Roland GI-10 Guitar-Midi Interface

As pitch‑tracking guitar systems go, this one is about as close to perfection as we're likely to get without another quantum leap in technology. Clean playing is rewarded by delay‑free tracking, and bends and hammers are faithfully reproduced over MIDI, but you can't just play as you would on a regular guitar, because fast strumming isn't handled very well. Additionally, fast mandolin‑style trills can cause missed notes. Nevertheless, if you think like a keyboard player, and play in a way that's appropriate for the sound you're using, then you can have a lot of fun. And if your MIDI module will allow you to set up different sounds for each of the six MIDI channels you're using (and most multitimbral modules will), you can experiment with different sounds on different strings. The monophonic pitch‑tracking mic input is slightly less of a success story, and I found it virtually impossible to track the human voice correctly, unless I stuck to a very pure tone with clear stops and starts between notes. I had a little more success trying to get it to follow my daughter's recorder, but on balance, I don't think this is a facility you'll come to rely on, unless you want to turn the spoken work into avant‑garde jazz! Until now, guitar synths have demanded a great leap of faith on the behalf of the buyer, a leap that many guitarists were unprepared to take, but now that the technology is less expensive and more reliable than ever before, that leap is starting to look more like a hop. If you haven't tried a guitar synth for a while, give the GI‑10 a spin — I think you'll agree that guitar‑to‑MIDI conversion has come a long way.