Electric guitars are great, but they’re just so 20th century. You’d think decades of musicians riffing on the instrument would mean there are no hacks left in the humble axe. You’d think so, but you’d be wrong. [Michael], for one, has taken it upon himself to reinvent the electric guitar for the digital era.
Gone are the strings, and the frets have vanished as well. The neck of this guitar is one long custom PCB, looking very sleek with black solder mask. Gold pads serve as touch sensors to give tone data over i2c (from unspecified touch sensing chips) to the Amtel Mega 32u4 at the heart of the build.
With no strings, strumming won’t work, so a laptop-style touchpad serves instead. That means every user interaction with this guitar is with capacitive touch sensors talking i2c. The X and Y coordinates of the touch, along with pressure are sent to the processor over the i2c bus, triggering an interrupt and offering quite a bit of opportunity for sound control.
Said sound control is, of course, done in MIDI. This lets the guitar control a whole variety of synths and/or software, and of course [Michael] is using more futuristic-sounding synths than a pack of guitar samples. That said, what exactly goes on with the MIDI controls is left frustratingly vague. Obviously fretting provides note selection, but does the touchpad just send a “note start” command, or are the X, Y and pressure data used in interesting ways? Is there multitouch support? The video doesn’t say.
How, exactly, the obviously-plastic body of the guitar was manufactured is also left unsaid. Is it a large resin print? SLS? It looks injection-molded, but that makes no sense for a one-off prototype. On the other hand, it looks like he’s selling these, so it may very well be an injection-molded production case we’re seeing being assembled here, and not a prototype at all.
For all the video leaves us wanting more information, we can’t help but admit the end product both looks and sounds very cool. (Skip to the 4:50 mark in the embedded video to hear it in action.) The only thing that would improve it would be a hurdy-gurdy mode. Thanks to [Michael] for the tip, and remember we want to hear tips about all the weird and wonderful hacked-together instruments you make or find on the web.
What this article is missing is a guitarist.
hahah you beat me to it
i was recently playing my electric guitar. and one of the things that has always strikes me about it when the amp isn’t turned too high up is that the sound coming out of the amp is the same sound that is coming out of the strings. which is kind of “no duh” but it’s so perfectly seamless!
i don’t at all think there’s no useful evolution left in the electric guitar. i just hope it will be as responsive. i have no idea how to accomplish that but
Advertising teaser?
4:50 before we get to hear the instrument and even then it’s quick demo and done?
And all those unanswered questions? What if someone emailed the guy and published the story after those burning questions were, I don’t know, answered?
I did just that in 2012 :)
https://librearts.org/2012/04/misa-digital-kitara-and-being-open-to-the-world/
Happy to see the project is still out there. It isn’t common for this type of adventures to last this long. So kudos to Michael.
Wow, how cool is that?
A guitar has 6 strings played against frets. You can generate music directly from the vibration of the strings by employing a resonator cavity [acoustic guitar], you can detect the string’s motion with a pickup and distort/color/amplify the signals to make new sounds [electric guitar], or you can even use a computer and other electronics to detect what notes are being played on the individual strings and translate that information to MIDI notes… to drive a synth head [midi guitar]. If you’re doing the latter, the strings don’t even need to be tuned to any key normally used, but in fact, could be all the same pitch and gauge if that suited you. The firmware can be set up to sort things out.
In my view all of these constitute some manifestation of what I’d recognize as a “guitar.”
I’ve seen guitar-like instruments with only 3 strings and no frets at all… Justin Johnson famously performs “Ace of Spades” on a garden spade fitted with three strings and a guitar pickup . He does so with a slide, and even this instrument, in my opinion, somehow falls into that “guitar” classification.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tAEAyHgCec&list=RD-tAEAyHgCec&start_radio=1
The project described here is very cool. It’s interesting, aesthetically-pleasing, has great workmanship, and I look forward to seeing how far the idea can be pushed. As is, it’s already a worthy toy, and probably has meaningful potential as a serious instrument. But aside from the fact that it casts a guitar-shaped shadow in the sun, there is really nothing “guitar” about it, digital or otherwise. It’s a essentially a very novel MIDI keyboard.
I guess if you’re building something like this you have to call it something, and “digital guitar” is probably not unreasonable. I’m just responding with the impressions of a long-time guitarist. I’d be interested in the opinions of other players.
Mark Sandman played a 3 string slide bass on many Morphine songs.
A rose by any other name.
Yes, guitarlike.
Yes, guitar-like, guitar-shaped but not a guitar. I was a guitarist at secondary school.
Touch sensing chips are Cypress cy8cmbr3116-lqx (visible briefly in the video)
Thanks for posting this! So this video may seem a bit strange… it’s both specific and vague at the same time, right? I wanted to document the process of building a product in a way that offers a high-level look into how it came together. Electronics, firmware, mechanical. I totally understand that a lot of the details aren’t covered and that’s frustrating for more technical viewers! The video is like a window into how I personally think about embedded systems and the process behind building something from scratch. There’s obviously a lot to cover, and I really wanted the video to be a brief overview that took around ~5 minutes… I’d never made a video like this before and it was a challenge to decide the level of detail.
PS. The touch ICs are Infineon CY8CMBR3116’s. I do have other videos on my youtube channel that go into a lot more details about the MIDI implementation, and LOTs of videos showing it actually being played. This video is on the other hand probably should have been titled “A window into the world of embedded systems development”. Anyway, thank you for posting!
Also – I agree that I’m being very loose with my definition of guitar :)
Cool!
Do you have more documentation about the instrument elsewhere? You can see that we’re into it!
The string IS the instrument. you don’t just activate a note. you TOUCH that note. HOW you touch that note affects how it sounds. you’ve invented a keyboard of unknown touch sensitivity which will not be guitar string touch sensitivity. you’ve invented a sim. no real guitar player wants this, no pro will use it.
Well, good thing this site isn’t called Make-a-Marketable-Product-a-Day.
This guy must be fin at parties…
I fully agree. I mean, what’s next? Some wag is going to take this idea and apply it to a piano keyboard, with digital electronic sounds instead of strings being struck by a hammer? No real pianist would ever want to play that.
it’s not really a reasonable comparison. when you switch from piano to ‘keys’, you do pay a penalty in the touch sensitivity…but it’s pretty minor and it’s improved a bunch over the years. fundamentally, if you use the same exact touch on an electric piano that you use on the acoustic one, it will work about the same. the key interface is extremely similar. the mechanics of it aren’t that important to the user. if you’re playing pianissimo (quiet), then it can be hard to tell if you really hit the key hard enough to make a sound, and it is the same difficulty whether it is electric or acoustic.
and even though piano is so similar to keys, there’s a lot of people who have a strong preference to for the real piano. and there’s been a lot of progress at erasing the differences, to convince people who were on the fence about it for ages. the first synths (if you don’t count pipe organs) are about a century old and yet it’s only gotten “good enough” for a lot of piano purposes in the last couple decades.
but guitar is much more intimate. you’re not touching a machine that you don’t care if it swings a hammer or not, you’re actually touching the strings. so your left hand (fret hand) decides for each contact with the string whether it’s pressing the string against the fret, or not pressing it hard enough and causing buzzing, or pressing it so lightly that you mute the string. and you can press and buzz and mute the neighbors too, with the same finger. just fingering a chord with your left hand is an immensely detailed operation on guitar. and you have nearly as much finesse with your right hand (strum/pick hand).
and on the one hand it’s this immense and perhaps unnecessary struggle for people new to the instrument (ask me how i know). but once you get some skill at it, it brings remarkable advantages, which are no less than the advantages of the guitar itself. but you can’t get good at it without all of the feedback intrinsic in the normal guitar. you need to be able to feel with your finger tips the same thing that you are hearing with your ears.
so as much as i would really like an easier instrument, it’s just really hard to imagine a synthetic interface that gives you any of the advantages of a guitar. the kind of unreliability you get out of a touch sensor destroys a guitarist. with the strings, you can hit or you can miss, but you can tell which it was by the feeling in your fingers. without that feeling, learning the limits of the sensor is almost impossible.
so i do think there might be some future to this development…but it seems like it will, at best, take years of development before it becomes ‘playable’ let alone becomes a competitor. and that’s why it’s so crucial that this video asks you to click but does not ask you to witness a guitarist. you can’t do those years of development without involving a guitarist, but that doesn’t seem to be the goal.
i would say making an acoustic guitar or any other instrument, that makes sound via physical vibration is a beautiful art and engineering exercise in tuning and harmonics that is timeless.
that being said, this is an excellent “guitroller” (a portmanteau of guitar and controller as in midi controller).
I’m sure anyone who also reads this blog and dj tech tools will find this and agree this is some kind of new midi controller in a guitar form factor.
I think matching the guitar form factor more intricately will unlock future innovation like how smart watches eventually round display units…
i can def see the community getting excited about making things like these.
like if i were to approach this concept or try to add something new, could we add a theremin interface with adjustable VST/noise generator modulated by the theremin, and tuned for guitar style gestures/strumming, pedals, fx, stomp box etc?
love this idea and think it’s cool af.
Many a guitar has been made similar to this. Though each unique implementation and creation is fascinating. Guitars constantly exist as a question mark of creativity, some things of note are pickups that have existed using lasers, fiber optics and pickups that exist at the end of the strings themselves, allowing for unique shape-work and routing. There’s a couple boutique brands that have been trying to do the whole “Air” guitar thing for some time now. Look into the tech that spun off in and from EMG, lava music, Casio, oPIK.
Better and richer guitarists than I explored MIDI back in the 80s, I even played such a guitar in the ’90s. This project strikes me as criddleware, i.e. crippled hardware. A charitable person would say “[whathisname] has developed a pricier Guitar Hero™.” I’ll say he doesn’t seem to be hurting anyone.
I remember when the Misa Kitara came out and got some recognition in Muse’s music video for Madness. It’s a great way to manipulate complex synth VSTs and directly control the wobbles of 2010s pop-dubstep bass.
I remember all the guitarists were irate lol…yet they use distortion pedals, electronic tuners, multitrack editors, and maybe even punch in multiple takes while using MIDI-controlled sampled drums lol… “real musicians exhibiting real talent on real instruments” was something of a slogan among these purists who might not even know that their favorite artists used beat detective and mimed their music videos!
Tech and music are two OVERLAPPING ways humans can put signals and noise to work!
LinnStrument. Done well. Nothing wrong with experimenting though. Some of these guitar form factor designs predate MIDI.
Dude from Muse has one almost exactly like it. This isnt new.
Guitar-shaped MIDI controllers have been a thing for almost as long as there has been MIDI.
I had a Casio DG-20 (which is to musical instruments what a ZX81 was to computers), and later an IVL Pitchrider.
Yamaha, Roland, SynthAxe, etc. have been around since the 80’s.
This one looks similar to some of Starr Labs https://www.starrlabs.com/ products.
So what about bends, sweeping or pitch harmonics? Actual guitar playing not just strum and single pick a note?
I’m sorry but the keytar from the 80’s seems more like a predecessor for this.
The life and soul of an instrument needs actual feel and touch by both the musician and the physical components of the guitar, SPECIALLY the strings.
What’s next? Sex for a man with no Dick?
Take a crap with no butthole?
That’s what the future is heading for…
Sorry I don’t mean to sound like a ignorant A-hole but that’s what came to mind as soon as you said… no strings..
The build is impressive, and the finished unit has great aesthetics and looks very professional. But the short little bit of playing it left me very underwhelmed.
Completely agree that this “guitar” lacks “life and soul” and is little more than a keytar. I doubt this device has half the tricks an experienced player can perform on a true electric guitar. But by means of the MIDI interface, it can do many things an electric guitar cannot. This might work well for a synthwave band.
Bending, finger picking, palm muting? This is a bridge technology at best. A new “Guitar Hero” controller most likely.
Let me tell you, I’m barely a guitarist, I’m a violinist of 3 years of learning that toys with a crappy factory-made nameless classical from a flea market, but I can smell from miles away that this stringless abomination is a bad idea. What’s a bend anymore? What’s even the purpose of plucking? Why not just use a cheap electric to sate all your needs without reducing this already basic instrument to a solid block of wood and plastic.
I have a Rock Band controller very similar to this (except with hard, velocity-sensitive plastic “strings”) that I use to control synthesizers that would otherwise be played with a keyboard. Flexible control methods allow you to play around with different perspectives.
Wtf “is the point of this ole guitar….if it ain’t got no strings?”
The one they made 12 years ago with six strings was more impressive.
Any pinch Harmonics, right hand palm muting, feedback, string scratching?
And a laptop styled touchpad to ‘imitate’ strumming (Lord knows how you can mute a string or two to play a chord you want).
Yeah…nah….
Somehow it made me think “accordion”.
Dude made a Misa tri-bass.
Nice. I love the (to be read positively) integration of a linnstrument-like neck with an x/y touch pad controller. Is this a “guitar”? Who cares! My main instrument is guitar. I KNOW GUITAR. This type of tool will make capturing SO much more EFFICIENT. Linnstrument mimicks string instruments but not the physical positioning of the guitar. Really love this start which in many ways is a means to an end as-is.
Well, it’s great to see that my patent being used by so many different companies!
I invented this concept in the early 80’s. Taught Michael Jackson to play it in the 90s and now I’m releasing a new version as The Jamma V2… And it’s WILD!
Me demoing The Jamma in 1984 with Jules Holland: [https://youtu.be/MKs_tqss6cY?si=MLDoLraMu__VjrbK}
Fantastic!
This was already attempted back in 1985 with the SynthAxe, a completely electronic guitar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqdVQ9VdoAg