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.

Comments

determinism finally!

[QuantumG]

As a software engineer, the one thing I hate about playing the guitar is that every time I pick it up I have to tune it, otherwise I won't get the same results as I did last time I sat down to strum. Is a little determinism too much to ask?

Re:determinism finally!

[my $anity 0]

Speaking as someone who just picked up the guitar about 2 months ago, I must say it's hard to play something genuinely bad-sounding on the guitar.
Somewhat dissonant, maybe.
Not good, maybe.
But it takes a concerted effort to play painfully bad.

Re:determinism finally!

[poot_rootbeer]

I think this would be more appropriate for the likes of Joe Satriani or Steve Vai when in a concert they use a different tuning for some different songs...

I don't think it would, unless all the alternate tunings are very similar to each other.

Getting the best sound out of a guitar using a specific tuning is not only a function of the tension on each string, but also the gauge and wrap of the strings. Take a guitar in normal EADGBE with medium-gauge strings and tune the bottom string down a step to D, and it'll still sound pretty close to ideal; but tune everything down a fourth to BEADF#B, and the sound will be thin and lifeless. You'll need to switch to heavier strings to play with that dropped tuning.

Besides which, half of the fun of a Steve Vai show is to check out all the different guitar models he has. There's his standard Jem, and there's the one with the brilliant blue LEDs inlaid into the fret markers, and there's the enormous heart-shaped guitar with three necks...

Re:determinism finally!

[timeOday]

If this system is fast enough, it could re-tune between each strum so you can play an entire song on nothing but open chords!

Re:determinism finally!

[yurnotsoeviltwin]

The sound coming from the strings would be different, and the feel of the fretboard wouldn't be right. If my guitar is significantly out of tune, I can tell just from the feel of the string tension. If it gets bad enough, the strings rattle against the frets. A strum on a guitar is not just a set of six pure tones, it's a complex and beautiful thing.

Re:determinism finally!

[adminstring]

If the guitar is in tune with itself, an internal computer can shift pitches to give alternate tunings. That's what the Line6 Variax does. The problem is that if the guitar isn't in tune with itself, how does the guitar computer know if you are out of tune, or if you're just bending a string? You could run a guitar through an Antares Auto-Tune, but then when you bent a string, it would jump from one pitch to the next like a piano, and you'd lose a lot of the guitar's expressiveness for soloing.

The good thing about the Gibson is that you only pull on the knob when you have strummed the open strings, so the guitar knows that no notes are being bent... it knows what the pitches should be when you strum open strings, so it has no problem tuning it to those pitches.

Your idea could be implemented if, like on the Gibson, there were a button to let the guitar know it was in "tuning mode." When the button was pressed, the guitar would listen to see how out of tune it was, then when the button was released, the pitch-correction computer inside could change the pitch of each string by exactly the right amount to bring the guitar's output into tune, although the strings themselves would still be out of tune, and you could still bend them all you want without having the pitch "snap" to the next note like a vocal that has been auto-tuned.

Re:determinism finally!

[fiendie]

...maybe it might be useful when/if they have to change tuning "on the fly".. but of course, it might not be possible to re-tune the guitar as fast as it is needed... That mostly depends on the bridge type. If you have a fixed bridge like the Tune-o-matic on the Les Paul from the article it's fairly easy to change the tuning of individual strings. A very popular example are the so-called drop tunings, where you tune down the low E-string one step for easier fingering of power chords. With a fixed bridge all other strings stay more or less in tune. If you have a floating bridge like a Floyd Rose vibrato system, all other strings will go out of tune and it is very cumbersome to get the tuning right again.

Can you hear the piezo output too?

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

Sounds good to me, as long as it does standard and drop-d. The one question I have is do the system allow you to output the piezo pickups as well, or are the solely reserved for tuning?

I thought about doing that once.

[dgatwood]

I thought about designing a self-tuning instrument once, but for piano, where the tuning process is a lot more painful. It would consist of basically a high speed camera and a strobe light that could be tuned to any frequency. For each piano pitch, it would hit the string, start the strobe, and compare the position on consecutive beats like a strobotuner, adjusting until it wasn't moving. Either that or just use a much faster high speed camera and skip the strobe light. The point is that by using optics instead of resonance, you could accurately discern an individual string's fundamental frequency without the need to stop down the remaining strings. Kind of what they did with piezo pickups, but a heck of a lot closer together. :-)

The whole thing could be built into a block that snapped down onto the three pins on a given model of piano and took advantage of the fact that there's more than one of them so that it wouldn't have to mount to anything else. With the single bass strings, you'd have to tune them by hand, but they're the easy strings.

Never built it. Never cared enough, never had time, never thought it would sell, etc.

Re:I thought about doing that once.

[Chirs]

You know they actually *have* self-tuning pianos? They run electric current through the strings to cause them to heat up and change their harmonics. No moving parts.

Get a Uke! And enjoy real materials.

[billstewart]

The standard for ukes is that you spend half your time tuning and half your time playing a bit out of tune. But maybe that's not the kind of consistency you meant?

Real musical instruments are made of real materials like wood, metal, or nylon. As temperature and humidity change, the shape and flexibility of the parts are going to change, and the parts that are held by friction may also move. And the accoustics of the places you're playing will all be different, and the people you're playing with will have different skills and different instruments, and of course if people are singing their voices aren't super-consistent even if they can carry a tune, and sometimes your fingers or mind are more flexible than other times. And if you move your instrument around it'll also be affected by that. So go with the flow, listen to the sounds around you and adapt. (Oh, and bring an electronic tuner - they really do help unless you're one of those people with really good ears who can do it all with a tuning fork.)

I recently opened my baritone uke bag and found that the thing had exploded - must have overheated in the car or something, because the strings had pulled the bridge off the body. That's a bit more extreme than the usual environmental changes in instruments, but it's reasonably large and I'd bought it for $20 on eBay. Glued the bridge back on, and it's sounding a little dull but the strings may need a bit of time to readjust.

If you don't like all this analog behaviour, get yourself an electronic instrument. Or go with something semi-digital, like a horn with valves. The brass'll still change a bit with temperature, and your wind may vary with humidity as well as tiredness, and a small-mouthpiece instrument like a French horn is a lot less forgiving than a baritone horn or tuba. Or get yourself a slide trombone, where you're always going to have to move your the slide to the right distance to get just the right pitch...

Re:Technical review...

[rikkards]

I should have been more clear, but Gibson has a digital guitar line "HDx" or something that is a Line6 ripoff. You are right the powertone is a mechanical device unlike the Line6 gear.

It isn't even Gibson's invention. It is licensed to them from Tronical (which is mentioned in TFA)

Re:Technical review...

[cayenne8]

"You misspelled "Black Sabbath".

Well, if this Gibson guitar came in an SG model...it WOULD be handy for doing some Sabbath, since Iommi does most of this stuff with the guitar tuned down. Less tension helps for his missing fingertips, and also is what contributed to making their 'dark' sound....

Strange, if Tony hadn't had that accident....BS might not have found their trademark 'sound' or tone.....