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Self-Tuning Electric Guitar
avirrey writes "The Technology Review has an interesting article on a Gibson Self-Tuning Guitar. Purist argue that you shouldn't need a guitar that self-tunes. Others argue that this will allow an artist to change tuning with one 'favorite' guitar, instead of having to swap out between songs." Ok I know what I think- freakin' sweet. Only technology will guarantee my sucking on the electric will at least be reasonably in-tune suckiness. Dear Gibson, Slashdot really needs to review your guitar. We'll need several review units and we lost your return address.
I agree that this looks like a super-neato piece of kit, but I would be willing to bet it will have trouble selling because: 1. It's one more thing that might break on stage. 2. Guitarist love tradition and tend to resist change. How long has the Les Paul been in production in its current form? Something like 60 years. The most revered amps are point-to-point wired vacuum tube models. Most people who are willing to drop this kind of coin on guitar gear would probably go for some aged custom model before they went for this. I'm not saying it's not useful, just that I would be surprised by significant commercial success.
It has a knob that you pull out to turn the tuning mechanism on, then you turn it off while you are playing so it's not trying to adjust.
I found this part of the technology to be especially clever:
As the strings are played, the Powertune processor compares their actual frequencies with the desired notes and sends instructions--tighten the string this much, loosen the string by that much--to tuning pegs equipped with strong, tiny servo motors mounted on the back of the guitar's head. Because onstage interference could potentially degrade a wireless signal, the system uses the strings themselves to send the signal.
I think the triangle woudn't have to be tuned too often.
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Agreed, but there are five situations where it could be useful, IMHO:
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To me, this self-tuning guitar is to guitarists what script kiddies are to hackers, no? And I sure as hell would bet that Jimi Hendrix wouldn't sound like how he did if this type of thing was around.
I don't know about you, but the minute "out-of-tune-ness" and things of that nature is what makes a musical performance sound more human. Similar analogy: quantizing and how that makes things so.. robotic..
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Completely unnecessary technological twaddle. Modern string technology, quality tuners, quality guitar, and a decent tuner. Tuners are buit into practically everything guitar related. Cue the Whaambulance. Part of guitar's beauty is it's simplicity.
The specific (and nearly impossible to perfectly replicate) sound that the vibrating strings make is the reason to play a guitar. Get rid of that and you might as well just use a synthesizer instead.
Random and weird software I've written.
An electric guitar is not a digital, nor even an electonically-controlled, instrument. There are guitar synths, and electonically-controlled things like the Line6 Variax. But those aren't really "electric guitars".
A solid-body electric guitar has magnetic coil transducers that generate an electrical signal as the metal strings vibrate in a magnetic field. That's pretty much it: no chips, not even transistors. It's a simple tool, rather in line with the Unix philosophy.
You can then take that signal and pipe through whatever processing you want - off board, in your stomp boxes or rack effect units. But don't mess with the guitar, any more than you'd mess with grep by trying to make it include awk.
This, though, is a mechanical thing, that just automates what the guitarist does when he looks at a tuner and frobs the tuning knobs until the needle hits center or the green light lights or whatever. It's a just a convenience, not a true alteration of function.
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Hmmm... I wonder how much *more* difficult it would be to have the guitar tune 'live', ie: while playing. Check for a short along the fretboard on each string, and against additional tension above baseline (to compensate for intentional and unintentional bending and whammy bar use) and feed that data into the tuning processor.
Would be awesome - how many times has your guitar gone out of tune while playing with brand skankin' new strings? I know you're supposed to stretch 'em out, but we're talking about a labor-saver here.
Though, like I said, it'd probably be a lot more difficult; baseline tension would change the moment a bend was made (stretching of the strings).
I wonder if resistance can be checked to put up a 'string needs replaced' idiot light? Ooh, how about a capacitance array just under the fretboard so that you can train your fretting tension to an ideal level?
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