Michael Zarimis offers an unassailable logic for developing his synth-guitar: it is the last band instrument to get the proper treatment.
"I'm a big fan of electronica," Zarimis said, "but the band format is missing. It's usually people sitting at desks or tweaking knobs behind the scenes."Unlike keytars, which remain keyboards, or MIDI guitars, which are "too temperamental," his Kitara keeps the frets but replaces the strings with an 8-inch multi-touch display. Inside is a polyphonic synthesizer, with 100 default sounds and 6 effect, each of which can be assigned to different 'strings.'
Zarimis, an engineer, created his prototype and put it on YouTube. Within a week, his video received a million views and the attention of a business partner. But the Linux-based guitar was the end result of many months of work.
"The first prototype I built literally in my house in my spare time," Zarimis said. "It took me two years."
It also works as a MIDI controller for use with a digital audio workstation or other equipment, and will be $849 when it is released in April. A $2,900 special edition, made of aluminum, is also on offer, and they're taking nothing-down pre-orders at the homepage.
Kitara [Miso Digital]
Kind of a sitar/bassoon crossover. And the fun bit is all the keys/frets are bend/pressure sensitive.
Utenzil
I put together a guitar-model-based MIDI controller using key-like buttons that omitted the “string plucking” aspect of the guitar and added polyphony. Why? Because the best aspect of a keyboard is one note per finger, and the best aspect of a guitar is the compact layout. Also, an onboard synth is kind of a waste of circuitry when you can control so many other things running on a laptop via a MIDI interface.
I used a “four string” type configuration, with two necks. The resultant layout provides a keyboard with a ten octave range. I will likely be mocked roundly for the quality and content of this video, but here it is:
I want one. The instrument I know how to play is a guitar. The instrument I like the most is a synthesizer. I suck badly at playing a keyboard, and even when I’m composing stuff for a sequencer to play I tend to figure out what I want to do on a guitar and then translate that to how it would be played on a keyboard.
Hanuman
Send one to Prince. Now.
Anonymous
I love this thread. The replies are really intelligent, coming from experience. It shows there’s a real interest in mingling the good aspects of electronica and traditional acoustic instruments.
This is my approach, if anyone would like to comment on it, I would be grateful to hear the feedback: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbUjkeaTjxo I put small, hand generators into the synthesizers with amplifiers and keyboard, so it becomes a complete, independent unit. The project is called the Electric Eels.
Beautiful, brilliant, makes me wish I still played just so I could play with it. It doesn’t look like there’s any provision for dynamics along the neck, but considering how much bending you should be able to with the other hand, I guess that might not be an issue.
imag
Very cool. Three thoughts:
1. It’s interesting that this is such an appealing format for a performance device.
2. It would be neat to have continuous strips so that slides could be performed on a light touch, with notes keyed only on a harder press. Hopefully down the road.
3. This is the first time in awhile that I wish I knew how to play the guitar.
Anonymous
I think a device like this would find a good market at the entry level of playing guitar. I started guitar at 14.
If I were 14 today, and I was given the option between playing guitar and playing this, I think a number might choose this. What this means is that in ten years, this instrument would have produced many impressive players, and performances. Believe it or not, it may become totally legit by next generation.
Cowicide
Where’s the bending and muting with real force feedback? Ah yes… a real guitar can do that.
Anonymous
Pricey for a non velocity sensing guitar. A simple force sensing pad under the screen would fix this.
Anonymous
Meh, I have to disagree entirely with the inventor (who obviously stepped on the work companies like Starr Labs pioneered) when he says that the ‘band format is missing’ in electronica. So are we to suppose that Kraftwerk is not a band? If the music is utter shite, then seeing 3-4 ‘band’ members performing it doesn’t make it any better. I don’t need or expect to watch a musician/artist like Squarepusher or Aphex Twin run around stage ‘playing’ in a ‘band’ format. The music speaks for itself, and it speaks clearly.
neokimchi
having seen pendulum perform both dj sets and sets with a full band, i can tell you right now, live, the full band was so much more fun to rock out to. not only did the music play harder with real guitars and drums, but the spontaneity of the performance was so much more exciting. and no matter what, seeing people rock out with their instruments will always be at least VISUALLY more exciting than watching a dj mix tracks.
(if you somehow disagree with that last bit, consider that pendulum had a dj in their full band set-up as well)
Clear forerunner to Mouse’s “syrynx” from Samuel Delany’s SF novel _Nova_.
Gilbert Wham
I’d forgotten about that book. I wouldn’t mind rereading a bit of space-opera.
slideguy
Harvey Starr, of Starr labs, has been making similar controllers like this for years. The only difference that I can see is that this has onboard sounds. A Starr Labs G6s will control any MIDI synthesizer or DAW. And they are as accurate as any keyboard.
I agree with anon #3. Showmanship isn’t restricted to a particular type or subset of instruments. Most electronic-type bands are trying to stay away from guitars, anyway.
As a string player, my first thought is that the total lack of tactile response will be a big turn-off to most other string players.
I have a MIDI guitar. It is a different instrument, and I don’t expect it to respond exactly like a regular electric. Therefore, I play it differently. The same could be said of this instrument, but the MIDI guitar still has strings on it.
However, as a synth nerd, I have to say that this is pretty damn cool.
Anonymous
As a lead guitar player with 40+ years’ experience (www.bipolarshaman.com), I use a MIDI system to generate my backing tracks, then I play a custom-designed Strat for the leads. This device is not a guitar. It kills the right hand (or picking hand), turning it into a touch. What?
Even the strum is awkward in the video. I’ve seen many “engineer-designed” devices called a guitar over the years, and guitar players almost never invent them. Pat Metheny added MIDI to his guitar, and the results are awesome. Adding a bunch of buttons to a neck and a touchscreen to the body doesn’t make it a guitar.
I’ll take the old-fashioned tactile, physical dynamics of the interplay between the hand-tuned strings of a real guitar any day.
UndeadBard
The thing this instrument desperately needs is a bridge to rest your right hand on (the video is a right handed player). You could also morph this into a trigger if one were to get creative with the concept. Outside of that, not to be negative to the creator but giving good feedback it would be useless for someone like myself or any real guitarist without that. I’ve been playing and teaching Guitar for 20 years and am lucky enough to own a custom shop Single Touch guitar with the Roland Gk 3 synth pickup and a Chaos pad dropped into the body very similar to a Manson M one D One. It’s nothing short of amazing, you should hear me play honky tonk piano on this thing, what a blast!
I hope it evolves into something really useful for the designer, good luck!
lbigbadbob
My partner in my electronic band is a guitar player and uses an old Roland pickup to turn his guitar into a synth. I’m pretty sure he would like the idea behind this, but I have to agree with bassplayinben… the absence of real strings would be a big huge negative for him.
It sure looks cool, though.
slideguy
The absence of real strings is what makes these things so fast. Any guitar player can get the feel of one in a few minutes. I dumped all my Roland systems on the market after playing a Starr Labs G6S, and I’ve been doing guitar synthesis since 1980.
Anonymous
Slideguy, the Starr Labs guitars don’t have real strings, but they do have string triggers for strumming/picking with the right hand. I could live without strings under my left hand, but I think it would be pretty awkward to have nothing physical to touch with the right hand – you would constantly have to keep looking at that screen. This guitar looks cool and all, but I don’t understand what it does that the Starr Labs guitars don’t already do better.
slideguy
Me either, which is why I brought up Harvey’s stuff in the first place. I was amazed at how intuitive the fingerboard buttons are.
kramski
I know this has nothing to do with the functions of that guitar, but… it bugs me when people just take the word for the object they are selling from another language as a brand and trademark it.
“I call this contraption I have developed “guitar” (TM)”
That is really creative.
Anonymous
As a native speaker of said language, I’m very much offended by it.
Anyway, good luck getting that trademark enforced or even acknowledged in Finland. If I had loads of money, I’d start selling a competing product with the same name just to fuck with them.
As to guitar synths being glitchy, staying on the Rock Band meme, Fender has a “real guitar” controller which is basically the above mentioned game controller merged with a Stratocaster. Because it’s physically detecting what fret is being touched, and individually listening to the strings to detect when they’re strummed, it doesn’t have the glitches that come from attempting to analyze the waveform. Here: http://www.fender.com/promos/2010/rockband3
While many will write these off as toys, they have a lot of potential as serious MIDI controllers for use in “legitimate” recording and performing.
Mitch_
A keyboard seems like the most effective way of playing notes on a keyboard but it is entertaining to watch it being played. I think I’d have a hard time playing on the display without looking at my fingers for the same reason I can’t type well on an iPad: no tactile feedback. A shaped hand rest to rest the heel of the strumming hand in a home position would be help make the “strings” easier to find without looking.
The potential to emulate other stringed instruments like tambura, sitar, veena, dulcimer, iktara, etc is appealing.
Mitch_
Damned typo- of course I meant “playing notes an a synthesizer”.
lewis stoole
my favorite part of the electric guitar is missing.
where is the whammy bar?
Anonymous
Touch-screen controls will forever suck for anything creative or playful where precise tactile and dynamic control is necessary.
When will people get that? Sliding your fingers around a plate of polished glass imagining you’re in an SF film is already so last decade.
Deidzoeb
The reason the keytar is such a joke is that it’s an interface designed to look more like a guitar, not designed to help the musician. I assume people who play keyboards have to relearn some things in order to play the same music on a keytar, which gives it a kind of cost, and which doesn’t outweigh the benefit of looking like you’re playing a guitar.
This has the same problem. People who want to make good music with a synthesizer will play on an interface that is easiest (probably as close to the kind they learned on as possible), or most versatile. Does this do something that most synthesizers can’t? I doubt it. Actually playing all regular guitars like a lapsteel would probably be more ergonomic (with the fretboard and strings on a level with your hands and parallel to the floor), instead of having the fretboard facing away from the player like it does when hanging. Also holding the frets from above it like a lapsteel player does (or like Jeff Healey did) would probably be easier than reaching around and under the neck to hold it. We all get used to playing it that way, but ask almost any beginning player and they’ll tell you it seems like a pain to hold it that way.
If a keyboard or synth player wants to look cool, they can make a video prancing with a guitar while their synthesizer music plays over it, or they can lip sync or something. The design of this thing screams “I wish I could play guitar.”
headfirstonly
I’m with Neokimchi at #17 on this one. Jon Swire of Pendulum has been playing a Ztar for years, and it featured prominently in their set at Glastonbury.
Of course, back in the 1980s there was The Synthaxe…
There are a few manufacturers making replacement bridges for normal electrics that allow the guitars to be used as a midi controller and/or played normally. The bridges have a piezo sensor for each string, which means that each can have a different sound.
Kindle
Michael Zarimis offers an unassailable logic for developing his synth-guitar: it is the last band instrument to get the proper treatment.
"I'm a big fan of electronica," Zarimis said, "but the band format is missing. It's usually people sitting at desks or tweaking knobs behind the scenes."Unlike keytars, which remain keyboards, or MIDI guitars, which are "too temperamental," his Kitara keeps the frets but replaces the strings with an 8-inch multi-touch display. Inside is a polyphonic synthesizer, with 100 default sounds and 6 effect, each of which can be assigned to different 'strings.'
Zarimis, an engineer, created his prototype and put it on YouTube. Within a week, his video received a million views and the attention of a business partner. But the Linux-based guitar was the end result of many months of work.
"The first prototype I built literally in my house in my spare time," Zarimis said. "It took me two years."
It also works as a MIDI controller for use with a digital audio workstation or other equipment, and will be $849 when it is released in April. A $2,900 special edition, made of aluminum, is also on offer, and they're taking nothing-down pre-orders at the homepage.
Kitara [Miso Digital]