The title says it all. Anyone tried this yet?
I am not sure how you could use your hand(s) to operate the Airwave unless you could use the position of the guitar neck to operate Airwave’s motion sensors. Otherwise, you could potentially take your hands off of the guitar after playing a sustained chord.
I am probably going to get an Airwave to use with my NI S-49 MK3 keyboard, so I’ll try it out with MG3.
ages ago i had an alesis airfx, it is definitely a fun way to manipulate the signal. but it is also kinda gimmick-y and moving your hands away from and back to the guitar gets old fast.
for half the price of the roli you could pickup a papritech and find an unobtrusive location to attach it directly to your guitar. i think the tilt/roll/nod detection would be much more ‘playable’ than the roli.
they have a bluetooth version for $169. i assume the tube can be removed if not needed.
So , you have obviously touched on the main problem here yourself. That the hands that you are using to create/trigger notes on the guitar, are also used for these new gestures with the Airwave. The question is how flexible the Airwave gesture recognition is, and there is also the issue of its physical construction. If you are tied to the physical gestures developed for a keyboard player only, you are certainly not in a great position to be genuinely expressive. And the placement of that Airwave will also be crucial since the infrared camera doesn’t tilt or rotate. And furthermore it has been proven to be sensitive to surrounding environment in that:
“in real-world use users note that you need fairly open space above your keyboard, clear infrared view (no bright sunlight), and minimal obstructions for best results.
Some users report the system always streams all the CC values continuously (even when idle) which may add overhead in editing automation lanes.
So, I am pretty sure it could be a very useful addition to a keyboard setup, but less convinced about the actual practicality when it comes to use with a MIDI Guitar setup.
Add to this one of the more fundamental differences we have with the pitch-to-MIDI note creation vs. the mechanical sensors and triggers in a keyboard. The notes created with a MIDI Guitar setup ends rather quickly in comparison. But the Airwave MIDI/MPE gesture modulation rely on long continous (held) notes. So that would probably mean you have to use the sustainer (infinite sustain) to get rid of the natural note-offs to work this. Not a problem, but if you want to integrate this into normal playing you should probably have a pedal connected to that Sustainer module on/off for smooth transitioning.
And as far as I understand it is only four CCs you get to control simultaneously? So a Papritech controller (like @kimyo suggest) or even a Touché controller could do that work. It would be interesting, though, to see if you could hijack their software presets/patches with another controller? Saving you from the arduous job of setting up. 