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Bass-midi converter?

F

fcleffer

Apr 15, 2007
37
1
phoenix,hilo,austin,berkeley
#1
Looking for a converter for bass guitar-to-midi for the purpose of writing music notation as I play. Sonuus had one (about $100) on the market for a few years, and it seems now that the poorly-reviewed item has been discontinued. Is there another maker with an inexpensive unit to use between a bass guitar and Sibelius notation software on a Mac?
Not looking to use for performance or exotic other-than-bass sounds... just want something that will accurately track the note and send it to the software.
 
#5
Then I've missed the reason why MIDI and not USB is involved when trying to record to his Mac.
Sonus makes the G2M V3 still and any interface can do USB to MIDI with a cheap converter.
 
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#6
Roland GR 88 said:
Then I've missed the reason why MIDI and not USB is involved when trying to record to his Mac.
Click to expand...
My understanding of what @fcleffer wants to do is record audio into his computer and have it converted to MIDI in real time. The Sonus G2M V3 that you mentioned is definitely an option, although to echo the OP it gets reviewed pretty poorly (I've never used one so I can't comment first-hand).

Roland GR 88 said:
any interface can do USB to MIDI with a cheap converter
Click to expand...
This is where you're losing me (likely because I'm just misunderstanding you). Any interface can send your audio signal into your computer, but I don't know of an interface that will actively convert audio to MIDI as you're describing (i.e. a general purpose audio interface, not a specialized audio to MIDI converter like the Sonus).
 
#7
Roland UM-2 MK 2 or similar. An interface is still required but I'm not sure why MIDI is a requirement for his software.
I suggest a modern USB interface only because MIDI is a term often used to describe any analogue to digital conversion and figure the O.P.'s Mac has a USB input.
The lousy reviews on the Sonus are likely due to the age old issue of converting guitar signals direct to MIDI and since the O.P. just wants to get his signal into his software any USB interface should do the job.
 
#8
Roland GR 88 said:
I'm not sure why MIDI is a requirement for his software.
Click to expand...

The OP apparently wants to play music on the bass and have it notated in Sibelius. Notation programs like Sibelius can import MIDI files or read MIDI input in real time and display the MIDI data as notes on the staff.

So he needs MIDI at some point, either an audio to MIDI device like the Sonnus or record the audio into the computer and convert that audio to MIDI. silky smoove mentioned Melodyne which is one piece of software that can do this. There are others, but only Melodyne can convert polyphonic audio (more than one note at a time, i.e. chords and double stops).

The audio to MIDI hardware solution avoids the need to record the audio and then convert it, the OP can simply play the bass and watch the notes pop up on the staff in real time.

The record audio and then convert to MIDI solution is not real time, requiring at least three pieces of software (audio recording, Melodyne or similar, Sibelius) and taking much more time to enter the compositions into Sibelius.
 
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#12
OP was pretty clear about what he wanted.

There may be a synth or octave pedal on the market that has midi out capabilities in addition to note tracking, but I can't think of a software way to do it. (Someone mentioned Melodyne which is great, don't know if it does midi out though. If it does, that might be a good bet if you have routing software into Sibelius.)
 
#15
fcleffer said:
Looking for a converter for bass guitar-to-midi for the purpose of writing music notation as I play. Sonuus had one (about $100) on the market for a few years, and it seems now that the poorly-reviewed item has been discontinued. Is there another maker with an inexpensive unit to use between a bass guitar and Sibelius notation software on a Mac?
Not looking to use for performance or exotic other-than-bass sounds... just want something that will accurately track the note and send it to the software.
Click to expand...
For Sale - Peavey CyberBass (midi bass)
 
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#16
Unfortunately, Fishman still hasn't produced a bass version of their "Triple Play" MIDI USB interface for guitars. The best current option I know (and it's the one that I have) is to use a dedicated Roland GK-3B pickup and an Terratec Axion converter. Roland also makes converters (GR-55, GI-20) that convert te GK pickup signals into MIDI/USB that are much easier to find. The old Axion AX-50 and AX-100 units had a clever algorithm that really helps tracking for a bass.

What the GK pickups do is provide a separate signal for each string, which makes the signal processing a lot easier. To figure out what MIDI note to send, the converter has to be able to figure out what the fundamental frequency is on each string that's vibrating. That means, at an absolute minimum, it has to wait until it's seen two full cycles of the waveform, and for practical purposes it needs to look back over quite a few cycles before it can be sure. This tends to result in noticeable lag on low notes if you're using the MIDI to drive a synth. For pure notation, you might not care. The other thing to keep in mind is that one has to play very, very cleanly to avoid getting glitch notes, though if one can apply a software filter that throws away MIDI note events that have a "velocity" parameter below some resonable threshold, that will get rid of most of them.
 
#17
silky smoove said:
That's what's hanging me up. MIDI happens entirely downstream of any analog to digital conversion, or in digital-only environments where no such conversion is needed.
Click to expand...

Don't get hung up now, my point, if I can get it across is that the term MIDI is often incorrectly used as a definition of A/D conversion ...... incorrectly as in by mistake. However in this case, MIDI messages is what the O.P. needs and I apologize for not being familiar with Sibelius' notation software or the practice of notating in real time.
 
#18
The Peavey MIDIBase and Cyber Bass that Chris mentioned are the simplest solutions if you can find one and afford it...I actually bought one years ago for $350, sold it for about the same (here, I think) and now see them approaching $2000.

They used wired frets so latency, polyphony and some of the bum notes issues go out the window. You need both the bass and the rack unit which simply outputs MIDI and does nothing else. It works exactly as Peavey says, you can choose whether it will track pitch bends or not, have each string on it's own MIDI channel or all strings on one channel, velocity sensing, etc. The OHSC even has a space to hold the rack unit.

A lot of that is overkill for the OP's case but Sibelius will record what he plays perfectly...I've done it with the notation part of Cubase.
 
#19
Bassheart365 said:
Real time bass to polyphonic midi out = FretTrax.
Click to expand...
00 images2b3.png

 
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#20
Bassheart365 said:
Real time bass to polyphonic midi out = FretTrax.
Click to expand...
The tricky bit with that approach is that the device has an easy time knowing where you've fretted, but a hard time knowing how you've plucked and muted. Could be made to work, but $1800 for a retrofit is a lot more than $230+$700 for Roland GK-3B + GR-55. They stopped building the GI-20 (MIDI conversion with no built-in synth, which is all you really need for this application), but you could find one of those used for $250 or so and get the job done for about $500 if you have a Jazz or similar body bass available to mount it on.
 

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