Open Source MultiTouch Guitar

You want all your gadgets to go multitouch. How about having multitouch musical instruments. I know multitouch piano is very difficult to use, but idea of multi-touch Guitar may not be as bad as it looks at first sight.

Misa Digital have come up a with a  unique, first-of-its-kind state of the art multitouch guitar. The body, is well finished with ABS. The player puts theirs hands in the same places you would on a guitar but the lack of strings and presence of multitouch makes it something different.

But wait a minute. Why do we need it?

Here’s what the founder has to say about traditional guitars

Guitars by their very nature have limitations. To create sound you need to hit a string, so that the sound at its most intense point is always the beginning of the pluck. The left hand controls what notes to play, and the right hand controls when to play these notes and the intensity of the notes. Effects can be inserted into the signal chain, but they are usually foot pedals which makes the experience of controlling effects disjointed from what your hands are doing. Plus, you can only really make use of one pedal at a time. Even in the (rare) case that controls are mounted on the guitar, the hand needs to switch between strings and controls. This may be okay if you only use effects occasionally, but when every note you play needs the controls set differently – good luck with that.

Basically, the fret is emulated by 144 sensors spread over 24 fret positions, six lying in each. Ofcourse you don’t strum with your right hand but rather uses the multitouch screen to control the inputs.

Touchpad controls:

• Digitizer filter
• note velocity
• pitch

The UI looks solid, something that can’t be explained in words, you wil have to see it for yourself:

The Concept:

The Misa digital guitar software is open source, and powered by the Linux operating system. This means programmers have the flexibility to modify how it works, and even change the interface to provide specific functionality. This is important because collaboration from the users themselves, experimenting and innovating in their own ways, will further improve the instrument.

The Misa digital guitar is a MIDI controller. It must be plugged into a MIDI capable sound module. The sound of this instrument is limited only by what you connect to it.

Specifications: Linux kernel 2.6.31 (Gentoo); 24 frets; touchscreen;

It is powered by  AMD Geode processor. That means this is open source waiting to see your own innovation. Other specs include MIDI out; Ethernet; and SSH server.

Get on, start writing code to get that beat.

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