Guitar Simulator Application

[Matthias_H]

Update: Please check this thread for news and a crude GUI/audio prototype.



Dear all,

I've been tinkering with the idea of a sample-based acoustic guitar simulator in the style of Ubisoft Jam Sessions for the DS, but, of course, better and more flexible Let's see what we have in the Pandora:

• Gaming controls and touch screen: check.
• Decent amount of memory: check.
• Low-latency audio driver: check (OSS should work fine at 512 samples or less)

What more would be needed for an app like this:

• Playback engine and touchscreen UI
• Chord database and a guitaristically meaningful mechanism for playing them (fretboard position aware fingerings, open string variants, alternative tunings, etc.)
• Guitar multisample(s), self-recorded. Until then, Karplus-Strong string simulation should do.
• Compression and tweaking (sample transition handling, etc)

My own time is very limited, but in my opinion it should be fairly straightforward to get the basic functionality hacked together, and continue from there. Does anyone have experience with audio programming under Linux? As for myself, I am by no means a trained software developer. Still, starting with a given program skeleton I tend to get most things done, so I could still contribute some of this and some of that (signal processing, audio sample recording, musical knowledge, haptics/"UI physics"). So, if you would be interested in a project like this, why not sit down and brainstorm some more. Here's the thread for it

Cheers,
Matthias

 

[michie4life]

This would be more awesome with MIDI controls

Great idea

 

[nexferret]

I could record you some acoustic/electric sounds to use.

 

[torpor]

Does anyone have experience with audio programming under Linux?

I do! I'm preparing some PNDS with the result of that effort .. hopefull in the next week or so I can release something and you can see for yourself how capable the Pandora is, using already-existing software, for the task you describe ..

BTW, Puredata would be a good environment to use for this project - I've got it built for Touchbook (similar to Pandora) and as soon as I get a chance to test it on real Pandoras (mine are still on their way) I'll get it packaged up.. could be that for your needs, a Puredata client on the Pandora will do the job perfectly, because if I set things up properly, you won't need to hack around to get stuff working - just run the Puredata patch that does i/o between mic/line in and stereo output, maybe with USB MIDI for controllers (if we can get the situation with snd-usb-audio module sorted out, its not included in the Base OS from what I can tell so far) ..

 

[Matthias_H]

BTW, Puredata would be a good environment to use for this project

Puredata. Come to think of it, it could be the perfect point to start. It even seems to support .ogg reading right out of the box. When I have a little time, I have to look into it some more.

 

[Matthias_H]

I could record you some acoustic/electric sounds to use.

If you have the patience and equipment for it (mainly a good room, a decent acoustic guitar, a stereo pair of small-diaphragm condenser mikes, preamp and A/D converter), that would be awesome! Have you recorded your own multisamples before?

 

[matzesu]

How about a extra funktion in the Guitar Simulator: Guitar Tuner : The Pandora has a Micropfhone, and it schould work

something like this:

 

[nexferret]

If you have the patience and equipment for it (mainly a good room, a decent acoustic guitar, a stereo pair of small-diaphragm condenser mikes, preamp and A/D converter), that would be awesome! Have you recorded your own multisamples before?

I don't have any proper professional equipment but I can get you some decent quality sounds from what I have.

 

[Matthias_H]

How about a extra funktion in the Guitar Simulator: Guitar Tuner : The Pandora has a Micropfhone, and it schould work
something like this:

Adding this to a guitar simulator (that is supposed to replace the guitar, not tune it) probably wouldn't make much sense, but there should be lots of open source guitar tuners out there already.

If you have the patience and equipment for it (mainly a good room, a decent acoustic guitar, a stereo pair of small-diaphragm condenser mikes, preamp and A/D converter), that would be awesome! Have you recorded your own multisamples before?

I don't have any proper professional equipment but I can get you some decent quality sounds from what I have.

If your acoustic has an internal mike or piezo, that should do for now. Perhaps it's even better to do the recording as dry as possible and add some room later. I'm just asking because if you have recorded a multisample before, you will know it is a sh*tload of work. Here, we're talking 6 strings times (say,) 12 frets times N dynamic levels plus effects (various mutings, hammer-on, etc.), totalling at literally hundreds of individual samples that have to be recorded, cut, and processed. So if you want to go through this, you may want to ensure that your audio chain doesn't give you too much hum, ringing, or noise.

 

[Mithrildor]

Simulation application, guys that sounds so awesome

 

[Matthias_H]

Dear all,

Sorry for the long delay. I had to put this guitar simulator thing aside for a while for several reasons. Meanwhile, I've started playing around with MikMod and Qt4 in the hope to get some low-latency audio output and GUI. Please find the latest development in the new forum. HELP is appreciated, especially for audio engine and user interface. Feature suggestions are nice too but won't get us far before the very basics are running smoothly.

Cheers,
Matthias

 

[mcobit]

For the frets couldn't u use a custom interface for the second hand built from a hacked usbjoypad or something like that?

 

[Matthias_H]

For the frets couldn't u use a custom interface for the second hand built from a hacked usbjoypad or something like that?

Sure, possible. That's further down the road. First we need to get a solid engine running.

 

[Esn]

Hey, just so you know, "2 keyboard buttons at once" is a MINIMUM. So if you added an option to map notes to the Pandora keyboard keys, chords would be possible as well. To be honest, something with a piano layout would be a lot more useful to me. Also, the thing I'm really looking for is being able to record on top of one or two things that you recorded previously (just for learning counterpoint and stuff).

Anyway, thanks for your work so far, I'm going to test out this new release... oops, well, I would, except it's not in PND format.

 

[Matthias_H]

Anyway, thanks for your work so far, I'm going to test out this new release... oops, well, I would, except it's not in PND format.

That's because no one has contacted me who could try to compile the app for the Pandora and, maybe, help me in setting up a dev environment with Qt4.