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Converting trumpet into midi/synth live.


ten_billion

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I'm doing reaserch to figure out the best way to turn the sound from my horn into digital audio. i want to perfrom live with midi/synth sounds heard instead of trumpet.

It would be best if i could program sounds or run it through a computer program like reason etc. this is a new field for me, so any help would be greatly appreciated

 

Thanks!

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I don't know what MIDI thing to suggest specifically for the trumpet that could work well, but from the point of view of a passionate synthesis user I can say that the trumpet sound is awesome as a source for synthesis and processing.

 

Did you ever listen to Jon Hassel? Exception made for "Fascinoma", which is wonderful too but acoustic, you'll hear in his CD's some incredible sounds that don't have anything of the trumpet anymore but that incredible articulation and expression that you'll never find in a MIDI instrument.

 

Wha, Pitch shifter, Modulation fx's of any kind, filters, all that stuff can really help to get incredible sounds with a trumpet. Consider a multi-effect unit of good quality...at least find the way to try one before you buy any MIDI stuff.

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Turning your trumpet sound into digital audio:

Mic the trumpet, run the mic signal through a preamp & into a digital recorder. This won't help you control a synth, though, it'll just give you a digital audio recording of a trumpet.

 

If you actually want to play trumpet & use that to control synths with midi, the controller Angelo suggested would work.

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There is a the Morrison controller as Angelo noted.

 

I don't know if the Akai EVI or Steiner controllers are still in production. These were horn based MIDI controllers. They never caught on, due in part to the "clunky" interface that required rotating a canister-like section to change partials.

 

You could try the Akai EWI which is their sax-based controller. There is a "valve mode" that enables you to use 3 of the woodwind style keys as valve buttons. To change partials, octave, etc., you'll have to use these keys in combination with your thumb on a set of roller switches. It's still a little odd but a reasonable solution with practice.

 

For the EWI with the "valve mode" and other MIDI wind controllers:

http://www.patchmanmusic.com/index.html

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The guys bring up an interesting question...

 

do you want to have your trumpet with synth TRACKING

OR

are you comfortable with a "trumpet controller" (a synthesizer specific interface that generally follows a trumpet ergonomics, but is designed specifically to allow for synthesier control)

 

 

FWIW - this is a common either/or in guitar synth as well...there are "synth enabled guitars" and "guitar(like) controllers)

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Another idea came to mind.

 

I've heard the Yamaha Silent Brass mute is a great solution to give a player an audio signal without leakage from the trumpet that you'd get with a mic. I don't know of any device that would then convert that audio signal to MIDI in real time without latency.

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I'm doing reaserch to figure out the best way to turn the sound from my horn into digital audio. i want to perfrom live with midi/synth sounds heard instead of trumpet.

 

There have been attempts to make audio-to-MIDI converters, but this is a really difficult thing to do. Yamaha and Akai have probably done more work in this area than anyone else, but I don't know that either has made a trumpet.

 

One of the biggest problems you'll have with a loud instrument like a trumpet is that unless you play off stage in a closet a long distance away, the audience will still hear your trumpet. Have you considered taking up the piano or, if you want to play a non-keyboard instrument, a woodwind or guitar? There are moderately successful MIDI converters for those instruments.

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There have been attempts to make audio-to-MIDI converters, but this is a really difficult thing to do. Yamaha and Akai have probably done more work in this area than anyone else, but I don't know that either has made a trumpet.


One of the biggest problems you'll have with a loud instrument like a trumpet is that unless you play off stage in a closet a long distance away, the audience will still hear your trumpet. Have you considered taking up the piano or, if you want to play a non-keyboard instrument, a woodwind or guitar? There are moderately successful MIDI converters for those instruments.

 

 

It did cross my mind that it might be possible to feed the trumpet audio into an audio-to-midi converter, such as one of the 6 channels of the Roland or Axon guitar synths.

 

However, I conjecture that these are optimized for guitar-string dynamics, timbre & harmonic content, and so might not work well. I suppose one might also need to do some compression or other processing on the trumpet signal on the way into the guitar-synth to increase the odds of having it work....

 

It would be an interesting experiment - - if it worked, it would open the possibility that may other monophonic audio could be converted to midi also, such as a singer's voice, any of the various brass/reed/woodwind instruments & so on.

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It did cross my mind that it might be possible to feed the trumpet audio into an audio-to-midi converter, such as one of the 6 channels of the Roland or Axon guitar synths.


However, I conjecture that these are optimized for guitar-string dynamics, timbre & harmonic content, and so might not work well. I suppose one might also need to do some compression or other processing on the trumpet signal on the way into the guitar-synth to increase the odds of having it work....

 

 

yeah there is such thing as a roland gi-20, that converts electric guitar/bass signal to midi. my friend uses it and runs his bass through Reason. I basically want the same thing for trpt. Hopefully the people at guitar center can help--but a lot of people who work retail in NYC are pretty useless.

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yeah i own the silent brass and was planning on using it. and im still looking for something that could converyt that signal to midi.


.

 

 

 

There have been a few units in the past, IVL's pitchrider series came in monophonic, I once modified an Ibanez MC-1 guitar-to-midi to handle mic ignals

 

there have even been pitch-to-CV...the SPV-355 had a "brass setting for the input

 

here is mono pitch-to-midi SW floating around, but if you poke around you can probably find some HW ones as well -- Ive heard of a vocal-specfic one called V2m (voice to MIDI)

 

that might work well

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The current Akai EWI has a trumpet fingering mode:

 

http://www.akaipro.com/prodEWI4000s.php

 

There was a guy posting on the Keys forum that was using a Kyma/Capybara system to track his trumpet playing. My recollection may be faulty, but I thought he mentioned using a pitch tracker within Kyma to extract MIDI note data as well as process the trumpet sound.

 

The Yahoo Windcontroller group is a good resource:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/windcontroller/

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