Donovan Banks

Not too long ago I purchased myself a keyboard to use for MIDI purposes in my music creation. It turns out I am not a keys player. I never have been and in the time it will take me to learn a whole new instrument I can make the money and hire someone to do it for me.

Then I heard about the Roland GR20 guitar synthesizer and figured this is a much better way to get the sounds I want, without having to hire a session musician.
It wasn't the cheapest of options but it certainly works well. But the toughest part is trying to play a guitar like you would a piano, or organ or trumpet etc.
Some of the sounds are very cheesy, others just don't live up to what they should be, but if I want a violin in the background of my piece, you won't know the difference between the real deal, and the synthesized take.

The pickup isn't very hard to mount and can be fitted on all types of guitars. As long as it has steel strings, or steel core strings then it will work.

One of the coolest things you can do is split the guitar and synth signal. You can split it after the pedal unit as well so you can send the guitar signal to a guitar amp/processor, and the synth signal to a PA or another amp.I have used this in a band situation, we didn't have a bass player so I split a bass signal to a bass amp, and my guitar to the guitar amp.
One can set the sensitivity of each string. In this case I had the top two strings on higher sensitivity and the bottom four on much lower. This prevented all my chords and general guitar work, from coming out of the synth and not sounding like a bass should. It would work wonderfully to use strings or other full sounding additions to really beef up your sound.

Here is part 1 of a 4 part video demo I put together.


Here are the rest, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Please feel free to leave a comment or ask questions. Have fun for now...