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Post by Daniel Linger on May 13, 2020 13:09:28 GMT
Hi one and all (and especially Robert, if you're reading),
I recevied my Starter pack 2 a couple of days ago, and am glad to say it overachieved in expectation. I honestly expected a considerably less full and clean sound (except where it's supposed to be gritty). I've had a hell of a lot of fun already.
And of course, it goes without saying, I've already ordered a couple more modules...
So before asking my question, a bit of an explanation. I use an old Alpha Juno I've had for decades, occasionally a big old DX7, but mostly these days, a cheap Novation Xiosynth as a control keyboard (because it's a small 2 octave job), a Minibrute 2S, a Microfreak, and an Elektron Samples all hooked up in various arrangements. Plus with the occasional Volca or Pocket Operator to add colour. If I use these latter two, then I usually don't bother with sync hookup, and just record them individually in multitrack.
I've got a 4I/O module ordered, which will facilitate me messing around with the Minibrute 2 and AE modular pretty nicely. But of course, I want to do more.
I'm not completely an amateur, in that I know what the components do, but one area I'd love to get into is hooking up a guiatr to do pitch following. Big question is - has anyone done such a module, and if so, where? I've had a cursory nose through Google but couldn't find anything relatable.
SO that's it - I want to hook up a guitar or other instrument and get it to "play" the synth by it following pitch. Would I also need anything else to go with it?
And if so, is THAT available too, or is anyone working on this?
Big thanks for your time reading, and any responses are welcomed. Big thanks to Robert for being an all-round nice guy, very helpful and a star for having the vision to create this in the first place.
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Post by thetechnobear on May 13, 2020 13:47:35 GMT
theres nothing available at the moment (afaik). pitch tracking is a pretty tricky process, and often the 'inexpensive' approaches have results that are 'less than spectacular'. if it's important to you that is accurate, Id probably look at one of the dedicated boxes that do this. theres quite a number of guitar -> midi, or guitar-> cv options... its definitely getting better - but I think those that are 'really into it' still tend do use special pickups on their guitars to 'do it at source' if you don't need it to be 'real time', i.e. you just want to compose with a guitar, and then play it on the modular - then a lot of DAWs/Plugins do 'audio to midi' conversion. again, not always great results - but the advantage there is you can then edit the mistakes out. this is opposed to envelop following, which tracks 'volume' of a signal - this is relatively easy.... funny enough, and reason i responded even though i dont use guitar, is Ive been playing with pitch-tracking on bela on eurorack, and been having 'varying degrees of success'  but perhaps some guitar players out there can offer some more promising and useful experience |
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Post by Daniel Linger on May 13, 2020 17:53:21 GMT
Thanks for the great response Technobear.
I kind of guessed it was going to be more involved in the electronics sense. I've seen various attempts in the past done cheaply, but frankly never really paid much attention apart from just thinking it was cool and all.
For myself, I guess I'm more relaxed about it. I don't mind it not being perfectly accurate, or at least open to lag as I can easily fiddle around with alignment in a DAW. I also admit I'm new to DAWs, as I've always preferred the tactile ability of hardware - it just brings more out of me. I think it's a DJ thing for me.
So I certainly wasn't aware of getting a DAW to do it. I may well have a fiddle about now and see what results I get - so BIG thank you that!
I guess the footnote to this is it might be cool in the future? I wouldn't hold my breath though bearing in mind the complexity versus cost.
Still, great response and I thank you for this.
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Post by thetechnobear on May 14, 2020 15:37:25 GMT
there might be some hope... e.g. the expert sleepers disting eurorack module has a pitch tracking mode - and thats a fairly limited processor i believe. this post on MW seems to indicate it works pretty well for guitar, though sounds like it needs a bit of 'finessing' but disting code is not open source - so unfortunately that could not just be 'ported' to AE, perhaps we need to convince Os to bring out a Disting for AE modular |
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Post by bbjack on May 27, 2020 14:52:22 GMT
Have a look at the Guitar Synth from Toybox for Reaktor.. www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/13429/Reaktor is taking a lot of CPU usage for Pitch Following and I am not able to see how the core of the Module is constructed. Maybe this high load is a reason why this is not translated to digital modules with microprocessors.. or there are only a few persons like us who wants to control a vco live with audio instruments  I modified the guitar synth for playing with a trumpet by adding a mixer to the end for the true microphon signal of the raw trumpet sound as well as adding a second vco for a fifth down tuning. Knowing that Reaktor is a Software and no hardware module, you can give it a try by downloading the free reaktor player and the free toybox pack. My Screenshot is too big for sharing directly.. so check it out in the cloud: drive.google.com/open?id=1rd5rc3KKushj6JiKKkwWDAQTJWCe3YI0 |
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Post by Daniel Linger on Jun 20, 2020 0:22:43 GMT
Sorry for the delay in replying.
BUt thanks for your comments, all.
I'm liking that patch on Toybox, bbjack. I'll give that a go myself when I get round to it. Thank you for sharing.
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Lugia
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Post by Lugia on Jun 20, 2020 19:57:38 GMT
Pitch tracking in the analog domain is one of the great bugaboos in synth history, actually. This idea was a big part of the thing that destroyed ARP, for example...the Avatar, which relied on a weird hex pickup scheme that never would work properly. Another device, the Gentle Electric pitch-CV converter, is something of a legend as it worked very well (albeit monophonically) but only a few standalone models were made, alongside a similarly small amount of modules they did for the Serge system. I have a few things along these lines, all from Korg: the MS-20 mini (x2) and their monophonic "guitar synth", the X-911, which uses a related pitch-CV converter. Do they work? Uhm...yes...kinda-sorta.
The problem is that sounds that we find interesting are ones that analog pitch-CV converters find totally brain-wrenching. These devices like to see signals where there's a VERY apparent fundamental, but WE like ones where the harmonic content is shifted or shifting, and there'll be points with that where the fundamental isn't the strongest partial in the sound. Result: mistracking.
A far better solution is what you see with the Disting, Electro-Harmonix's x9 boxes, the recent Boss pitchtracking synths, etc, and this is to digitally track pitches. A fairly basic processor running a barebones FFT algorithm can easily sort out pitches in even single-input polyphony, then it would just be a matter of a subroutine to convert that data from the FFT read, via DC-coupled D-A converters, to CV/gate outputs. But then there's an I/O issue; let's say you want to use this device as a guitar synth. So...six strings = a maximum of six voices of polyphony to track. And this also means six CV outs, six gate outs...
The better solution would be to convert from the analog input to MIDI, and then use MIDI-CV/gate conversion. This avoids overtaxing the processor, the need to really go nuts with the audio-CV conversion routine, etc. Plus, there's more off-the-shelf solutions to deal with audio to MIDI than audio to CV/gate.
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Post by Daniel Linger on Jun 28, 2020 13:32:40 GMT
Thanks for the input Lugia. Nice description there.
I was aware of a fair amount of that. I knew before asking that this was a BIG ask.
YOu've also triggered an old memory in me too, when you mentioned that MS-20s kinda did this. I was trained in audio engineering at Salford College of Technology (in Manchester, England) back in 1990/1. We had an old MS-20 knocking around in one of the studios (neglected and stuffed at the back). After one afternoon down the pub (well, it was college after all) we cam e back a bit worse for wear and started trying to patch everything into that poor synth. It took it well, but we did get some sort of note following of sorts, so I get what you mean. Plus, we were just winging it then, butit's a great memory you uncovered nonetheless.
I thought about the MIDI/CV conversion and doing things that way, and that's fine for just about everything in my arsenal .... except guitars. The only reason I really want to be able to do it with guitars is because the playstyle when you're noodling on a guitar lends itself to a different style of melody than noodling on a keyboard, at least that's what I find. So I've always thought it's be cool to capture that.
No worries anyway, I really appreciate the time and effort you put into explaining it.
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Lugia
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Post by Lugia on Jun 28, 2020 22:12:03 GMT
YOu've also triggered an old memory in me too, when you mentioned that MS-20s kinda did this. I was trained in audio engineering at Salford College of Technology (in Manchester, England) back in 1990/1. We had an old MS-20 knocking around in one of the studios (neglected and stuffed at the back). After one afternoon down the pub (well, it was college after all) we cam e back a bit worse for wear and started trying to patch everything into that poor synth. It took it well, but we did get some sort of note following of sorts, so I get what you mean. Ahhh, yes...see, the fun thing about the MS-20 is how it MIStracks. Instead of trying to get it to properly follow an incoming pitch, it's much more useful for causing racket. Case in point: pretty much all of Aphex's initial acid work. Much of the screechy, messed-up, quasi-industrial rhythmic racket is a drum machine (a TR-606 works VERY nicely for this) fed into an MS-20's input stage, then if you get creative with the patching, you quickly arrive in RDJ's territory in the early-mid 1990s, bounded on one side by "Digeridoo" and the other by "Ventolin".
Why? OK...P-2-V converters really don't like FM-y sounds, and they REALLY don't like noise...pitched or otherwise. So the circuit is trying like hell to resolve a pitch out of something it can't deal with, while at the same time you're doing things like overloading the input preamp on the MS-20, weirdly bandpassing it, and extracting the envelope information (after whatever the hell you've done to it!) to make the synth do...well, put on any of those brutal JOYREX sides. That. Of course, this is also why the MS-20 really hates to track ANYTHING properly, because it doesn't like the additional harmonic content; about the only instruments I know of that the Korg P-2-V is ever happy with are things like flutes, recorders...stuff with minimal additional partials as part of its sound.
TBH, the MS-20's input stage would be a VERY useful thing to replicate for the AE, I think. Not only would it give the system an envelope follower (useful in of itself), but the ability to do some basic P-2-V would be nice. Pretty simple device, too...input preamp (or not...the 4I/O + 2SIGNALAMP would be fine for that), nonresonant low and high cuts, envelope follower, and P-2-V, with patchpoints after each stage. Add a cheap beatbox, and INSTANT ACIIIEEED!
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Post by Daniel Linger on Jul 13, 2020 10:49:52 GMT
Holy hell Lugia - have you ever given me food for thought there.
I never thought about it before but it stands to reason that back then when the MS20s were new tech, there was going to be no way they could process and intelligently track anything but the more simple stuff. I should have thought more about it.
But as you say, there's always great serendipity in chaos and unwarranted effects and actions. I'm a firm believer in it.
And now you have me convinced that I would also love the input stage of the MS20 to be an addition for the AEM - I would LOVE to get down and dirty with that noisy chaos.
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pol
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Post by pol on Apr 6, 2022 20:54:31 GMT
SO that's it - I want to hook up a guitar or other instrument and get it to "play" the synth by it following pitch. Would I also need anything else to go with it? And if so, is THAT available too, or is anyone working on this? Just in case you missed it, there is somethign you can try now within the AE:-
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Post by duddex on Jul 10, 2022 13:49:29 GMT
Unfortunately, envelope follower modules don't track the pitch but the volume. But this is a very interesting topic. I came across this topic when I was watching several MS-20 tutorials (actually I have to admit that these were Behringer K2 tutorials). The tutorials usually also cover the ESP and show how to use a guitar or a microphone to play the synths. And when I wanted to dive a little deeper into this topic, I found this post. It seems that there are only a few Eurorack Modules which provide pitch-to-cv functionality (as mentioned above). When I first saw this ESP 20 Processor module, I thought I found what I am looking for. But it turns out that this is just a module for Cherry Audio's Voltage Modular Software Synthesizer  Audio-to-midi and then midi-to-cv may be an alternative. But I think that the result is probably a bit "jumpy" when you do pitch bends on a guitar, because I guess that the audio will be converted into whole notes. So even though it might be quirky and not precise at all, I would like to have a pitch-to-cv module in my setup. Maybe some of the electronics experts here on the forum can "reverse engineer" the ms20 or k2 circuits of the ESP? |
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Post by duddex on Aug 13, 2022 14:38:49 GMT
I did a little test with VCV Rack. I used the NYSTI P2V (Pitch to voltage) module and the CV->MIDI module. I plugged in my guitar to my soundcard and sent the signal to the P2V module. The output of the P2V module is sent to the CV-MIDI module. The MIDI notes are sent to my MASTER I/O module.  It turned out that my assumption is correct: a pitch-bend on the guitar is converted by the CV-MIDI module to whole notes (or of course more precisely: half notes). So the notes jumped when I bent the string on the guitar. I also sent the "voltage out" from the P2V module to a VCV Rack VCO. This worked. So the conversion from pitch to cv in the NYSTI modules works great. Additionally did some tests with SCAMP. This is a python library which was recommended on the AEmodular Discord channel by rodney (Earcandles). This library supports microtonality by sending MIDI pitch bend information. When you use the librry to send "Play Note 48" to the MIDI output, this results in C2. But you can also send "Play Note 48.5". This results in the note between C2 and C#2. So basically it would be possible to "translate" every audio pitch information to MIDI information |
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