal steel guitars.

Thanks. I will investigate the new intervals between strings that are allowed using various slants. I've just been strumming string clusters and then slanting or in reverse sequence.
I didn't stumble on anything I found musical but I should listen carefully or maybe find some pedal steel tutorials. In the hands of a master it's an incredibly expressive instrument.

In the hands of a fool it's still unlike anything else a fool can mess around with and for $5 it's a definite E Ticket (like Space Mountain).

wim

maxwellhouser

@McD said:

@maxwellhouser said:
Bar slants are (mainly) a lap steel technique allowing you to hit notes together that aren’t possible when the bar is straight across and you can also bend the notes into other chords/harmonies similar to using the pedals of pedal steel guitars.

Thanks. I will investigate the new intervals between strings that are allowed using various slants. I've just been strumming string clusters and then slanting or in reverse sequence.
I didn't stumble on anything I found musical but I should listen carefully or maybe find some pedal steel tutorials. In the hands of a master it's an incredibly expressive instrument.

In the hands of a fool it's still unlike anything else a fool can mess around with and for $5 it's a definite E Ticket (like Space Mountain).

Slanting on this app is maybe harder than on a real steel guitar imo and I’m good at neither. I’ve been debating getting a pedal steel forever after hearing Daniel Lanois’ pedal steel ambient work. I have a decent lap steel, love it but want the pedals really bad. A decent pedal steel is at least $750/$1k-ish tho.

zedzdeadbaby

Has the 2 finger muting been removed? its what makes the app playable without foot controllers. Heres a classic example of a cover I did awhile back with the first version using the muting method extensively. Also has the copendent matrix been removed?

cheers

Harvest Bloom by My Android Lover

maxwellhouser

@zedzdeadbaby said:
Has the 2 finger muting been removed? its what makes the app playable without foot controllers. Heres a classic example of a cover I did awhile back with the first version using the muting method extensively. Also has the copendent matrix been removed?

cheers

Harvest Bloom by My Android Lover

Not sure about the muting but the copedent matrix is under ‘pedals setup’ in settings. Don’t know if it’s exactly the same as the original app. You can see a pic of it on the App Store pics…

Ps nice track 😎👍

Spud

@wim said:

@Spud said:
I tried recording the midi out into Bitwig but it doesn't play back correctly when sent back to SGP. It records the slide position as pitch bend, and the plucked string as C-2 C#-2 etc but they all play back as the same string if I feed that back into the app from Bitwig.

If l look at the midi on the iPad using Midi Wrench, there is pitch bend data on CH 6,7,8,9,10. Not sure if I can work out how to get Bitwig to record all this correctly.

It could be that Bitwig isn't recording everything exactly as-is. I read up-thread that if you record into Midi Tape Recorder (which is highly accurate) then play that back to SGP, it sounds as it should. I haven't tried that myself, but only read it.

This was a common theme when Animoog Z came out. Nothing was able to record the MPE accurately enough for an identical playback until Midi Tape Recorder came along.

Have you checked to be sure that quantization is off in Bitwig?

Thanks Wim - Midi Tape Recorder captured it perfectly. I then exported the midi file and pasted it into Bitwig and it played back perfectly when controlling SGP via a midi interface. I'll keep playing and see if I can work out how to capture it directly in Bitwig without loosing the other midi channels with the pitch bend data. Don't think I had record quantization on but will check.

qryss

Can’t wait for the first cover of this one with Steel Guitar PRO.

Any takers..?

AlterEgo_UK

In Doug’s livestream chat last night I asked Jessie Yonac if they might include MPE in an update and they said they were looking at it! The app sounds great with Strummer and GeoShred but misses the MPE in GeoShred.

cuscolima

I am looking for an app or a Mozaic script to turn a note into a specific CC#. Here it would be me pressing C3 and I have CC10 with a fix 126, D3 and I have a CC11 with a fix 126 value…

It looks easy like this but I don’t find (or don’t remember) an app or a script… anyone?

[edit] I found it, thanks. If you are interested https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/mfxconvert/id1451192046?l=fr

NeuM

@AlterEgo_UK said:
In Doug’s livestream chat last night I asked Jessie Yonac if they might include MPE in an update and they said they were looking at it! The app sounds great with Strummer and GeoShred but misses the MPE in GeoShred.

Yes, being able to use MIDI to assign both sliding behavior and muting needs to be added. It’s so close to being perfect.

HotStrange

@McD said:

@HotStrange said:
Does the app send midi out? Being able to control other synths with the sliding guitar would be absolutely fantastic.

It sends out MIDI but be advised it uses a custom MIDI protocol… the intent is for DAW’s to be able to record performances.

It’s possible some could convert the MIDI stream to use it as a general purpose controller using Mozaic or Streambyter. Using MIDI spy as a monitor I can see that the
NOTE On/Off events rotate between a few MIDI channels. It looks like they need to allow for notes to be coded to strings. But converging on a single midi channel for note events might make it a reasonable controller but probably hard to master and frankly “Why?” Needs to be determined.

Rozeta LFO doesn’t seem to send Pitch Bends but mLFO does using CC=0. Hmm. Does Rozeta use this trick?

I see a Mozaic script to hack some extra features in the future after study of the MIDI stream out. Mozaic can send Pitch Bends so it might do chord changes like the slide bar.

UPDATE: It sends out Notes 0-9 for a 10 string pedal steel and 0-5 for a guitar.
Transposing the note up into the middle of a keyboard makes it send a chromatic scale. Easy to convert to optional scales in a script. You just need a dial to select optional tunings like the app does. I’m sure someone will jump on it. Actual note changes for melodies are expressed via the Pitch Bend output that tracks with the slider. +/- 2 octaves is the way to go for a guitar neck or maybe +/- 6 semitones with
The script making all notes fit relative to the “nut” or open strings on the display.
Going above the 12th fret could be allowed with +/- 8 or so.

Woah thanks for the super in depth reply. I’m not nearly well versed enough to make a script for this but will happily attempt to use someone else’s 😂 it’s not a big deal though. I just thought it would be a cool way to control other synths. Thanks again 🙏

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

@wim said:

@tput73 said:
It’s definitely worth 5$, such a great sounding
App.
My only gripe is it needs MPE support.

How would that work in keeping with the idea of the app? A slide guitar only has one slide and it affects all strings. You don't have one slide for every string and every note.

This thing is meant to emulate a slide guitar, I don't think it's meant to be like GeoShred.

Steel players often slant the slide to get slightly different tuning effects on each string. MPE would be necessary to capture that.

And with only 12 steps of midi pitch bend it won’t respond well with an external controller such as Velocity kb or GeoShred. Very sad about this.

zedzdeadbaby

@maxwellhouser said:
Ps nice track 😎👍

Cheers!

@Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said:
Steel players often slant the slide to get slightly different tuning effects on each string. MPE would be necessary to capture that.

And with only 12 steps of midi pitch bend it won’t respond well with an external controller such as Velocity kb or GeoShred. Very sad about this.

Forget about the slant in this app its not tactile enough if you listen to my track I posted its a good example of preloading the strings with copendents. A real pedal steel has 2 levers on each side of both knees to pull and push your copendent matrix. Or look to open standard tunings and take your D and G strings etc. tune one up half step and tune one down a half. the available chords on one bar just from that simple copendent becomes doubled.

Cheers

NeuM

@zedzdeadbaby said:
Has the 2 finger muting been removed? its what makes the app playable without foot controllers. Heres a classic example of a cover I did awhile back with the first version using the muting method extensively. Also has the copendent matrix been removed?

cheers

Harvest Bloom by My Android Lover

I don't know if they removed it or they haven't yet implemented it, but 2 finger muting not being in the app is a showstopper. I sure hope it was just an oversight and they're working on a way to bring it back.

cokomairena

@NeuM said:

@zedzdeadbaby said:
Has the 2 finger muting been removed? its what makes the app playable without foot controllers. Heres a classic example of a cover I did awhile back with the first version using the muting method extensively. Also has the copendent matrix been removed?

cheers

Harvest Bloom by My Android Lover

I don't know if they removed it or they haven't yet implemented it, but 2 finger muting not being in the app is a showstopper. I sure hope it was just an oversight and they're working on a way to bring it back.

This changed the sound to a muted guitar? If it’s not there I don’t think they will implement it. Is a whole new set of samples isn’t it? I would love some muted guitars tho

I spent like 2 hours playing this thing through rymdigare… help

Agatha_aga

@JeffChasteen said:
This sounds great and the price is wonderful.

I play “real” slide and lap steel, so I have always used the Yonac app for mostly accents or drones/glissandi. As a result, I have the original loaded up with tons of Sonic Youth and Blixa Bargeld tunings. Unfortunately, I don’t see a way to transfer them over from the old app to the new one. It appears that I will have to enter them anew in Steel Guitar PRO. Oh well, first world problems…

Idea of loading SY tunings into steel guitar sounds dope. Do you happen to have any recordings to share?

Svetlovska

@cokomairena said:

Very nice plug-in but I need a midi guitar strummer now.

You mean like this?

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/midi-strummer-auv3-plugin/id1532229404

Paulo164

Ok, bought. Sounds great.
Still need to find the optimal setup to use the pitch bend from an external keyboard.
However the sustain pedal seems inoperative. Neither the CC64 which seems inassignable. Any other struggle with this ?

ExAsperis99

@Agatha_aga said:

@JeffChasteen said:
This sounds great and the price is wonderful.

I play “real” slide and lap steel, so I have always used the Yonac app for mostly accents or drones/glissandi. As a result, I have the original loaded up with tons of Sonic Youth and Blixa Bargeld tunings. Unfortunately, I don’t see a way to transfer them over from the old app to the new one. It appears that I will have to enter them anew in Steel Guitar PRO. Oh well, first world problems…

Idea of loading SY tunings into steel guitar sounds dope. Do you happen to have any recordings to share?

Brilliant idea

ExAsperis99

@ExAsperis99 said:

@Agatha_aga said:

@JeffChasteen said:
This sounds great and the price is wonderful.

I play “real” slide and lap steel, so I have always used the Yonac app for mostly accents or drones/glissandi. As a result, I have the original loaded up with tons of Sonic Youth and Blixa Bargeld tunings. Unfortunately, I don’t see a way to transfer them over from the old app to the new one. It appears that I will have to enter them anew in Steel Guitar PRO. Oh well, first world problems…

Idea of loading SY tunings into steel guitar sounds dope. Do you happen to have any recordings to share?

I think @JeffChasteen has suggested this idea before, which is why I have this handy link.

http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/tab/tuning.html

cokomairena

@Svetlovska said:
@cokomairena said:

Very nice plug-in but I need a midi guitar strummer now.

You mean like this?

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/midi-strummer-auv3-plugin/id1532229404

Yep. I remembered I have NuRackFX and it has a simpler version of this 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

Agatha_aga

@ExAsperis99 said:

I think @JeffChasteen has suggested this idea before, which is why I have this handy link.

http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/tab/tuning.html

Thanks, I’m aware of that site and have tried alternate tunings with my guitar setup. It’s the idea of “abusing” virtual instruments that I’m so excited about.

Also question to everybody, what about cabs, are they integrated into amp module?

Paulo164

Also the mute release samples add a lot of realism but are available only when playing with the UI and option « mute when picking ends » is ticked. This + sustain CC64 not working is a pity and could be fixed quite easily I think.

lukesleepwalker

Aw heck yeah, just catching up to this one and it has some quirks to work out in spots. But wow does it sound good.

JeffChasteen

@Agatha_aga said:

@JeffChasteen said:
This sounds great and the price is wonderful.

I play “real” slide and lap steel, so I have always used the Yonac app for mostly accents or drones/glissandi. As a result, I have the original loaded up with tons of Sonic Youth and Blixa Bargeld tunings. Unfortunately, I don’t see a way to transfer them over from the old app to the new one. It appears that I will have to enter them anew in Steel Guitar PRO. Oh well, first world problems…

Idea of loading SY tunings into steel guitar sounds dope. Do you happen to have any recordings to share?

McD

I'm experimenting using Steel Guitar Pro as a MIDI controller. It outputs Notes 0-9 (or number of strings minus one) as each string is touched. Then sliding the bar outputs Pitch Bend values so targeting synths or apps that support pitch bend +/- 12 or 24 is best. Then sliding the bar changes the effective Note rendered.

Since note 0-9 are not even defined for an 88 note keyboard I AUM's MIDI settings to shift the notes up by 60 to 72 notes (less for a bass instrument).

I've been looking and so far I find the lit of synth/apps supporting pitch bend adjustments to be:

Zeeon
World Synth
(some do but they don't seem to care about external pitch bend input)

Are you aware of more apps that support +/- 12 pitch bend settings?

NOTE: The scale of the pitch bends do NOT currently align with octave at the 12th fret but I think it can be scaled to fit using Mozaic or Streambyter. So you get the slide whistle scale that requires you to tune by ear... some of the presets in Zeeon sound very "theremin like".

The note sustain seems to require "hold the string". Chaining options in Steel Guitar didn't seem to change this... I need to study when the "Note Offs" are triggered and see how to deal with it. Right now I'm using a "Big Reverb" (Blackhole is nice) to get Harp like resonance without any damping.

Until I get the visual clues for pitch to play to a scale it sounds like a Lab oscialloscope instrument which some might really enjoy "as is". It does that old time radio dial into a tone effect. Using multiple strings it can imitate the "THX Sound Logo" theme from one direction and using overdubbing it could do both above and below for a complete product.

I hope more investigate this app as a type of MIDI controller so we can have a lot of Slide Guitar options for more synths. World Synth Dudek is very cool with a slide input.

It will also be nice to re-map the 0-9 notes using Mozaic or Strembyter to a variety of tunings like the app does. Then we can do harp strums and autoharp like layouts.

HotStrange

@McD said:
I'm experimenting using Steel Guitar Pro as a MIDI controller. It outputs Notes 0-9 (or number of strings minus one) as each string is touched. Then sliding the bar outputs Pitch Bend values so targeting synths or apps that support pitch bend +/- 12 or 24 is best. Then sliding the bar changes the effective Note rendered.

Since note 0-9 are not even defined for an 88 note keyboard I AUM's MIDI settings to shift the notes up by 60 to 72 notes (less for a bass instrument).

I've been looking and so far I find the lit of synth/apps supporting pitch bend adjustments to be:

Zeeon
World Synth
(some do but they don't seem to care about external pitch bend input)

Are you aware of more apps that support +/- 12 pitch bend settings?

NOTE: The scale of the pitch bends do NOT currently align with octave at the 12th fret but I think it can be scaled to fit using Mozaic or Streambyter. So you get the slide whistle scale that requires you to tune by ear... some of the presets in Zeeon sound very "theremin like".

The note sustain seems to require "hold the string". Chaining options in Steel Guitar didn't seem to change this... I need to study when the "Note Offs" are triggered and see how to deal with it. Right now I'm using a "Big Reverb" (Blackhole is nice) to get Harp like resonance without any damping.

Until I get the visual clues for pitch to play to a scale it sounds like a Lab oscialloscope instrument which some might really enjoy "as is". It does that old time radio dial into a tone effect. Using multiple strings it can imitate the "THX Sound Logo" theme from one direction and using overdubbing it could do both above and below for a complete product.

I hope more investigate this app as a type of MIDI controller so we can have a lot of Slide Guitar options for more synths. World Synth Dudek is very cool with a slide input.

It will also be nice to re-map the 0-9 notes using Mozaic or Strembyter to a variety of tunings like the app does. Then we can do harp strums and autoharp like layouts.

Woah I bet it sounds great with world synth! Thanks for testing this out. Glad to see it’s at least somewhat working!

NeuM

I've discovered that all tracks created in iOS GarageBand using Steel Guitar Pro will not retain performance information. The track retains MIDI notes, but trying to play back a saved GarageBand project results in just... nothing. No audio on the Steel Guitar Pro tracks at all.

Please investigate, @jessie @ Yonac.

McD

@HotStrange said:
Woah I bet it sounds great with world synth! Thanks for testing this out. Glad to see it’s at least somewhat working!

I found out that Audio Layer can be configured for Pitch Bend up to +/- 48. I made a demo
with:

3 AudioLayer instances with a Choir, a Bell and a Chimera preset set with +/- 12 bend on the Pitch page and +72 notes in AUM. One Zeeon +60 notes. One World Synth +72 notes. (NOTE: You can get power chords using +60, +67, and +72)

There are 3 useful techniques in the GUI:
1) touch strings and hold for notes and chords (adding Rozeta Scalar for Pentatonic forcing)
2) slide the bar for microtonal pitch shifting
3) tap on the fret board and the "slider" jumps immediately to that position for chord/note intervals

I didn't wait for slide mastery so I went for experimental "weirdness". I can get similar sounds from Shoom or by using TC-Data as a controller. I switched over to the "Lefty" option in SGP for this recording. I'll probably settle on one of the other with a lot more practice.