First time guitar synth user. Please advise

[Chemkaun]

Hello - this is my first post. I am a classical guitar player and until recently I have never plugged in before. I am using a Godin Grand Concert Multiac SA guitar with a Roland GR-55 guitar synth. I'm learning things on my own and so far it has been fun. I use the Roland GR 55 to model bowed instruments like the violin or cello. This is where I have issues.

I will play a string and it will produce a pleasant sound but it seems as though the vibration from one string causes another string to sound and it gets picked up by the guitar synth. And if I want to play a melody I have to mute a string immediately after I play it before playing another string otherwise I get this interference. And it seems unless I mute it the note will continue on indefinitely and trying to play another note while the original note still rings out causes the unpleasant interference.

I guess my goal is to cause the notes to fade away more quickly. I don't want to play a string and hear the sound sustain indefinitely. Any advice would be appreciated and please pardon my ignorance.

[LSemmens]

I can't be too helpful, but terminology might be where you are getting lost. Look for the "attack" and "decay" setting in the synth. That may solve some of your issues. Sorry I can't offer much more.

Agree with LSemm on this, your decay is too long for your liking, and you can adjust this. Mine is a GR-33 that I rarely use these days, so we might be talking apples and oranges, but those other notes you hear could be spurious notes from imprecise technique. The synths are extremely unforgiving.

[Bob Womack]

Players who are used to being able to overcome the quiet string noises of open strings with the louder ones on an acoustic will experience that problem.

On the GR-20 (which I have) there is an adjustment to block out low-level string noise. I don't see that parameter in the GR-55 manual.

With the guitar synth, any activity on a string triggers an output. You need to develop the technique of an electric lead guitarist who plays loud amps with some gain on them. The electric guitarist in that application does, in fact, mute all the strings except the active ones that are being used. I've taken to playing no more than two or three strings at a time to prevent false triggering.

PS. Tuesday I was recording Hammond B-3 organ sounds for a song with mine. Pretty cool!

Bob

[zhunter]

I think String Sensitivity is the parameter you want to adjust to minimize false triggers.

And yes playing synth guitar takes practice.

hunter

[Davis Webb]

I owned the same combo.

Your technique has to change. Once it does, and you are clean....it will be flawless. I presume you calibrated the string sensitivity and other settings?> If not, follow the manual's instructions.

The GR55 is very different from any previous Roland gen, I have had most of them. It is flawless if you are a clean player with the proper calibration.

[Chemkaun]

Originally Posted by Davis Webb

I owned the same combo.

Your technique has to change. Once it does, and you are clean....it will be flawless. I presume you calibrated the string sensitivity and other settings?> If not, follow the manual's instructions.

The GR55 is very different from any previous Roland gen, I have had most of them. It is flawless if you are a clean player with the proper calibration.

The scale length is 650mm for the Godin grand concert multiac. But the closest setting is "ST" or stratocaster which is 648mm. Is this what you used?

[FrankHudson]

Yes, muting and clean picking is important. You can use your flesh for this.

Some MIDI player will use a near the nut string mute to help. There are boutique ones with hinged arms favored by some jazz hollowbody players, and straps with foam pads to mute the strings like a deadening elastic capo sold in florescent colors for guitar shredders, but you can get some of their muting with a hair scrunchy.

Another thing the helps with the extraneous noise triggers (besides better technique) is Elixir strings.

Some synths and synth patches will let one choose a mono mode where only one note will sound at once too.