PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Any guitar players out thers using a ZTAR?
Check out http://www.starrlabs.com

I use roland a Roland gutiar synth and find the midi output is very unstable. I'm interested in getting a Ztar (very expensive) compared to Roland's solutions.

Wondering what a Ztarist's experience using creamware or anything else!

Thanks,

Just for the record my Creamware 4.0 works great on my old skool mac running os 9.2.2.
If it works use it!

Stebzilla

ahhh, nice site - they've added all the stuff Casio left out in their DG20
I don't qualify as a guitar player, but I've the above mentioned cheapo controller (it has microswitches under the frets which are 'operated' by pressing fake strings down, fixed velocity, no bend, aftertouch or whatsoever).

Guessing from the (truely) limited capabilities of the DG20, the Z_Tars must be real fun to play.
The Casio needs an extreme adaption of whatever playing technique, yet it manages to do some stunningly good fakes (just a bit limited in it's range).
The fun starts when you layer non-guitar midi stuff to a 'guitar' base (either internal or triggered samples).

To a degree this will certainly apply to the Z-Tars as well, just that they offer way more sensitivity and of course more creative potential with the variety of controllers.
But imho you will need an open mind to such an instrument - it will require it's own playing style.

Honestly, when I tried the DG20 the first time I only thought OMG, that will never work
With some practicing it's not that bad at all.
I've even considered to add velocity and pitch bend - cannot be that hard to do.

If you're doing live gigs you might try a DG20 (they sell for $100-200) before investing in a real instrument. It looks pretty strange and is at least an eyecatcher...

cheers, Tom

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2005-02-19 11:58 ]</font>

Are you aware of Axxon Guitar->MIDI converters (now distributed/owned by Terratec)? They use the signal from the Roland pickup (GK2A) and perform a much faster conversion, with minimal if not totally unnoticeable latency.

This is one of the rare sites that won't run under Firefox.


"The BZ-3 guitar is carved from clear acrylic"

How do you carve acrylic? They must have a special knife.

no problems here with Firefox 1.0 under Win2K

well, time has moved on - today they carve by Laser and such stuff
though a jigsaw with the proper blade may also work

cheers, Tom

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2005-02-20 09:58 ]</font>

looks like they'll work. i have heard that they work, but they sure do look hard to handle, they look like bends are not too guitar-like either.....
shadow's midi converter is also much quicker and accurate than the roland, but there are certain limitations to converting midi from guitar string pitches...

i think that the real question is "how badly do you want a new toy?". it's really hard to imagine the guitar really being a convienient midi controller. maybe for certain kinds of single note entry a guitar might be a great controller, but for more complex chords and expressions, i doubt that using a guitar is better than learning the keyboard(this from a true keyboard cretin/cripple).

But if you want to do it all at once Gary

I have thought for some time of maybe hooking up a hex pick-up to my ADs and see, how fast Flexor will alow me to go.

That thing reminds me of the first Yamaha guitar controller. Awful thing it was. All the strings were tuned to G(third string tuning) so there was absilutely no way of playing with feeling with it.

After reading some more on Axons homepage, I have more or less dumped the Guitar MIDI story

I use Axon interface with no problems, and GREAT tracking speed!

The Ztar is good only because you don't really need to play it in a typical guitar style, since it's based on sensors. THe only similarity is how the instrument is held.

Check out Todd Keehn's videos of his ztar jams. (He also builds a nice guitar)
http://www.tkinstruments.com/id63.htm

Have fun,

Greg

i believe the axon and shadow pickups/converters are the same. a really good product.

has anyboby heard of the RMC fanout box?

It uses the hex pickup to split the guitar signal into six guitar outputs (one for each string)

Maybe using Flexor one could have an accurate (extremely) synth triggered by a guitar and polyphonic!

Anybody tried this already?

it's no big deal to accurately trigger a synth by one of the afforementioned constructions.

but guitarists usually want something that also captures their personal style (at least to a degree) and expression.
as there is velocity, open/damped strings, how the string is plucked, bending, at what fret it's played and possibly a few more that I'm unaware off.
a hexacoil is very limited in tracking this information due to it's principle of working, hence the research for alternatives.

for simplicity let's assume a basstone of 50HZ.
to detect it's frequency at least one cycle has to be performed - which is 20 ms of latency BEFORE processing can even start.

cheers, Tom

And that is the reason, why I dumped my idea to do a "fletar". Axon has another way of doing things, which apearantly gives the results before a full cycle of 50Hz.