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Playing Steel Guitar PRO with GeoShred through midi?
Is it possible? I have both Audiobus and AUM.
Thanks!
Comments
Should be possible. Load SGP in an audio lane, GeoShred in a MIDI lane. Route GS output to SGP. Not sure how well it will work, though. You'll find that out.
Oh, so that’s how you use AUM! Thanks! I finally got a sound out of Steel Guitar PRO in AUM. The sliding/pitch bend doesn’t work though. Any idea to why?
This is where it can get tricky. GS tries to help you send MPE messages, but SGP may not be expecting them. You need to find what SGP expects, and see if there's a suitable GS mode/preset that works with it.
For sliding, MPE usually assumes a pitch bend range of ±48 semitones, but normal keyboard pitch bend is usually ±2 semitones. So a small vibrato in GS may produce a very small effect in SGP. That may be what you're seeing.
A couple of little notes regarding AUM. It is by far preferred that you use Audio Unit Extensions, not the older Inter-App Audio. You've probably done this. And you can do a lot more with AUM than just MIDI routing. You can add more instruments, effects, sends, busses, etc. Save a Session and you can go right back to where you were.
This is a new universe to me. How do I go about to find out what SGP expects in this case?
Where should I use Audio Unit Extension? When I choose SGP as a source in AUM?
I wanted to try a solo using Steel Guitar Pro as an MPE target from Velocity Keyboard.
To do this you run the output of Velocity Keyboard into a Steambyter instance with this line loaded:
EX = EF
That routes all Pitch Bends to channel 16.
That should work for GeoShred in MPE mode too.
Could you explain that in more detail and as simple as possible? I’m totally new to this 😊
Pitch Bend works for me without the routing to channel 16 @McD .
I remember when SGP came out you did a lot of work on this so perhaps it is significant and I can’t see it.
I’m have SGP set to PitchBend Radius = 12. This is a way down the settings (spanner and screwdriver icon) in SGP, not sure what it is by default ?
I’m using a MIDI instance of GS with the default MIDI Out Control preset, The first preset of the 42 available presets.
The problem I have (and I think I had this problem when SGP first came out) is ‘warbling’ notes.
Looking at what GS sends vs what SGP sends when you bend notes, GS is sending additional Pressure messages.
The only other thing I can see that is different is that SGP pitchbend values are in the range 0 to about 5,500 whereas GS are in the range 8,000 to 16,000.
What do you think ?
Apologies @pelle if this is all confusing. It’s not normally as difficult as this but SGP has (I think) a strange implementation of how it handles midi.
EX = EF
This converts any pitchbend on any channel over to a pitchbend on channel 16 (F in hexidecimal.., well 15 really but programmers start with 0 so it’s the last channel which musicians call 16).
The logic of channel 16 is that MPE distributes pitchbends with individual notes in a round robin approach over channels 2-15 (1-14 for programmers… it’s confusing for the programmers too and we forget sometimes and are 1 off). But Steel Guitar Pro accepts pitch bends on channel 16 and applies it to your incoming notes.
I’ll test this later.
I made a Mozaic script that converts Steel Guitar Pro MIDI into MPE so you can use it’s screen interface to send MPE like midi to an MPE synth if it’s pitch bend is set to +/- 12.
I’ll test when I get home. Maybe put up an AUM project with a working configuration on Patchstorage.
That worked beautifully, thanks a lot! The only little problem left is that I can’t slide on the lower notes, only the higher ones. Well, I can slide on the lower notes if I set play mode to “poly” in GS but then it sounds aweful if I press four or more keys at once. All notes wobble/modulate for some reason.
Also, can I change preset in SGP from GS? I close down GS and open up SGP every time I want to change preset and it’s kind of annoying.
It looks like the problem is the channels that the lowest two strings output to I.e. 5 and 6.
The top 4 strings are 1 to 4 and seem to work ok. No idea why.
If you map everything to channel 16 it seems to fix that.
If you change the StreamByter script that @McD provided to XX = XF then it seems to work.
re presets I don’t think you can send Program Change directly from GS which I think is what would be required.
Are these two solutions to the same problem?
BTW, do you know of any another way to get good electric guitar sounds when using the interface/layout of GeoShred or similar?
The code XX = XF will map everything to channel 16.
In StreamByter 0 represents channel 1, 1 represents 2 etc.
In addition, numbers are represented in hexadecimal I.e. 0 to 9 and then A to F. So A = 10 and F = 15.
So if you combine the starting at 0 with the hexadecimal then F represents 16… obvious really 😊
Not sure if you mean sounds that you can play with GS (which is basically any app that produces sound) or apps that have the same layout as GS.
If the latter then iFretless Guitar is a similar layout and has recently been updated and has a few electric guitar sounds.
I keep getting these unintended octave jumps (like a whammy pedal) in SGP Pro and also in Roli Noise. Is that an artifact from Pitchbends resetting like a joy stick might and NOT holding the last position? I can’t find a way to get them out of the MIDI stream using GeoShred. Velocity Keyboard works a lot better for me but I suspect there’s a setting in GeoShred I don’t have dialed in properly.
UPDATE: MIDI monitoring reveals occasional Pitchbends at the extreme top end with a value of 16,383 (MSB = 127 and LSB = 127). I’m not sure what that means to the app but Steel Guitar Pro does that Whammy Pedal “Up and Octave” sound. I filtered these PitchBends out and it seems to break the pitchbend working for notes afterwards. It’s always something.
There’s a data pattern where it adds these 16838 Pitchbends every 6 notes:
I’m stumped… why are these in there?
Strange. I’m not seeing these values. Just ones consistent with the 8,000 + range but no big jumps as per screenshot. Are you using the same midi preset as me ? We can take this offline if it’s easier 🤨
Should I run StreamByter in AUM? If so, can you share the settings in AUM as a file? As I said earlier, om brand new to these things.
Thanks for the tip about iFretless. I bought both the guitar and bass app. They sound great when ran standalone but kind of buggy when played with GS via AUM. Notes get stuck and there’s quite a bit of latency (which I experience with SGP too).
This is the setup in AUM. SB has GS as its input. SGP has SB has its input. You type the XX = XF into SB and click install rules.
I know what you mean about stuck notes etc . There are some bugs with iFretless Guitar that were reported a while ago but I’m not sure if these explain what you are experiencing. My plan next week is to approach moforte who are the developers of GS and ask them for some help on this one ☝️
OK I’ve got a setup that seems to work for iFretless Guitar (iFG). I did it a while ago but had forgotten it 🤨
If you look at the settings in iFG , press the Cog at the bottom right for a few seconds and then scroll down to the midi settings it says ‘MPE 4 - 1 channel per string’ . I believe this is the midi out settings for iFG but it gives a clue as to how GS should be setup.
In GS click the top right Setlists area, Scroll to the bottom and select MIDI Out.
Click where it says MIDI Out Control I.e. the Presets list and scroll down to preset 31 I.e. MIDI Out MPE Mode 4.
If you try this it should work I.e. no stuck notes or latency other than the pitch bend range is not quite right.
To fix this click the three vertical dots at the top right and then select MIDI from the menu.
The window that appears on the left should already have MPE Channel 4 highlighted. Click Edit.
The new window that appears is a bit confusing as some of the text is obscured but click the edit icon (paper and pencil) next to the lowest of the two entries that say ‘MPE Channel Mod’ (the first is mode 3, the second is 4 which is the one we want)
You need to change the Pitch Bend Range from 48 to 12 (you may have to scroll down slightly to see this)
Click Back and Done. Once you have done this you won’t have to do it again.
This works fine for me with iFG. Let me know how you go on and if you need any help.
Thanks a lot for the instructions! Do I need to do both the settings in SB and those in your latest reply?
You don’t need to do anything in SB for iFG.
SGP is still problematic whatever we do.
Ah, okay! Do you think Velocity Keyboard will have the same problems with SGP?
I can’t find other MPE controlled electric guitar apps - do you know of any?
How should the apps be routed? And what’s the insert or effect you’re using on SGP?
Hi, don’t know anything about Velocity Keyboard but I’m sure somebody else will help you out.
Can’t think of any other MPE apps that are guitar specific but that does not mean to say there are’t any. Again hopefully somebody will comment.
The apps are routed as per the screenshot from left to right so GS is the input to SB as per the ‘Connect Midi Sources’ window above. SB is the input to SGP via the same mechanism.
The effect is just TB Reverb for a bit of reverb. It’s not relevant to the issue.
If you’re struggling with any of this I recommend watching some of the excellent videos that are available for AUM e.g.
one of Doug’s at the Sound Test Room which is here https://www.youtube.com/c/TheSoundTestRoom (just search for AUM or Velocity or Steel)
or Gavinski’s very thorough video here
(again lots of other apps are covered)