I remember about 9 months ago observing to a friend of mine that no matter how much technology changes and advances, some things will just never change. Some things might be massively updated, but you cannot, just for example, fundamentally change the human voice. No matter how sophisticated you get with how you process it when recording, you cannot fundamentally change the human voice and still have it be, well, the human voice.
The actual example I used was the electric guitar: it IS my favorite instrument, and I AM a very techie-oriented guy, but I could see no possible way you could change the basic 70-80 year-old design of the electric guitar without creating a new instrument. Its technical design, in modern terms, is almost ridiculously primitive: take some metal strings, put an electrical pickup on the end to absorb the vibrations, and feed that signal directly through a simple electric amplifier. You CANNOT change that design without making a brand new instrument; you can make something else that’s STRUNG like the guitar, but if you change the metal-on-metal, feed-the-signal-directly-into-a-raw-amplifier nature of the thing you have a new instrument.
For example, for years there’s been a thing called a “guitar synthesizer,” which basically picks up the notes played on the guitar and processes them through a synthesizer, muting the actual sounds she makes and them translating them for a synthesizer, so the guitarist can “play” something that sounds like an organ, or a trumpet, or a piano. And that’s fine. It’s very cool actually. It’s not playing “an electric guitar,” but it’s an instrument played like a guitar that allows the guitarist to do amusing and/or beautiful things.
There was also an attempt some years ago to make a new “electric guitar” which used a complex array of lasers, so that when the guitarist’s fingers broke the laser beam, a synthesizer would make a noise corresponding to the notes he was playing. And that was cool. But it also wasn’t an electric guitar; it was something DIFFERENT. Completely valid musically, just NOT THE SAME.
You might still be able to call such things a “guitar,” but it’s not an electric guitar anymore. It might be a synthesizer–a very cool synthesizer, mind you–that’s played LIKE an electric guitar. But it’s not fundamentally an electric guitar anymore. It’s just something that looks like one and is played sort of like one.
Nothing wrong with any of it. It’s just not electric guitars anymore. An electric guitar is vibrating metal strings fed through a pickup fed directly into an amplifier. Despite its technological nature, it’s still a human finger, and it’s still fundamentally analogue and very, very direct.
The electric guitar is, in modern terms, a very primitive instrument. How can you improve upon it without making something different? I just didn’t think it could be done without creating a whole new instrument that just looked like an electric guitar. Every effort to do so had resulted in a DIFFERENT instrument, and not the SAME instrument incrementally improved.
I didn’t think it could be both incrementally and substantially improved upon without changing it. It was perfect the way it was, limitations and all. But I was wrong. Moog Music proved me wrong.
I don’t even really play a guitar; I’ve had a few lessons and played with guitars for years, but I am no guitarist. I’m just a fan of the instrument, and of technology in general. But they really impressed me with how lateral thinking can sometimes give you a paradigm shift. They’ve got a little gizmo that feeds power directly into the strings to keep them vibrating, or, at the flick of the switch, cuts the vibrations instantly. That’s all the little gizmo does. They’re selling it in a very expensive specialized guitar right now, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that within a decade you can buy this gizmo and put it on any electric guitar you own, very cheaply–and you’ll still have a basic electric guitar but you’ll have more options with it as a musician. Fantabulous!
Yes, I’ve written about this before on this blog, but my mind was just churning on it again recently. This is a fabulous example of lateral thinking at its best. It IS still the same instrument, it IS still just vibrating steel strings.
I honestly think there should be an equivalent of the Nobel Prize for something so damned clever. And I really do predict that while right now this might be an expensive high-end guitar, within a decade at most every kid who has an electric guitar will have a little gizmo that he slaps on that does this for a hundred bucks or so. It just feeds power back into the strings, or draws it out on demand. That’s all it does. But it changes the whole range of possibilities with the instrument.
I love it.
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I’m really debating on whether I should even show this to my husband. We already have 7 guitars (5 his, 2 daughter’s) plus a whole bunch of synthesizing (pedals and software), mixing, and recording equipment. He would go nuts over this. Right now, I’m just glad it’s that expensive, and even more since his would have to be left handed.
"For example, for years there’s been a thing called a “guitar synthesizer,†which basically picks up the notes played on the guitar and processes them through a synthesizer, muting the actual sounds she makes and them translating them for a synthesizer, so the guitarist can “play†something that sounds like an organ, or a trumpet, or a piano. And that’s fine. It’s very cool actually. It’s not playing “an electric guitar,†but it’s an instrument played like a guitar that allows the guitarist to do amusing and/or beautiful things."
While not necessarily making other instrument sounds from the guitar, except percussion, someone like Phil Keaggy uses more real-time (for lack of a better word) overdubbing and looping, along with synthesizers, but it is still through the guitar and its pickups.  He’s a one-man band with full use of the guitar. That’s a long video, but from about 3 min on is a sight and sound to behold. I wonder what he could do with a Moog!
Actually, there is a video of Phil Keaggy noodling around on a Moog. A quick youtube search should bring it right up.
RyanR’s last blog post..Faces of Math
This is amazing. We’ll see how rock stars use it, since you need to be a rock star to afford it.
Most excellent! Thank you, RyanR.
I still haven’t brought up this subject with my husband yet.
How do you feel that a Chapman Stick compares to a regular guitar? I got I couple of albums with it on them and was amazed what a different feel the instrument can give for what the same basic principles. In some ways however, it seems a lot like what Stanley Jordan does on a traditional guitar.
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