Gibson's Digital Guitar Finally Released

tdiman writes "The world's first digital guitar, using Gibson's MaGIC digital transport standard, was introduced February 20th at the Intel Developers Forum." We've been following this one for awhile, I'm really curious to see what something like this can do.

Comments

Benefits?

[MankyD]

What are the benefits to this product?

They say it's compatible with existing equipment. Wouldn't this neccesitate a D/A converter, thus negating the effects of a digital guitar to begin with?

How much does it cost?

Re:Benefits?

[MankyD]

Another quick question:
This product would seem to go "anologue-digital-analogue", two conversion processes on top of whatever effects/amplifcations are being applied. Wouldn't this hurt sound fidelity? I certainly don't see how it could benefit.

Re:Benefits?

[Katalyzt]

they say "This provides unprecedented control with the ability to adjust volume, pan and equalization of each string individually."

once someone learns how to handle this it should extend the range and sound of a single guitar enormously!

Re:Benefits?

[Wumpus]

I disagree on a couple of points: All music, except purely vocal music, relies on fancy crap to sound good. For some reason I get really pissed off when people suggest that acoustic music, for example, is somehow a more "pure" form of expression than rock music (with electric guitars, electric bass guitars etc.)

The way I see technology and music, it took 10000 of technological innovation to get to the classical guitar, and then a mere 50 to go from there to a Fender Strat, another 30 or so to MIDI guitars, and 20 years later we have a digital system that can make musicians' lives easier in many ways, while making them sound better under the conditions that most working musicians have to deal with in order to get their music to audiences. The big leap, as I see it, was getting to the acoustic instrument. The guitar of 100 years ago was a technological marvel that required countless bits and pieces of machinary and knowledge to make, not to mention the social structures that would give people the time and the incentive to deal with making instruments and music in the first place.

A lot of real musicians understand their gear, and put it to good use. Don't knock the delicate interplay between the sound a musician produces and the inspiration she can get from it. Sure, Jimi Hendrix could play a beat up $5 accoustic guitar, but at least some of his uniqueness came from the exploitation of technology, and putting the "limitations" of that technology (feedback, clipping) at the service of his music.

The second point I disagree on is that music is getting worse. It isn't. Granted, commercial radio is at an all time low, but that's a process that's driven by the way the music business is structured, and it has nothing to do with the technology at the disposal of musicians today. If anything, today's cheap recording technology can make it possible for musicians on a budget to create a product that's on par or better than the big labels' multi million dollar productions. If anyone tells you otherwise, they're selling something. Probably studio time.

You obviously care about music. You wouldn't bitch about it otherwise. There's good music out there, but you have to do some digging. A lot of bands try to get the word out about their music by using the web. Look them up. There are so many of them out there, that I find it hard to believe that you won't be able to find at least a couple of artists that you'll like.

One last point: You suggest that people throw out their synthesizers, and get down to the "real deal". For some people, the real deal is simply out of reach, as in 50 piece orchestra out of reach. Synthesizers are just instruments, and damn fine instruments, at that. For some people, they're the only means of getting their art to be heard by people who can't read an orchestral score.

Analog vs. Digital

[vurg]

The human brain can notice, although subconsciously, differences between digital and analog sound sources. Analog ones having very fine distortions that we humans cannot discern consciously. The concert is cancelled because someone hacked into his guitar.

Re:Broken cords anyone?

[SlashdotLemming]

Endless possibilities here though. Example: for rookies who can't tune worth shite (like me ;) it would be huge for a tuner to get a direct feed from the exact string I'm trying to tune.
Hell, why not a self tuning guitar. Fixes itself during a show. Or even have a two way link and the board guys 'reconfigure' the instruments remotely.

As for broken cables, gonna be a big problem. That better be an industrial strength cat5 port, cause you're gonna bust cables ends much more often than strings.
Maybe wireless, but that could lead to a whole new quality of bootlegs ;)

Re:Journey?

[NetGyver]

Your right of course. NOBODY in bands you hear today plays guitar like they really mean it. I have a alot of songs from the 60's/70's/80's where they really really made it scream and sing, practically giving the guitar a life and voice of it's own.

I don't know if this digital guitar will change anything. Personally, I believe it has alot more to do with how the labels find bands. There are quite a few people out there who can rock a guitar like you wouldn't believe, but when it comes to getting them into bands, I don't think the RIAA really cares about a band or artists musical talent like they used to. After all, that lack of talent can all be made up for with pre-processed effects and sampling these days.

It's a shame really.

Re:more useful link

[Talinom]

I don't belive that this technology will be universally adopted. Why? Your analog distortion created by vacuum tubes, which is a mainstay effect of everything from rock to death metal, differs from digital or transistor generated distortion in that analog will gradually saturate and digital is instant.

For the non musical: Touching or picking the string lightly in an analog environment will result in a clean sound, pretty much no matter how much distortion you have. Touching, picking, or even breathing on a string in a digital environment will instantly result in massive distortion.

I can pretty much guarantee that artists from Eric Clapton to Metallica will stay with analog as the mainstay for their sound.

One story that I have heard is back from the early eightes during the Blizzard Of Ozz tour the entire MIDI rack crashed and needed to be restarted during one of Randy Rhoads' solos resulting in a really pissed off Ozzy. How many musicians would like to take a chance of their system crashing that hard during a live performance?

Re:Looks like a desperate cry for attention

[Chris Johnson]

Hey, I've been hacking guitars for many years (over a decade and then some) in attempts to get at the real essence of the physical motion of the string. At one point I was using a blade alnico magnet singlecoil low-impedance pickup RIGHT UP AGAINST the bridge. More recently I've been designing guitar DI boxes that can do full-on distortion and still have the transparency to do more complicated chords. I've discovered some things.

First- it's been done before. Jimmy Page was doing this years ago. In fact if you go to my URL there, some of the guitar sounds are specifically modelled after Page's more wiry, bright sounds, especially 'Dance With The River'.

Second- any form of getting more raw transparency and accuracy out of the guitar tone (instead of a wall of 'really cool' mud) has some VERY NASTY side-effects. What happens, and I'm not fooling here, is that your performance gets stripped naked. It's VERY difficult to perform with perfect accuracy. In fact it's undesirable and boring to do so- but here's the catch: while people who like your music invariably like it all the more when the tone is more transparent and uncolored, anyone who is approaching it from ANY sort of critical direction and finding fault will simultaneously like it less!

I'm not saying the new Gibson stuff is in fact more transparent- it might actually be worse than simple electrical wiring.

I am saying that if it IS really more transparent and a better 'image' of the guitar performance than the regular kind, that's a real double-edged sword there and you might not be ready to deal with the results.

You end up gaining the ability to have regular folks be really into it for the first time- they don't have the training to interpret mistakes and they go only by how well you can connect your musical intent to them- but you will get crucified by other artists and by anyone with the training to understand a mistake. With enough clarity into your performance, it is IMPOSSIBLE to evade criticism: even your correctly played stuff has a degree of presence that makes it seem 'wrong' compared to more colored stuff.

This has turned and bit me in a big way at times- the more I developed the tech of it, and especially when I started to mimic Jimmy Page tonal balances, the more extreme the responses were. Interestingly, I have a friend who was around when Led Zeppelin was coming out, and he tells me the same thing happened then- the critics just could not hate Zep more, anyone wanting to dislike them just went ballistic.

So- I don't know if this Gibson stuff really is better fidelity, but if it is, watch out! You'd better be pretty tough to expose yourself like that. The rewards are great but the penalties are harsh...

Re:My guitar gently weeps

[r33per]

Too right: if there is one thing that the world can do without it is more guitar with more crappy transistors. anything to do with guitars that involves transistors just makes the guitar sound like a bee in a can.

Bring back vacuum tube PC's: they might be bigger, hotter and more expensive to run, but I bet M$ will be able to implement P*ug & P*ay tubes that blow every 6 start ups.

Linux will have a much better implementation of tube device drivers, but it will only work on certain tubes

Plus your PC will sound infinitly better.

Digital sucks. Analogue Rocks.

Re:My guitar gently weeps

[Anonymous Coward]

It blows me away how many people on Slashdot are ultra-luddites when it comes to certain things. Of all the places i'd expect people to bitch about a digital guitar cable, Slashdot is the last.

Think about it: when you record your album it's going to be 44k1/16bit anyway, so anyone saying guitars should use vacuum tubes and run through crackly cables is kidding themselves. It's the same crowd who think spring reverb or analog synths are useful. Yes, they're all much nicer to play/use in real life, but once it hits the CD everything good about "the sound, man" just disappeared.

Personally i am VERY excited about this. Note that this isn't a MIDI guitar, it's digital audio. It's not about playing synths with your guitar, it's about getting the cleanest possible sound quality from the notes you play, through your effects, into the mixing desk. And each string is processed seperately! An absolute BOON for EQing, and i'm sure the best guitar players will meticulously tweak their other settings so playing the same note on two different strings gets hugely different effects.

Think about it - the next step here could be to quantize the notes or transpose them. Imagine hitting your foot pedal to transpose to a certain scale - you could continue playing the same lick and have it sound different. The point? If each string is processed differently and you have some mega fat bass sound on the bottom string, you don't want to lose that effect when you change to the 5th string... sooo foot-pedal - TRANSPOSE +5 and bam. You could even take it to the point where each fret is processed differently, so riffs could be set up to take advantage of different effects depending on where you played them.

Damn people, be creative. Sure it's not going to change anything for your average blues guitarist, but for people who are really pushing the envelope, virtuosos like Steve Vai or Satriani, for experimental guitarists like Buckethead, or even for your average studio guitarist this has the potential to be huge.

Is Cat5 a good choice?

[Snafoo]

I don't know about you guys, but I find that one of the biggest problems with my guitar cords is simple wear-n'-tear at the connectors. Does Gibson really think that the mechanicals of those flimsy crimped Cat5 connectors will stand up to the (er) acrobatic needs of Joe 'Garage Band' Sixpack?

Re:hrm...i'll pass

[King_TJ]

Mmm... I have mixed feelings myself. I've been playing electric guitar for over 10 years now (although lately, just on the rare occasion that I get free time and feel like plinking around on it), and I can understand both sides of an argument like this.

I think the bottom line is, as long as the instrument still has 6 strings and is played by hand - it will only be as good (or bad) as the abilities + imagination of the person playing it.

The primary "benefit" of going digital with any of these things is to clean up background noise.
I've sure had my share of hassles with guitar cables going bad and causing loud buzzing/humming sounds through my amp, or intermittently cutting out. By changing the signal path to digital, at least you'd have much more of an "either it works or it doesn't" situation. A bad cable would mean no sound at all.

On the flip-side, I don't think I'd pay a premium price for a guitar just because it converts analog to digital and back again on the other end of the cable. This seems like just the type of thing that allows Gibson to boost prices on their guitars, and pad their wallets.

The thing Line 6 was doing with their "digital guitar" appears to be much more interesting and useful. They're basically taking what used to be an external effects processor and integrating it into the guitar, so with a twist of the dial - you can make their generic guitar emulate the tone of many different popular guitars. Of course, that also means your Line 6 instrument has no unique, defining "character" of its own. That automatically makes me, as a musician, feel like I'd only want it as a second (or third) guitar. Not my *only* guitar.