Hardware systems for generating MIDI output from guitars are often expensive, impractical and unreliable. Jam Origin's revolutionary software alternative is none of these things. Along the route, some fine products have come my way, but none has quite cut the mustard. The latest incarnation of this design from Roland dominates the sector today. As a result, The desktop version of MIDI Guitar is the most configurable, thanks to the options on the Advanced setup page. This unique technology is the basis for the company's first foray into MIDI guitar software, appropriately named MIDI Guitar. You might recognise the iOS version of this software from last month's App Works column in which Bill Lacey poured praise on the iOS version of the MIDI Guitar family. The app is also covered in this review to put it in context with versions for other platforms. The actual patent application Generative Audio Matching Game System, US 20120132057 A1 makes very interesting reading, and sets out the methodology that lies behind the polyphonic pitch prediction and detection within MIDI Guitar. In extremely simple terms, it would seem that incoming audio from a source is compared against a stored library of pitches from that source, and the matches arising identify the pitches which are then translated to MIDI. As the title might suggest, the patent application also sets out the potential usage of the technology within a computer 'edutainment' game based around the concept of a jam session, and I'd certainly look forward to seeing that if it ever turns up in the real world. What really sets MIDI Guitar apart from its competition is that there is no need for any specialised hardware: all you need is a way of recording the output from your guitar's pickup into your computer. MIDI Guitar runs on Windows XP SP3 or newer , Mac OS 10. All variants are available as virtually unrestricted free trials, with the Windows and Mac versions being downloadable from the Jam Origin web site, whilst GarageBand for Mac OS and iOS variants are available on the Apple App Store. Installation under Windows and Mac is as simple as downloading and extracting the software, dragging the resulting folder into your Programs or Applications folder and manually copying the VST '. The desktop trial versions are fully functional MIDI Guitar for iOS is a simple but surprisingly effective app implementation of Jam Origin's technology. Installing and fully activating the iOS version of MIDI Guitar on my iPad 2 was as easy as I've grown to expect from the App Store. Opening the program brings up five information pages, three of which tell you all need to know about the app and how to run MIDI with other iPad apps and GarageBand. Cabled MIDI via an iOS MIDI interface linked to your computer, synth or sound module is recommended as the route with the least latency. Being the simplest incarnation of MIDI Guitar, the iOS version also has the least degree of display and control. You can set polyphonic or monophonic mode, switch the latency between 6ms and 11ms and alter the input sensitivity to suit your guitar's output and your playing syle. The GarageBand version is a step up in complexity from the iOS app, with the ability to select from any available input and output audio devices and channels. Sample rate can be varied from 44. An Output Visualisation facility gives you a view of either the waveform of the input from the guitar or the Polytuner, in which the pitches of each of the recognised strings are displayed on a series of rotary dials. For those who might find such complexity distracting, these visualisations can be switched off. A line of buttons across the bottom of the page illuminate to indicate the pitches being recognised, and can also be clicked on to generate the indicated pitches. Either way, the desktop version is the most fully featured incarnation of MIDI Guitar. Its Essentials screen is almost identical to the GarageBand Basics screen except that the GarageBand default selector has disappeared and there is now an additional button that resets the program's Recognition preset see below to 'Electric Guitar Default'. Working on this screen is, other than that, the same as working on the GarageBand version. The Advanced screen is where you'll find the additional editing and setup facilities that, to me, give MIDI Guitar its real power. If you're going to get the program to really work for you, this is where you'll be spending most of your time. This gives you not only the ability to use a floor controller to send MIDI controller information into MIDI Guitar via its Learn function, but also to use a keyboard to play the selected instrument in MIDI Guitar. The top half of this screen is completed by the Output Visualisation section, which now carries clickable note buttons. The first of these rows is all to do with MIDI parameters, with its first section, MIDI Settings, selecting polyphonic or monophonic pitch recognition, choosing whether CC64 acts as a synth sustain pedal or acts to hold the synth sound behind the guitar sound, and activating the MIDI Learn function. The MIDI Machine section allows the creation and selection of what could be thought of as customised MIDI effects. A MIDI Machine can be mapped to any MIDI input or output sequence, allowing you to develop and insert customised arpeggiators, harmonisers, MIDI delays, and so on. Customisation at this level needs a certain level of programming expertise, and the MIDI Machine API is based around a total of 10 Lua functions. Lua is a powerful programming language that is already used in many applications such as Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom, and is extremely fast. What makes this section particularly attractive to me, at least is that it acts on any MIDI stream passing through it, so a MIDI Guitar MIDI Machine can work on the outputs of external keyboards and sequencers. If you like the sound of this, you can find the API details at. In this version, the MIDI Output has four selectable velocity curves. Getting started with the iOS version of MIDI Guitar is simplicity itself: you simply plug in your interface and play. Although Jam Origin openly state that the latency in the iOS version is inferior to that of the desktop versions, I could find nothing to complain about in the performance of MIDI Guitar under iOS. The latency, whilst just noticeable, never felt as though it was hindering the music — perhaps because it was, as far as I could tell, exactly the same across all strings. As might be expected, MIDI Guitar worked easily and seamlessly with the iOS version of GarageBand. With GarageBand running, I found that I got the best results from virtual instruments by running at the higher latency, and although that latency was more noticeable, the overall excellence of the tracking and triggering still impressed me. As always, time spent setting up the sensitivity to work with the way that I was playing a specific sound paid dividends. It couldn't have been easier. The overall latency will depend on the performance of your router and on whether or not you have a cable running from it to your desktop computer. For the GarageBand and desktop variants, once the program has opened, you need to plug in your guitar interface, select it as the input, select the output that you're going to monitor through, select the Test Piano and adjust the Sensitivity level until you're getting clean notes. Depending on your computer's performance, you may need to increase the latency from 128 to 256 samples at this stage. This is where MIDI Guitar's Pitch Sensitivity and Pitch Prediction functions let you optimise individual note sensitivity to great effect. The thing to remember here is that you don't have to set up every single one of the 48 notes: you only need to work on notes that you are actually going to use. The ability to optimise just the needed notes and turn off all the rest , then save that configuration as a preset is a really great feature, and can completely cut out false triggering of unwanted notes. The Virtual MIDI Output was completely rock solid, recording absolutely clean MIDI information that required almost no editing, other than to correct for my sloppy playing here and there. I ran it, without difficulty or incident, with GarageBand and Logic on the Mac and, once I'd installed a Windows virtual MIDI driver, with Studio One on the PC as well. Since Jam Origin have thoughtfully provided a comprehensive list of setup guides for the vast majority of common DAW programs on their web site, plus general setup notes to cover any DAW that is not on the list, I really can't imagine anyone having problems. For me, latency on the desktop incarnations of MIDI Guitar just wasn't an issue. The success of any MIDI guitar system, hardware or software, is defined by its tracking and latency performance. By that measure, when set up and optimised for a particular sound and my playing style, the desktop version of MIDI Guitar succeeds beyond anything I have played to date. I felt that the desktop version could be set up with my Strat to track better than anything that I've ever owned — it's even better than a perfectly set up Zeta Mirror 6. Overall, the MIDI latency was at least as low as my current hardware floor unit, and that particular unit, compared to MIDI Guitar, has much higher latency on the lower strings. I'm also very encouraged The icing on the cake is the MIDI Machine section, where Lua scripts can be implemented to process incoming MIDI data. There's a major upgrade to the iOS version of MIDI Guitar coming out soon and it seems that they are also currently working on some really interesting enhancements to the desktop versions. Bass and violin versions are also in the works. Even if you do end up with a millisecond too much latency or a glitch here or there, the absolutely killer aspect of Jam Origin's MIDI Guitar program is its price. If you're a guitarist who owns a computer or iOS device and an audio interface, Jam Origin's MIDI Guitar is an essential trial download and an inevitable purchase. There is no directly competing computer program that I know of. I think that we could well be headed for some very interesting times... Before you get started with MIDI Guitar, you'll need to get your guitar tuned to concert pitch — or a maximum of one tone down, in the desktop versions — turn all controls to 11 and select the bridge pickup. I'd also advise making sure your strings are in good condition, slipping a thin strip of felt under the strings at the first fret to reduce any false triggering, and not using effects or playing through an amplifier. As an aside, selecting the computer's internal microphone and simply singing notes produced some interesting chordal structures, but perhaps that's just my singing. Together with its iOS implementation, MIDI Guitar opens up a whole new area of experimentation at a price point that is simply unchallengeable. The future of MIDI Guitar starts here! The contents of this article are subject to worldwide copyright protection and reproduction in whole or part, whether mechanical or electronic, is expressly forbidden without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Great care has been taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this article but neither Sound On Sound Limited nor the publishers can be held responsible for its contents. The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the publishers.
