PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production Transcription at the Mind Boggling Level

A few posts have addressed transcription.

Here is a tool I had to pay 99 bucks for but I didn't mind because when I sit down and play the guitar and come up with some cool licks or even a full classical piece it makes a midi copy note for note. I exchanged a lot of emails with the developer when it was in Beta and he is a really cool guy. Great product.

https://www.jamorigin.com/midi-guitar-and-midi-bass-official-release/

AND, obviously once you record a guitar lick you can play it back in real-time or later as another instrument.

In other words, if I am channeling the output to Aria, I can use the electric guitar to play violin--or anything else.

OR, just for lazy people like me, I can load in a solo audio track of some part (say a lead I played in another song) and it will transcribe those notes as midi.

Sometimes it is a little off, and I have to tweak a few things in Guitar Pro but it is pretty daggone close. And polyphonic. Trippy.

I like to have this turned on when I come up with a riff and go ahead and make a Guitar Pro Copy of it (or simple midi) so if I come back a year later and ask "What the heck was I doing?" this will tell me what the heck I was doing.



For chords I got riffstation a while back and it is a little pricey I guess at 40 bucks (and BIAB can also analyze chords) but it is pretty handy for practicing if you are in a rush and want to figure out what someone is doing on a tune.

https://pro.riffstation.com/buy-or-download/

More than one forum member praises MIDI Guitar 2 by Jam Origin. One member, Larry Kehl, has many of the hardware based MIDI guitar solutions like Roland's GK-3 hex pickup, YouRock YRG-1000 controller and Fishman Triple Play and he says MIDI Guitar 2 performs as good as the hardware solutions. At $99 it costs less than the hardware solutions.

If you haven't run across it yet another software solution is +++ MIGIC +++. It is available for about $40 but is not as refined as MIDI Guitar 2.

David

I think I can help you with any buyers remorse (or spouse doubts )

If you are stickily, or essentially, a guitar ONLY player like me, and you want, nay you NEED, to get NOTES and CHORDS (poly-phonically) into the PC to record as MIDI, or play a plugin to record, or NEED to send MIDI OUT to external synth/sampler playback MIDI hardware, and you want to do it as INEXPENSIVELY as possible than that $99 is the BEST $99 you will spend.

I don't think that TODAY any other MIDI guitar solution even comes close!

Obvioulsy that will only hold true unitl someone else (like Migic) gets similar polyphonic software - with maybe more and better features or a cheaper price or a a mixture of features and price.

PS - if you have any kind of WIRELESS guitar setup - then you also are equivalent to a Fishman Triple Play setup (and probably cheaper depending on your wireless rig)


=======================
Only real draw back to it and the much more expensive Fishman Triple Play (without buying yet more gear - a FTP $200 foot controller) is you MUST have a PC "in the loop" to trigger external MIDI synths/samplers.

For you that might not be a issue but sometimes it drives me NUTS because, a PC is a distraction in and of itself.

Unlike picking up a guitar, flipping the ON switch to a keyboard workstation, and guitar amp and GK interface (my rack) and just playing - you get lost booting and then there is the OS (especially now with Win 10) and SW updates, and hiccups&issues, and messages, and more hiccups&issues, and emails, and hiccups&issues, and web distractions, and more hiccups&issues, then reboots to clear hiccups&issues, AAAARRRGGHHHH!!!! (and I am a computer geek/nerd)

Larry

will you please explain how you "load in a solo audio track"
thanks in advance

You're just feeding audio to it so any reasonably clean pre-recorded audio can be fed into the SW as if it were the incoming guitar audio

EDIT

PS just for clarification the audio (live audio or otherwise) needs to within the MG2 SW guitar audio range (around drop D to about 2 semitones up)

that's actually pretty cool stuff

that's what i need help with
in the stand alone & plug-in versions
specific example say with reaper of how to feed audio coming from a wav or mp3 file

Hey,

I have no idea how the standlone works because I do not use it.

In my Sonar DAW however, there are two tracks.

If you have midi guitar 2 you only have 2 tracks in question.

1. One is the audio track where you either play or import an audio track to be analyzed (singe instrument)

You insert midi guitar on this track as the audio effect.

Make sure to go to the VST toggle and set midi output to on.

2. The other track is the midi track. Make sure you set the input to "Midi Guitar 2." I usually choose channel 1.

Hit record with the record button set on the midi channel. If you are playing it will turn that into a midi. If you have an audio file loaded, it will turn that into midi.

Make sure you have input echo button on on both channels.

See screenshots.

thank you david that's just the input i needed

Have a look at this thread https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=166656&highlight=template+for+midiguitar

I got a template from a guy in the reaper forum that works well, unfortunately but I can't find the contact but if you search the forums you may find it.

thanks sinbad

Standalone use (VSTi plugin use was covered above)

If you truly want to use the “standalone” only MIDI Guitar 2 (MG2) with the end result of recording its output as MIDI you technically can’t because you need other tools as well (I’m splitting hairs on term “standalone”). You will need an additional MINIMUM of: 1) internal or EXTERNAL DAW or sequencer application capable of actually recording MG2’s MIDI output, and 2) a way to route that MIDI from MG2 to that DAW or sequencer.

If you further want to use pre-recorded audio to trigger MG2 and record that resultant MG2 output MIDI you need the above minimum plus an audio application (e.g., Audacity, Transcribe!, Mixcraft, RB, PTPA, …) that can play back pre-recorded audio files that uses MME NOT ASIO as its audio device and ASIO4ALL for use in MG2 as its audio device (there are other ways and you can use multi-client ASIO but you are on your own if you want to venture there.)

If you simply want to use MG2 in “standalone” mode to play your guitar live and trigger MIDI synths & sounds – see MG2 instructions and if you further want to also record THAT MIDI read item 1 below:

If you want to use the MG2 VSTi (i.e., non-“standalone”) see the EXCELLENT post by David in previously this thread as well as sinbad's post.


1). For just “standalone” MG2 to MIDI recording (independent of incoming audio to trigger MG2):

You need a way to route that MIDI to some MIDI recording device or app. IF you are sending he MIDI out to some external HW then you need a hardware MIDI port of some kind (.e.g., like a USB to MIDI cable) but suspect you’d already know that if you were already sending other MIDI from your PC to external HW synths, sampler (ROMpler) playback devices, and sequencers.

To send MIDI from MG2 to an internal DAW or sequencer recorder you will need something like MIDI-OX (free and yes it works in Win 10 as well as Win 7) or LoopBe 1 (the 2 port one is free the 30 port one is not free, but for this all you need is the free 2 port LoopBe).

http://www.midiox.com/?http://www.midiox.com/moxdown.htm

http://www.nerds.de/en/download.html

Using Loopbe 1 ports you simply select one of the Loopbe 1 ports as MG2 MIDI-out and that SAME port as your DAW/sequencer MIDI-in port.

Using MIDI-OX you have to connect whatever MIDI output port/device you have selected in MG2 to the MIDI input port you have selected in your DAW/sequencer.

Loopbe 1 is the least confusing of these two options especially if you have never used MIDI OX. But suggest you get MIDI-OX anyway, it is VERY useful for all kinds of MIDI routing and MIDI data monitoring/troubleshooting especially in a multi- or complex MIDI setup.

2.) To use pre-recorded audio into “standalone” MG2 to generate MIDI for MIDI recording:

You need item 1 above (for getting MIDI from MG2 to DAW or sequencer) and as already mentioned earlier an audio application (e.g., Audacity, Transcribe!, Mixcraft, RB, PTPA, …) that can play back pre-recorded audio files (again within a reasonable guitar frequency band) that uses MME NOT ASIO as its audio device. You will also need ASIO4ALL and an audio card (beyond the internal chip set audio device) for use in MG2 as its audio device. Note, this is NOT the only way to do this but beyond this method it becomes dependent on your audio card, its ability to mix and resend audio back into PC on different lines, etc. You can also use a multi-client ASIO but you are on your own if you want to venture there.

The simplest way to explain is see pic as sample, or see following explanation:

a. Audacity is playing a FLAC file using MME as its audio device;

b. MG2 is then “hearing “ that audio using ASIO4ALL and generating pitch to MIDI data that is sent out to MIDI output port “internal 2” (which is the second Loopbe 1 MIDI port);

c. Finally Powertrack’s has recorded that MIDI data by listening for it on MIDI input port “internal 2” (again the second LoopBe 1)


3. Of course if all you want to do is use the standalone MG2 to record your live guitars’ MG2 generated MIDI follow the instructions in item 1.

Good Luck
Larry

Larry,

Ole really enjoyed your last post and I am going to send him this. What a goldmine.

Man, have you ever considered taking a job with the Microsoft Azure people to help them improve their parallel processing algorithms for big data cluster analytics in the cloud?

They could use your help.