In the year and a half since I last posted, I haven't made any new piezo pickups. But, I have found new applications for them. Piano tuning, at least for Concert A, while the children are running around screaming, was one. Creating odd MIDI controllers is now another.I recently bought a Sonuus G2M guitar-to-MIDI converter for about $99. It's as good as advertised, with low latency and accurate note and pitch bend detection. I was curious how it would work with one of my piezos instead of a guitar pickup, however, and am weirdly excited about the results.
First, I input into the G2M one of my large Plasti-dipped piezos that I had taped to an inexpensive ukulele. The MIDI reproduction was less than spectacular, maybe because of the high register of the ukulele. The G2M manual states that its note detection range is between E2 and E6 and that notes outside of this range will be detected, but that "performance is not guaranteed" (whatever that means). Also, that notes played on the ukulele didn't sustain seemed to affect the MIDI reproduction. Making noises into the ukulele's sound hole produced interesting results, including legato I haven't been able to get with an electric guitar and the G2M.
So, I taped the same pickup to a plastic kazoo and plugged it into the G2M. The results were cool (click here). The linked audio sample uses the alto sax sample from Steinberg's Halion 1. I hadn't turned off the pitch bend in my sequencer, so the sample occasionally sounds like something other than a saxophone, but the speed at which different notes were reproduced is something that I hadn't been able to achieve with an electric guitar. The score of the sample also shows some impressive results from a plastic kazoo.
