Touch: Meet the Multitouch Guitar – Plus An Open Source, iPhone Solution, Too
As multitouch becomes more widely available, there’s an opportunity to re-imagine all sorts of interfaces. And yes, that includes the guitar.
Meet the Misa Guitar: Strings and frets are each replaced with digital touch controls, and the soundboard touchscreen is set up to control notes, velocity, pitch, and filters. In fact, it makes the guitar more like a keyboard, and less like a guitar. But as with all digital instruments, abstracting the gesture from the actual sound means that you can arbitrarily redefine what the instrument really does.
Jim Purbrick first experimented with iPhone performance at an open OSCestra. Unlike the Misa, his guitar remains a real guitar. The addition of an iPhone (or an iPod touch, if you’d rather) is simply a way to augment the instrument. In the grand tradition of the one man band, touch control with the open-source control application Mrmr allows him to manipulate Ableton Live tracks.
The solution is an open source Python hack that connects his mobile device to Ableton Live through Live’s LiveAPI. And incidentally, this solution requires far less effort – and yields more immediate integration – than running a Max for Live device. (I have to point that out, because while I’m impressed by Max’s extraordinary capabilities inside Live, there are practical ways in which direct OSC integration is better for controlling Live itself.)
I want this really bad..really, really bad. The Misa Guitar reminds me of a kaossilator gone rogue. As far as the iPhone install—its high on my Max for Live to-do list right under practice actual guitar.