MIDI Guitar 2.2.1 & Jazz - Improving the workflow
I am an improviser/composer with a thing for fringe expressions normally. Here, I believe I succeeded in showing atypical restraint though, to hopefully get a point across. Whether it is in the Jazz idiom or in a contemporary classical setting doesn’t matter. I like the music I make to make me feel something. The thing is, when I write music on a computer, perhaps for a smaller setting, jazz bands or string quartets, I want to maximize the emotional expression. But there always seem to get stuff in the way. Doubt as to what is the best choice of notes, or some mixing aspect. I can always go to ready-made loops or midi files and sample libraries, draw some automation for those most relevant parameters to my intended result, and voila. I have something like a draft to present.
Great, but it is nowhere near the emotional connection I have to improvised composition.No time to second guess anything either. My most powerful tool nowadays is in the software solution that is MIDI Guitar 2 by JamOrigin. It does not really make your guitar a full-fledged competitor to keyboard, but moreover complement it, as it adds some features that I feel get lost in composing with a keyboard alone. There are two things mainly in my setup, that I would argue MIDI Guitar 2 can bring to the table to facilitate the work process considerably. The first one is intrinsic to the nature of guitar playing: it is the directness to the use of bends, vibrato, and slurs, and anything in-between. The MIDI Guitar software today is no doubt great at picking up on any bends for single notes lines being played. Not as much for polyphonic action yet. But as it is under development for MPE compatibility, I have great hopes for the future of the product. I have focused in this video on demonstrating those instruments that are the best examples of what I am trying to convey, which happens to be mostly wind instruments, and primarily in some sort of relation to any of the many different expressions related to the jazz label.
Where the natural connection to bends provided the first thing guitar have over keyboard in my book, the second thing I want to address could actually be used independent of controller, but is most relevant to the setup in a larger perspective: the breath controller. It has become second nature for me to use for any type of expression and is most important to the general ability to emulate other kinds of instruments. Remember that all of this, in the end, is a tool for not having to go into automation drawing mode, but instead be able to deliver a lifelike result from just recording alone. So these videos should also reflect that. No quantizing, no post-recording adjusting, or anything. The only things that are edited are the movie files, for the sake of a compilation. Certain omissions of unflattering less than tasteful tone choices may have been done there, but that is all. There is no special guitar, no special pickups used (except for that clip with the fretless Vigier with the Sustainiac system).
All clips that feature instruments where vibrato is at the heart of the expression are instruments that bend properly. Obviously not including the piano, but also not the flute in the last clip that has a programmed vibrato. Bends and breath are the two things that make me consider the MIDI Guitar 2 rig with a breath controller to be head and shoulders above any other setup for the improvised part of composing. I do have a Roli Seaboard and the Expressive Touché SE controllers too, but for now, they are also complements, special tools for special tasks!