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What is Audiobus?Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.

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Jamstik Studio MIDI Guitar

Coming soon from Jamstik:

https://studiomidiguitar.com/

Interesting, Fishman hexaphonic MIDI pickup!

Jamorigins Midi Guitar for ios is really really great but this might just have better tracking due to the Fishman pickup and it is really portable as a guitar with the headless design.

If we can get some good acoustic simulators and a Polyphonic pitch shifter in AUv3 + hopefully Blue Cat's Re-Guitar for ios what more could you possibly need as a guitarist on the go? :)

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Comments

  • edited January 2020

    @Treaszure said:
    what more could you possibly need as a guitarist on the go? :)

    A guitar? (https://eo-guitars.com/ are phenomenal if you don't mind classical.) But I'm looking forward to this one, which has been a long time coming; it was originally the Jamstik 12, then that got merged into this when it became clear that the Jammy was going to be too close a competitor for that product. I hope there'll be space in the market for both.

  • @Treaszure said:

    Jamorigins Midi Guitar for ios is really really great but this might just have better tracking due to the Fishman pickup and it is really portable as a guitar with the headless design.

    How much better can the tracking be that the original Jamstik? It had dedicated strings, sensors under each fret and seems pretty flawless since it isn't tracking frequency of string vibration to choose the midi note (just sense any vibration in the string to trigger it to look at certain strings on the fretboard).

    $700 for this looks pretty steep to me. I'm sure most will think compared to a Keytar it is so cheap, but honestly $50 for Midi Guitar 2 with all the IAPs looks like it works almost as good, with just a little latency.

    Since guitar is mostly dead from a popular music standpoint and can easily be replicated by synthesizers anyway I have to applaud the various manufacturers to trying to figure out how to make electronic music with a rather good chordable human interface. You would not know, looking at NAMM, that the guitar is dying out and guitar and associated accessories are being bought less frequently. So many manufacturers chasing fewer dollars from either dying clientele (baby boomers whose collections will soon be on the market for pennies on the dollar) or a shrinking youthful demographic.

  • @Masanga said:

    @Treaszure said:

    what more could you possibly need as a guitarist on the go? :)

    A guitar? (https://eo-guitars.com/ are phenomenal if you don't mind classical.) But I'm looking forward to this one, which has been a long time coming; it was originally the Jamstik 12, then that got merged into this when it became clear that the Jammy was going to be too close a competitor for that product. I hope there'll be space in the market for both.

    Hey! Many thanks for the link, first time seeing these! :smiley:

    I don't mind classical at all actually the Godin Multiac Nylon SA with a Boss SY-1000 would be my first choice and cover many needs.

  • @fprintf I disagree with both of your statements about popular music and the ability for synths to replicate guitars. Particularly acoustic. But then, I am a guitarist... :#

  • @fprintf said:

    @Treaszure said:

    Jamorigins Midi Guitar for ios is really really great but this might just have better tracking due to the Fishman pickup and it is really portable as a guitar with the headless design.

    How much better can the tracking be that the original Jamstik? It had dedicated strings, sensors under each fret and seems pretty flawless since it isn't tracking frequency of string vibration to choose the midi note (just sense any vibration in the string to trigger it to look at certain strings on the fretboard).

    $700 for this looks pretty steep to me. I'm sure most will think compared to a Keytar it is so cheap, but honestly $50 for Midi Guitar 2 with all the IAPs looks like it works almost as good, with just a little latency.

    Since guitar is mostly dead from a popular music standpoint and can easily be replicated by synthesizers anyway I have to applaud the various manufacturers to trying to figure out how to make electronic music with a rather good chordable human interface. You would not know, looking at NAMM, that the guitar is dying out and guitar and associated accessories are being bought less frequently. So many manufacturers chasing fewer dollars from either dying clientele (baby boomers whose collections will soon be on the market for pennies on the dollar) or a shrinking youthful demographic.

    You are probably 100% right but if we compare the new Jamstik with other MIDI Guitars like ROR Guitars Expressive (€2990) https://www.rorguitars.com/products/expressiv-midi-pro or Industrial Radio's Solange ($3950) https://industrialradio.com.au/products/solange-6-midi-guitar/ it's pretty cheap.

    Really sad that the guitar is dying out, how could one even know when there's new guitar related stuff all the time on sites like www.gearnews.com

  • I’m definitely getting this!

    Unless the left-handed version is more expensive than the right-handed version, and doesn’t come in the same range of colours.

    In which case they can fuck off and die.

    But otherwise, yes. I’m getting one.

  • edited January 2020

    @fprintf said:
    Since guitar is mostly dead from a popular music standpoint and can easily be replicated by synthesizers...

    Man, you can’t be serious!

    Guitar might have massively overstayed its welcome but it certainly isn’t out of the game by a long stretch.

    There’s waaaay too many guitar bands. At least for my liking.

    Also to say that guitar can be easily emulated by synthesises is absolute bollocks. Yes, computers are very good at this kind of stuff but still nowhere near in terms of feel, dynamics etc. I see jamstic not as a guitar but more like a guitar-like controller for guitarists who can’t express themselves well enough with a keyboard but like the sonic flexibility of a synth.

    To me it is still very gimmicky and while we’ve gone a long way with various controllers like sensel morph, boppad, seaboard etc they’re nowhere near the expressiveness of their acoustic and electro acoustic counterparts. Especially true for string and percussive instruments. IMO

  • @mjcouche said:
    @fprintf I disagree with both of your statements about popular music and the ability for synths to replicate guitars. Particularly acoustic. But then, I am a guitarist... :#

    I agree, there's stuff on say a regular nylon acoustic that can't be replicated! :)

  • @Treaszure said:

    @mjcouche said:
    @fprintf I disagree with both of your statements about popular music and the ability for synths to replicate guitars. Particularly acoustic. But then, I am a guitarist... :#

    I agree, there's stuff on say a regular nylon acoustic that can't be replicated! :)

    I have to say though - Beathawk’s Nylon Guitar in Spanish Gypsy IAP is very good. Playing with the Jammy, it is very close to the feel of nylon, though still slightly lacking.

  • Very nice, my daughter would love it, bur I’ll have to wait ‘til I win the Loto... which could be sometime since I don’t enter. lol

  • @mjcouche said:

    @Treaszure said:

    @mjcouche said:
    @fprintf I disagree with both of your statements about popular music and the ability for synths to replicate guitars. Particularly acoustic. But then, I am a guitarist... :#

    I agree, there's stuff on say a regular nylon acoustic that can't be replicated! :)

    I have to say though - Beathawk’s Nylon Guitar in Spanish Gypsy IAP is very good. Playing with the Jammy, it is very close to the feel of nylon, though still slightly lacking.

    Nice, I trust you I'm sure it possible to get good results. Before my computer crashed I had a very realistic multisampled Fretless Bass in Kontakt and with Jamorigins Midi guitar it sounded really nice.

    But honestly arabic, african or gypsy styles on a real nylon can't be replicated unless one uses keyswitches and something would, like you said, still be lacking.

    While we are on the topic of keyswitches have you heard of Virharmonic and the Bohemian Violin/Cello?
    There's demos of it being used with a guitar, really nice with no keyswitching to get realistic results.

  • @u0421793 said:
    I’m definitely getting this!

    Unless the left-handed version is more expensive than the right-handed version, and doesn’t come in the same range of colours.

    In which case they can fuck off and die.

    But otherwise, yes. I’m getting one.

    The good news: The left-handed version is the same price.

    The bad news: You have to buy left-handed strings, which are nearly three times the price of standard (read: right-handed) strings. If I were you, I'd buy those strings in bulk.

  • @Treaszure said:

    @Masanga said:

    @Treaszure said:

    what more could you possibly need as a guitarist on the go? :)

    A guitar? (https://eo-guitars.com/ are phenomenal if you don't mind classical.) But I'm looking forward to this one, which has been a long time coming; it was originally the Jamstik 12, then that got merged into this when it became clear that the Jammy was going to be too close a competitor for that product. I hope there'll be space in the market for both.

    Hey! Many thanks for the link, first time seeing these! :smiley:

    I don't mind classical at all actually the Godin Multiac Nylon SA with a Boss SY-1000 would be my first choice and cover many needs.

    The Eo fits perfectly into the bag from my original 1st-gen Jamstik (5-fret model).

  • @Treaszure said:

    @mjcouche said:

    @Treaszure said:

    @mjcouche said:
    @fprintf I disagree with both of your statements about popular music and the ability for synths to replicate guitars. Particularly acoustic. But then, I am a guitarist... :#

    I agree, there's stuff on say a regular nylon acoustic that can't be replicated! :)

    I have to say though - Beathawk’s Nylon Guitar in Spanish Gypsy IAP is very good. Playing with the Jammy, it is very close to the feel of nylon, though still slightly lacking.

    Nice, I trust you I'm sure it possible to get good results. Before my computer crashed I had a very realistic multisampled Fretless Bass in Kontakt and with Jamorigins Midi guitar it sounded really nice.

    But honestly arabic, african or gypsy styles on a real nylon can't be replicated unless one uses keyswitches and something would, like you said, still be lacking.

    While we are on the topic of keyswitches have you heard of Virharmonic and the Bohemian Violin/Cello?
    There's demos of it being used with a guitar, really nice with no keyswitching to get realistic results.

    I will have to look into this!

  • edited January 2020

    I had the original Jamstik, or maybe v2. I didn’t like it at all. This looks much more playable though. I wish there was an easier way to add MIDI to a regular guitar though.

  • @mistercharlie said:
    I had the original Jamstik, or maybe v2. I didn’t like it at all. This looks much more playable though. I wish there was an easier way to add MIDI to a regular guitar though.

    It's the Holy Grail. I've been chasing it since the Castle Aaaaaargh of the Shadow GTM-6, and still haven't found a hardware controller that's appreciably better than just whacking your actual guitar through MidiGuitar 2. (Except for the Artiphon Instrument 1, which only wins by being so unplayable as a guitar as to force you to think about what you actually want from an MPE controller as a guitarist.) The original Jamstik was just awful; the v2 vastly improved but you still couldn't actually hold it, and no amount of tweaking the settings could get it to respond like a real guitar. The Jammy is a big step forward, but it's still miles off the real thing. But all strength to all these guys, all of whom deserve support; each iteration inches closer towards the impossible, and I'm not disappointed to be perpetually disappointed.

  • @Masanga how’s the Fishman Triple Play? The price isn’t too bad.

  • edited January 2020

    @mistercharlie said:
    @Masanga how’s the Fishman Triple Play? The price isn’t too bad.

    Yes, it has a lot of fans, and a hex pickup ought to be better than undifferentiated pitch conversion, but it's hard to find anyone who says it's appreciably better than MG2 (which is great as it goes but still isn't really good enough). I'm a nylon-string player by preference, so haven't bitten; would be glad to hear experiences.

  • edited January 2020

    [doh! quoted myself when I meant to edit. Ignore.]

  • Pre-Order price has dropped to $599.99

  • Compared to the Artiphon, what would you recommend?

  • Definitely the Artiphon at this stage, because it's out, cheaper, and works (brilliantly) – but with the caveat that it stands in the same relationship to a guitar as a Seaboard does to a keyboard: not an emulation of an existing physical instrument but a controller that harnesses that instrument's skills for a different way of playing. (There are probably people who can play the Goldberg Variations on a Seaboard, but that's not what it's for, and you certainly can't play Anji on an Artiphon.) The Artiphon is essentially a pressure-responsive MPE keyboard laid out in the form of a (highly user-configurable) guitar fingerboard; the rubber strumming triggers are largely inessential and not responsive enough for a moderately competent picker anyway. But as a tap instrument it's absolutely amazing: more sensitive to very delicate touches than a Seaboard, and capable of very fast single-handed shreds with big bends. It's not great for chordal playing, but for solo lines it's the best thing out there.

    The new Jamstik is a bit of an unknown quantity at this stage. I love the company and back everything they do (though I skipped the Jamstik 7 in favour of the 12, which was announced at the same time but eventually rolled into the Studio model – original backers got an absolute bargain), but I always found the 5-fret model limiting and difficult to hold, and much less responsive than the Artiphon. If you want a specifically guitar-like controller, the Jammy is available now and a significant step up from the older Jamstiks, but may be about to be leapfrogged by the Jamstik Studio model. It might be better to wait and see how the new Jamstik compares when it lands – though I think every MIDI guitarist should have an Artiphon in their life anyway because it's something different and better, a complete rethink of what the unrivalled musical affordances of the guitar neck (its compactness, its transposability, its ergonomics of natural hand shape and grip and minimal finger movements, the visualisability of harmonic relationships as 2D constellations of points, &c., &c.) can do when liberated from the compromises of physics.

  • Which Artiphon?

  • Thank you for all your comments on this. I am most intrigued by Midi Guitar 2 since it sounds like it works about as well as anything else to help tranform my guitar playing into synthesizer notes on the fly. I'm a terrible keyboardist but a passable guitarist!

  • @mojozart said:
    Which Artiphon?

    The Instrument 1; they have the Orba coming out, but that's not a guitar-style controller.

  • I wonder if it ever goes on sale. I thought about this app a lot but realized i hardly ever crry my guitar around. I do have the small Jamstik usb one but not all the notes get recorded all the time so it’s not that accurate imho. Perhaps it’s user error but will try again.

    @fprintf said:
    Thank you for all your comments on this. I am most intrigued by Midi Guitar 2 since it sounds like it works about as well as anything else to help tranform my guitar playing into synthesizer notes on the fly. I'm a terrible keyboardist but a passable guitarist!

  • @Tones4Christ said:
    I wonder if it ever goes on sale. I thought about this app a lot but realized i hardly ever crry my guitar around. I do have the small Jamstik usb one but not all the notes get recorded all the time so it’s not that accurate imho. Perhaps it’s user error but will try again.

    I've never seen it go on sale, plus there are two more IAPs to buy within it that also never seem to go on sale. And the developers think it is absolutely a good value when asked, because it is 1/3rd the price of their desktop app. Whatever I kind of agree, nowadays I'm tempted to get myself a soft button midi controller like a Launchpad and forget about trying to use my guitar to drive synths anyway. One more nail in the coffin for guitar!

  • edited January 2020

    I haven't kept up with pop music - no idea who is even in the Billboard top 10 right now - but the music manufacturing industry doesn't seem to think guitar is dead, judging by Winter NAMM 2020. All the big companies - Fender, Gibson, etc. - introduced yet more batches of guitar models. Epiphone even introduced a made-in-USA line. D'Angelico announced the return of a USA workshop, to be led by Gene Baker, and posted a bunch of videos of D'Angelico guitars being played at NAMM.... by young people. Really, I don't think a single player was over 30 years old. Okay, maybe Kurt Rosenwinkel - making him the old man of the D'Angelico family there.

    If the guitar is "dead", nobody would continue to make and sell guitars anymore

  • @Treaszure said:
    Pre-Order price has dropped to $599.99

    Wow! That is a great price for a travel guitar with built-in MIDI. Think I'm gonna jump on this one, even though I'm comfortable entering synth parts into a sequencer by keyboard.

  • @fprintf said:
    Thank you for all your comments on this. I am most intrigued by Midi Guitar 2 since it sounds like it works about as well as anything else to help tranform my guitar playing into synthesizer notes on the fly. I'm a terrible keyboardist but a passable guitarist!

    I'm a passable player, too. People pass right by when I play. 😉

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