Moog Guitar

Over on Instapundit this weekend I read a little on the new guitar from the famous electronic musics wizards at Moog. I wound up finding some video of it on YouTube:

More about the instrument on the company web site.

Most modern music rests on the bedrock of drums, keyboards, and guitars. The electric guitar has always fascinated me and been my favorite instrument to listen to and watch performed upon. For decades people have predicted the instrument’s demise and for decades they’ve been wrong. On the surface, the guitar looks less versatile than a keyboard, because it typically takes two hands to create sounds that can be done with only one on a keyboard. But between fingering patterns, string bending, and the “whammy bar,” there are just things you can do on a guitar that are very hard or impossible on a keyboard. So, like most enduring designs, the guitar has weaknesses but also strengths; some things are better and easier on a keyboard, some things are better and easier on a guitar, and so ultimately it’s just a question of your artistic goals and preferences.

Still, no one’s come up with a bedrock improvement on the basic design of an electric guitar in generations. Indeed, I used to say to people that the 70 year old basic design of the electric guitar would likely never be improved, because if you changed it much you’d have a different instrument. Paul Vo proved me wrong. How cool is that?