Week 4 - MIDI Pick-up

Hi welcome to the second instalment of my music tech forum blog for first semester.
I’m really starting to settle in at the University of Adelaide now. Classes are getting more practical and more in depth, which is making my interests, grow in MIDI, audio studies and music tech. My knowledge of music technology is growing every day and I can now combine this with the performance and theory side of music I have studied in the past.

I’m performing a 3 minute piece of music tomorrow in music tech forum. Our very last rehearsal for the performance is tomorrow at 12. My group has decided to do a funk song, because it’s an easy genre of music to put together in the limited time we have to organise the piece of music. I’ll let you know how rehearsal and the performance go next week.

I’ve been looking into using MIDI with a guitar used as the controller. This interest is because I want to be able to store guitar sounds using MIDI, be able to play any kind of instruments part in a live or recording situation on the guitar and loads of other options. I found some useful information on one of Roland first guitar MIDI setups, which includes a GK-2 pickup and a GR-50 rack mounting sound module. The Gk-2 consists of a pickup which is attached to a switching unit. The MIDI pickup sits underneath the strings like a normal magnetic pickup, usually in between the bridge of the guitar and the bridge pickup. I found this is a great device because the guitar can be used normally and as a controller that sends MIDI data from each string. By doing this you can blend two different instruments to play in unison or set the guitar and other instrument to play a constant harmony. The options are endless in a live or recording situation I personally could have hours and hours of enjoyment experimenting with this device. The pickup works by sending digital data to a rack module which converts the data to MIDI. At first I was worried about having to drill holes in my guitar to attach the pickup and switching unit, but I’ve found you can attach them with an adhesive. This week I’m going to look further into the GR-50 sound module which they don’t make anymore with one they do called the GR-30. I’ll also look into why such plays as Jennifer Batten, John petrucci, and Alan Holdsworth use some kind of MIDI setup.

References

Denyer, R. (1982). The Guitar Handbook. In A. Buckingham (Ed.), Performance Technology (PP.224). Spain: Darling Kindersley Limited.