A few weeks ago I posted about a cool new plugin called MiGiC that lets you convert guitar to MIDI in real time. It basically turns your guitar into a MIDI controller.
The plugin is free while it’s in the beta testing phase. I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with it. Being able to use a guitar to play virtually any kind of software instrument presents all kinds of interesting possibilities.
Lately I’ve been having a lot of success using MiGiC to convert my regular guitar into a bass guitar.
I figure I’ve already spent enough money on music software and hardware this year and I don’t want to have to buy a bass guitar at the moment.
So I’ve been experimenting with different ways to add bass to the mix, and I’ve found that for me the fastest and most accurate way is to use my regular guitar with MiGiC routed to a MIDI track setup with a bass instrument.
MiGiC converts the played guitar notes into MIDI notes in real time and records them like a regular MIDI instrument, so it’s easy to fix any timing issues and fine-tune settings with a couple of quick edits.
MiGiC is surprisingly accurate when it comes to timing and notes, especially when you tweak the settings. The only quirk is it adds a few random notes here and there, probably string or pick noise, that have to be edited out, but that just takes a few clicks in the MIDI editor.
I find that using a guitar is a lot easier and more precise than trying to use a MIDI keyboard controller to add bass. And it’s definitely a lot faster than manual editing.
There’s more info and directions on how to setup and use MiGiC on the earlier article. If you ever want your regular guitar to double as a bass guitar on the fly it can do so in a pinch.