There has been lots of news in the area of MIDI controllers in 2013. This video, though, demonstrates that you can a lot with just a guitar, ThumbJam & SampleTank.
In the video, Tim Behrens explains how he uses the audio to MIDI conversion in ThumbJam to play samples in Sampletank (it works for other programs, too).
Behrens notes:
I am not discouraging anyone from buying any apps here. Just showing how I use Thumbjam to achieve sounds close to what the dedicated midi conversion apps do.
For anyone who is serious about this kind of feature, I would recommend checking out the Midi Guitar app, as it is certainly tracks well and is polyphonic.
One last thing I’d say is that you have to practice with these apps. You can not just play your guitar like you normally do. Notes have to be muted more, there is a bit more latency, sustain will confuse it, vibrato jumps around. It takes time, but hopefully I demonstrated that you can get some very playable results.
Check it out and let us know what you think!
Thanks for sharing my video on your website. Synthopia is a daily stop for me, so I’m psyched to have one of my demos included here. Even since posting this, I’ve learned a ton about thumbjam. So many features to explore in that app, even without the audio to midi option. Best wishes –Tim
Nice video. Sometimes I wish I had kept learning to play the guitar 😉
Thumbjam can still do the things mentioned in the background with background audio on and instead of adjusting the sample volume you can click on the ipod controls and mute the instrument directly without changing any of the other settings. Overally, Thumbjam is completely awesome and necessary for all who are serious about the tools in iOS music.