Way back in September, I
wrote1 about my desire to order a soi disant smart guitar (SG7);
requests from the family for items available from Temu have disappeared, so I
thought that it was time to treat myself. I ordered the SG7 on 12 January and
it came yesterday - only 18 days. Very good service. The SG is very well
packed: it comes in a cardboard box, but inside the box is foam lining so no
damage could be done.
SG7 comes with a shoulder strap (as if I'm going to stand up and play it)
and a USB cable that is intended both for charging and for recording
purposes. I wish that there was a soft bag in which to store SG7, otherwise
I'm going to have to keep it in its box.
After charging it, I turned it on and starting banging away. For a beginner,
this is not a bad choice (easier on the fingers than a real guitar and much
smaller) but for an experienced guitarist, it is slightly problematic.
Hammer-ons and slides don't work: sound is produced only when one
plucks the strings with the right hand, not the left hand. Also it seems
that I have a habit of resting my right hand fingers on strings, so
frequently more than one string is sounding.
I bought the guitar for recording purposes; after some fiddling around, I am
pleased to say that both the old MIDI sequencer and Reason recognise the
guitar without too many configuration problems. The MIDI that is recorded
contains many phantom notes - probably because of my right hand technique -
and tends to have a longer latency that I would like. But one can easily
edit out the extraneous notes and fix the timing. I would prefer that the
USB cable be twice its length, but that just may be because of my setup. I
may well order a longer cable.
As it happens... I've been working on a song in
68 that I started a few weeks ago. I created one version that sounded
absolutely terrible when I imported into Reason, so when I started another
version, almost immediately I checked that it sounded good in Reason. Of
course, since then, the arrangement has gone through many changes; today I
added extra bars in certain places in order to emphasize and I also added
some parts.
The idea of using SG7 is that I am much more likely to come up with
interesting parts if I am playing a MIDI controller in the shape of a
guitar, and indeed the parts that I added today made the song more
interesting. That is not to say that everything I played made its way into
the arrangement as it stands at the moment; I had to clear out quite a lot
that simply was not interesting. But a short chordal passage was used as was
a counterpoint to the introductory solo. SG7 should also shorten the time
that I spend on creating a song's skeleton as I can simply play the chords
then transfer the MINI notes to different instruments; quicker than adding
them manually. I wonder whether I'll ever compose a song on this
instrument.
Last
Friday2, when grand-daughter #1 was playing the piano, gd #2 picked up the pan pipes that I bought in Rodos many years ago. Once she understood how to get sound out of the pipes, she then walked around the apartment playing them. I am in two minds as to whether I should introduce her to SG7; at least she won't have any difficulty in getting normal sounds out if (as opposed to pan pipes or a violin), it won't hurt her fingers and I can show her simple tunes.
Internal links
[1] 1812
[2] 1893
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