Digital Guitars or “Guitar Controllers”
For many of us the beauty of the guitar lies within its timeless design and the creation of music that occurs between the human hand and the vibrating string. Adding anything more than an amplifier, pick-ups or some effects pedals might be considered sacriligious – yet there has been significant movement towards a synthesis of the traditional with the digital – hybrid guitars with guitar strings and traditional bodies.
Gibson Fender & Line 6 Digital Guitars
Guitar brands such as Fender, Gibson and Line6 have produced some real guitars with digital capability.
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Guitar Controllers – Digital Music
Electronic music proposes an entirely different control spectrum / system of variables which require an infinitely more diverse set of controls than the hand and the string might deliver. In the world of synthesis the need to control vast parameter arrays, such as sustain, pitch, filter, velocity and decay, have lead designers away from the keyboard and into the realm of the “guitar” based controller.
Hyper Touch Digital Guitar Controller
The Hyper Touch ‘guitar” from Italian Givingshape Design pushes the concept of guitar design into entirely new territory. This guitar dispenses with strings altogether and uses intuitive, programmable touch surfaces to transform this “guitar” into a wireless midi controlled command centre. As a guitar shaped midi controller the Hyper Touch Guitar offers infinite sonic possibilites. Choose as many strings and frets as desired, any tuning combination or programme any sound wherever.
Misa Digital Guitar – Kitara
The Misa from Kitara digital is a digital guitar shaped controller that combines traditional guitar playing techniques with the possibilites of digital audio.
24 “frets” of six buttons each combined with a touch sensitive “pad” bring new levels of tactile expression to music makers – sound may be morphed in an infinite number of ways far removed from the action of picking or plucking a string.
The Misa Kitara digital controller is Linux based and open source so programmers will have the ability to re-programme its ‘brain’.
The Misa digital website is here.
