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Guitar Hero, On a Real Guitar, To Hit Shelves In 2009
An anonymous reader writes "The Minneapolis Star Tribune features an article (with photos) about a prototype electric guitar that doubles as a Guitar Hero controller. It is not just another guitar-shaped controller with buttons: it is an actual, playable guitar, shown in-action. The startup company, Zivix, LLC, intends to bring the product to store shelves in 2009. Web searches indicate that the company may have raised around $800K for the venture. The company is also working on technology that enables finger sensing on a real guitar that would allow your computer to teach you how to play chords or evolve into a future guitar synthesizer."
MIDI guitars and guitar interfaces were available in the 90s, probably earlier. Here's one I remember:
Parker MIDIFly
Wasn't this idea thrown around when the MIDI interface was created, 20+ years ago?
But of course...we're now coming full circle when people realize that they can do this Guitar Hero stuff on real guitars, and without the buttons either. Turns out, guitars actually make music all by themselves (with possibly just an amp)!!! But I digress--for those interested in music, here are the relevant things that precede this in time and in awesomeness:
Yamaha MIDI pickup for guitars -- turns the note you're playing into a MIDI note that can then control a synth on your computer. And I don't mean the 80's era crappy "synth" sounds, modern sound synthesis engines are INCREDIBLY realistic.
Alternatively, you could skip Guitar Hero completely and do the following:
This is the method I use and it's incredibly satisfying if you don't happen to have a band lying around. Plus it also lets you choose which part you want to play along with, speed up/slow down the song. Sure there aren't any vocals, but it's still mucho fun and way better for impressing people with.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
try this: http://pianobooster.sourceforge.net/ An equivalent for the midi piano, I presume. I haven't tried it, but it's free software, so you can make it better if it sucks.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
actually most new players quit is because they bought a guitar thinking "now i'll buy a cheap guitar and try whether all this guitar playing stuff is fun or not". cheap guitars are difficult and painful to play, though, so the fun is over fast.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I work at Zivix. The comments here (both positive and negative) are helpful for us to figure out hw best to explain what we've developed. Here's a few points: - Our core technology is proximity-based fingertip sensors that can be installed in a fretboard. The Headliner just has 12 on the first string, but other models can populate up to a full guitar - The challenge with Guitar Rising and other methods that work with a normal guitar is to analyze the signal, possible with one string, really really difficult with more than 1 string at the same time, which is why Midi guitars have separate pickups. Delay is a big issue, since analysis is always done after the fact - Guitars only allow 1 note per string. Playing the game across more than 1 string would be pretty hard, our guitar allows "chords" on one string, just like the plastic controller - On the Headliner, you don't really learn to play guitar, but you do learn to fret and pick a string, and end up with a real guitar when the game is over. Bundled software will let you trigger loop combinations interactively to play on top of, makes practicing a lot more fun. - On our other products coming out, you can learn to chord, and view the result on the screen, chords can be seen before picking a note, so delays are minimal - hope this helps....