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?

[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.

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.