Kettle Drum Boogie

Here’s another example of playing MIDI guitar using the MIDIPLUS Piano Engine.  MIDIPLUS website is here: https://www.midiplus.com.tw/en/product-detail/PianoEngine/. You can get it from Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/MIDIPLUS-PianoEngine-host-sound-module/dp/B09HXQQKGJ

My guitar MIDI setup  uses the TriplePlay divided pickup from Fishman https://fishman.com/tripleplay/. I’m very happy with the responsiveness of the MIDI and the various settings  you can apply changes to optimize your sound for the way you play. I use primarily fingerstyle technique rather than a plectrum and the settings in the TriplePlay interface will accommodate that, as well as changing the “strength” of the signal out of the divided pickup for each string.

In the General MIDI (GM) standard, kettle drums (timpani) do not have a dedicated, standardized percussion note. Instead, timpani are typically treated as a melodic instrument and assigned to MIDI Note 47 (B2) or mapped chromatically depending on the specific orchestral sound library or synth you are using. In this case, the guitar input and the MIDI sound are both available and mixed to make the timpani a little more guitar-ish.

MIDI for guitar is a ton of fun, and the technology is such these days that you might get away with letting your laptop process the audio file into midi rather than using a dedicated pickup-to-midi like what the Fishman technology offers.   Try it out for yourself and see if it fits your style of music.