| midi bass
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I just picked up a Roland Midi converter system (GK3b+GI20) a few weeks ago, and am currently getting to grips with it. So far so good...
Searching TB throws up a few threads, which show that there ARE Midi bass users here, but nothing really in depth (and it's not clear where it should go - basses, pickups, effects,misc?). While I don't have any specific problems right now, I'd really like to chat to some people who've been down this route...
My own experiences so far:
First few hours were a disaster. I taped the pickup onto an old cheap P copy, and didn't spend much time with the setup - I wanted to get going! The results were awefull tracking.
A second attempt the next day using a slightly better bass, and a bit more patience yielded dividends. Getting the pickup in the right place is critical - about an inch from the bridge is fine, but I needed to get it close to the strings.
The tracking is now pretty tight, and very playable. Bottom E is a little slow,but still managable. open strings getting triggered by touchs which would normally mute them are a new hazard - I'm experimenting with the scrunchie option.
Ironically the tracking is fine for funky syncopated stuff, but falls down badly when playing straight 8th pedal notes - the problem is dum,dum,dum,dum gets picked up as dumdumdumdum and the notes don't always get retriggered properly. If there's a change in pitch then it picks up the new note pretty quickly, and it's fine. I'm using fingers - maybe a pick would be better.
Per string transposing is a lot of fun - I mod'd the cello patch to tune in 5ths. Of course that renders it unplayable byme, but it does sound pretty authentic!
I still haven't chosen a bass for a perminant fix yet. It doesn't look like the pickup will fit on my Kubickis - there isn't enough gap between the bridge and the regular pickup to squeeze in the hex-pickup.
I think I'll get a new 5-string, and tuning it EADGC. A low B would put strain on the tracking, but a high C would be nice for chording.
I did consider ADGCF as a tuning to optimise the tracking, and using the midi transpose to put the notes back in to a more bass like range. Unfortunatly I did some experiments, and the roland unit "expects" the strings to be BEADGC. It will only track notes 26 frets about the expected open string, so on a 24 fret neck an ADGCF tuning would leave the last three frets non-functional.
I'm currently just running the midi to a cheap Yamaha GM/XG box. It seems to work really well. I've got a few other expanders kicking around - I'll have a go with them sometime, but then I'd want a mixer, and then a full rack, and it could all get out of hand...
Anyway - thats where I am now. Just thought it might be usefull to share my thoughts at this stage. I'm not sure HOW I'm going to use this, but it's a lot of fun.
I'd really like to hear what others are doing with this stuff.
Ian | 
