What do you use MIDI guitar to do?

[jpleong]

Seeing viewtopic.php?t=937 and @jb63's MIDI-equipped Parkers for sale had me wondering what members of the Parker community actually use MIDI on their guitars to achieve?

I have a lot of (non-guitar) MIDI-connected gear but my very brief flirtation with MIDI guitar (some flavor of Godin plus a VG-88) was less-than-stellar. I've been able to achieve (mostly) what I've wanted for otherly-guitar sounds via a mix of envelope filters, modulation, POGs, and esoteric delay/reverbs. For the rest (playing samples of pianos, horns, strings, etc...) I use whole other "instruments" (AKAI and Ableton groove boxes) triggered by footswitches or manually played.

I'm a fan of EHX's POG/HOG based products so I wonder if the 9-series from them would alleviate much of what MIDI-users are doing in a cover band or church setting.

JP

[mmmguitar]

In practice, I use my guitar synth gear for hexaphonic processing, rather than MIDI. For thirteen years or so, now, I've been using a GR-55 for guitar modeling, alternate tunings, layering, and triggering pads. Though my Axe FX has a monophonic synth I can use for the latter two, the hexaphonic unit simply tracks better and allows for ambient chords to be played, sustained, or looped while I noodle over them or loop additional layers. I record guitar and bass through the same unit.

I know I could be using the MIDI-out on the unit for more than nothing - But I have a keyboard and AE-30 which are better-suited for that realm. Plus, I've been using Guitar Pro transcription software for so long that it's faster to manually enter the notes for a part than clean up the mess of artifacts the program interpreted from the guitar or another MIDI controller (e.g., mistriggered notes, enharmonic notes in the wrong part of the guitar neck, sequential 64th note rests when I played a staccato note, etc.).

For most guitarists, I imagine it comes down to their preferring to use the instrument they're most comfortable with as a MIDI controller for messing with new gear, rather than investing in learning a new instrument. Being as I'm mediocre on a few different instruments, the fun for me is in how different instruments/controllers bring out different ideas (Not that they're necessarily good ideas).

I got into guitar synth after spending a few years enjoying what I heard players such as Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, and Patrizio Mameli doing with them, before finally deciding I wanted to play with the same toys.