Slashdot Mirror
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.
"...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..."
Yeah, and since slashdot is made by its community, we will need 900,000 test units =o) (sorry 900000+ id noobs =oP no testing for you)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
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?
How we know is more important than what we know.
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?
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
It takes me (and most other guitarists) a few seconds to tune a guitar.
It's a pleasant, harmless little ritual, and somewhat calming before you play a gig.
This is a silly and expensive gizmo, IMO.
Azural - instrumentals
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 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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
All I want is an amp that goes up to 11.
This sig is false.
How to play Guitar by David [Jad] Fair
I taught myself to play guitar. It's incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string father out by the tuning end it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That's all there is to it. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that's pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you'd still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day.
Traditionally, guitars have a fat string on the top and they get skinnier and skinnier as they go down. But he thing to remember is it's your guitar and you can put whatever you want on it. I like to put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldn't have so much to worry about. What ever string he hit had to be the right one because they were all the same.
Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong. But that absurd. How could it be wrong? It's your guitar and you're the one playing it. It's completely up to you to decide hoe it should sound. In fact I don't tune by the sound at all. I wind the strings until they're all about the same tightness. I highly recommend electric guitars for a couple of reasons. First of all they don't depend on body resonating for the sound so it doesn't matter if you paint them. As also, if you put all the knobs on your amplifier on 10 you can get a much higher reaction to effort ratio with an electric guitar than you can with an acoustic. Just a tiny tap on the strings can rattle your windows, and when you slam the strings, with your amp on 10, you can strip the paint off the walls.
The first guitar I bought was a Silvertone. Later I bought a Fender Telecaster, but it really doesn't matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar that tunes at the other end. I've never tried one. I guess they sound alright but they look ridiculous and I imagine you'd feel pretty foolish holding one. That would affect your playing. The idea isn't to feel foolish. The idea is to put a pick in one hand and a guitar in the other and with a tiny movement rule the world.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
In America, self-tuning guitar tunes itself. In Soviet Russia, self-tuning guitar is tuned by you!
Michael Manring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Manring uses a custom Zon Bass Guitar http://www.zonguitars.com/zonguitars/hyperbass.html. Below each tuning knob is a lever which can de-tune a string with just the flip of the switch. No fancy pickups, electronics etc. Sure if he needs to tune beforehand, he does it the old fashioned way (by ear, tuner etc..), but while playing he detunes in a flash. You can find him pretty easily on youtube http://youtube.com/results?search_query=Michael+Manring&search=Search
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..
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
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...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is a good idea, but ONLY if it tunes to drop D. I have wayyyy too much angst to play in standard tuning.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
My friend recently got a Variax modeling guitar and I got to play it the other day. It looks like a really basic electric, but it has individual pickups for each string and a really realistic synth computer inside that models all kinds of guitars and other stringed instruments. And this ain't no crappy MIDI guitar, it responds naturally to bends, harmonics, etc. It can also do on-the-fly alternate tunings, but without actually changing the physical tuning! It feels so weird playing an electric guitar with a whammy bar and the sound of a banjo coming out.
Then he set it up running into a pitch tracker outputting a sine wave, fed into a Marshal stack simulator. Try to beat that signal path!
Yes, that's what we need, MORE triangle!
damaged by dogma