The primary objective in getting the MIDI Godin guitar and the Roland GR-20 was to use them to produce music notation for the songs I write. Despite written assurances that it would handle the task with the specified equipment, Guitar Pro does not do notation from your MIDI guitar. I wish they had told me sooner.
I have been using Guitar Pro for several years. You can find lots of free tabs out on the web. They can help to teach you what the famous artists are doing. The number of tabs has fallen off as the music publishers threaten lawsuits. At one point the whole Bob Dylan catalogue was removed from the internet! Exactly, you are as shocked as I was. Good news: they moved it offshore and it is available again. Whew!
There are still probably 30,000 tabs available so Guitar Pro, which comes from France, is a good buy. However, it is not the product if you want to get more serious and do music notation.
I cannot believe they mislead me. I asked them directly in an email on January 1st if it would work. My question on Jan 1st was very specific:
‘Can Guitar Pro5 take the midi data and create music notation?’
Guitar Pro replied on the 4th was
‘If your GI-20 install a driver in your system (for MIDI-In), i think is no problem.’
However when it wouldn’t work, the new reply on January 17th was,
‘Actually the MIDI In feature is very restrictive and not adapted to the actual hardware like the Roland GRx interfaces. The Midi In catch only the NoteOn with the Midi Note value (0-127.’
In response I wrote
‘In other words, the first answer was wrong and the second answer was a fair evaluation of the program’s limitations. Since one said it would work an the second said it wouldn’t, that’s a contradiction. You should warn people that it’s not useful for music notation since its not.’
I got the Gallic shrug today when they replied ‘If you want.’
Other solutions, read money and time, are Finale and Sibelius G7. There are more than 20 solutions; however I am going to do trials of those two before I waste rest of my life on this project.
My new song sounds cool though played with 60’s rock organ. Always an upside.
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