The Self-Tuning Guitar

CowboyRobot writes "With the TransPerformance Performer you push a button to activate a mechanical re-tensioning of the strings to any of a few hundred tunings, 'accurate to within 2 cents over the entire tuning range', in a couple of seconds. They can even refit your existing guitar. There's a long audio interview with Jimmy Page on the site. It's funny to hear him speak."

Cool, but

[dreamchaser]

This is really cool. However, maybe I'm showing my age here in that I'm not sure I really like the idea. I've been playing for 25 years (since I was 12) and IMHO a huge part of learning to play is developing a good ear and being able to tune your instrument by hand. I never cared for electronic tuners for the same reason.

That being said, since I *can* tune by ear, I probably wouldn't mind the convenience of being able to 'dial in' whatever tuning I want.

Let's just make sure that newbs learn things right before you let them have one of these ;-)

Just what we need

[AlgoRhythm]

well my first reaction was "Great! More tone deaf 'musicians' who can't even tune thier own guitars ... at least they'll just suck instead of also being out of tune."

But then I remembered I fellow I used to play with who was enamoured with oddball tunings. I would have loved to get him one of these, because he had to change tunings so often that the audience would get bored in between songs. Wouldn't have been so bad if the guy had had a pesonality to keep them entertained with ... guess that's why I USED to play with him.

Professionals only, please

[The Fun Guy]

The FAQ says it costs about $4000 to retrofit it onto your guitar. This is not for your average guy who plucks a bit on the weekends.

Accurate within two cents?

[mtrupe]

Big deal- I'll tune it myself. Whenever I need to tune its usually because I am less than 2 cents out of tune anyway (unless my guitar has been re-strung or not played in a while).

Besides, who would want that big nasty thing on a Beautiful Taylor, Les Paul, or Strat? Its a cool toy, but I don't see much use for performers.

i teach bass....

[musikit]

and i meet students all the time that don't want to learn to tune because of digital tuners. i would imagine how "bad" music would sound when they can figure out they can just press a button to retune their guitar. people listen. you ear tune to train your ear.

Re:I wonder...

[kinnell]

to them it is such and art and about what they hear

Tuning is a science, not an art. Either the guitar is in tune, or it's not. If it's not, it sounds wrong. An out of tune guitar sounds bad, period. The only issue I can see, is if the tuning mechanism affects the tone, but this is unlikely, if they've designed it properly.

Can a computer really tune to the level that they can hear it needs to be tuned to for them?

I'll wager a computer can tune a lot better than most guitarists.

Re:Cool, but

[cozziewozzie]

Tuning by ear is great, if you're playing for yourself. If, however, you are playing with others, it takes quite a while to get all of you in tune, and you usually get out of tune by the end of the first song. Especially if you rehearse daily and play live often, it can become a pain.

I agree that developing a good ear is important, but when you're paying huge $$$ for the rehearsal room, or have 300 people listening to you, you don't want to spend half of your time tuning your guitar. It's something all guitar players can do by ear, but shouldn't have to keep doing it over and over again.

People...

[ProudClod]

Don't seem to understand what this product is for. It's not for tonedeaf idiots who can't tune a guitar.

It's for professionals, who want to expand their sound by being able to change tuning midsong and at a rate of a tone a second, so that you can get effects and changes in sound that are impossible on a normal guitar tuning headstock (believe me, I just tried to emulate this video with my guitar: http://www.selftuning.com/video/video.html )

I think the price tag of 3300$-3899$ says it all really.

Re:Bridge

[SoTuA]

If they are to affect the tuning, they should be more like "lengthening or shortening the string" that "raising or lowering the string". The effects on string action(*) should be negligible... of course, this assumes you have your guitar mostly in tune, as if you are grossly out of tune you will need BIG bridge movements to compensate.

(*)action: Shortest distance from the strings to the fingerboard.

Re:Even more fabulous

[MyFourthAccount]

Interesting read. I liked this quote:

"From a pragmatic point of view I think it's an absolutely appalling idea. It would put me out of a job," says Martin Surrey, who tunes pianos for the English National Opera company.

No shit, Sherlock.

Welcome to the world of automation. The other 99.9999% of the population has had their work been influenced by it for a couple of decades now.

Guitarist's are traditionalists

[goatan]

this is unlikley to be popular Most guitarists are traditionalists valves are our main preference whilst transistors are devil spawn in an amp.

The only people likley to buy this are those who use a lot of diffrent tunnings in performance, but then they have to weight this against the likley reduction in the guitar's worth. I dont' think it would be worth forking out money to reduce the value of your pride and joy it might be the sort of thing i would put into my epiphone but never my strat. Didn't see a price on the site but some one mentiond $4000 at that price you could buy 3-4 gibson les pauls or 2 cornford hellcat amps, when compared to that it's not value for money at all. This isn't going to be worth it for the majority of players who use just one or two tunnings as you can get electric tuners for 5 that tune just as accuratley if not more so.

I can see this being right up jimmy page's street but it's not going sell big.

Re:Jimmy Page

[eggoeater]

I agree...some people listen to some of his solo lines and think "that sounds sloppy." True. But they kept it because it had feeling. If there's any doubt about his ability to play FLAWLESSLY, just listen to Bron-Yr-Aur, which is played in an ALTERNATE TUNING!!! I tried to learn it once.... I gave up. Too hard. (...and I use to be able to play most Van Halen stuff.)
Jimmy Page is an amazing guitar player.
-Steve
-----
This Sig best viewed in a drunken stupor.

Re:Sweetness...

[Vagrant]

I think his complaint is that F is the hardest chord to barre since it is so close to the nut. Depending on the guitar action and your hand strength, it is sometimes impossible to strum a clean crisp F.
To the original poster ... try a different guitar, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Re:Sweetness...

[Noah Adler]

Now if only they could get one to automatically play a real F

Maybe you should consider PRACTICING a little bit instead of looking to technology to make you a rock star.

If automation is really the way you want to go, there are even better [fisher-price.com] guitars out there with your name on them. They don't stop at a mere F chord, they'll play the whole damn song for you! Rock star in a box!

But really, is an F honestly that hard to play? ;-)

Re:I wonder...

[iomud]

I'm pretty sure this is why the Boss TU-2 has bypass so you can tune without other people listening even in the middle of a song during a drum solo or breakdown what have you. Visual feedback so you don't even have to be able to hear to tune properly.

butterface guitar

[carpe_noctem]

Jesus, who designed this damn thing? It looks like someone glued a harmonica onto a les paul.

I like the idea of having embedded electronics in guitars, but when you get down to it, it's a really dumb idea. A guitar is a musical instrument, that can be played for years and years. A circuit board will be obsolete by next christmas.... why would you want to disgrace a 3,000$ guitar with some cheap silicon junk? Let the effects processors do the processing and tuning, and the guitar just play the damn music.

Re:Sweetness...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, since re-tuning is now possible in very short time, you could just tune all the strings up a half tone when you need an F, fret an E and tune the strings back down when you're done with it. :)

An even better idea for incompetent auto-tuning guitar owners would be to add an open F tuning to the tunings list. That would enable them to play clean F chords to their hearts' content.

Re:vocalists

[nfotxn]

And soon they will be replaced with vocal synthesizers like Vocaloid [zero-g.co.uk] that will allow future Britneys and Justins to focus sorely on being pretty and making wadrobes "malfunction".

Idoru anyone?

Re:Sorry for the rant, but really!!!

[Queuetue]

I don't think this is a laziness device. I think it's intended as a retune-during-performance device, to dramtically increase a single guitar's playable range.

I'm reasonably sure that Jimmy Page knows how to tune a guitar.

Re:Sweetness...

[Keebler71]

The key to a good bar chord isn't the index finger,.. it is your THUMB! The thumb gives you the leverage you need to bear down with your index finger across all 6 strings equally. Most people press their thumb into the neck of the guitr closer to the side with the big-E string. This results in good contact on the E and A strings, but the higher strings will probably be too loose to get a good tone. Try moving the point where you apply thumb pressure on the back of the neck closer to the higher strings. It may help to 'slightly' rotate your index finger so that you are using a little of the harder 'side' of the finger rather than the meaty palm site of the finger.

Re:I wonder...

[cozziewozzie]

Your post was unreasonably aggressive and full of BS. I won't flame you back, just point out a few things:

- Electric tuners do not sit next to your amp and you can use them without anyone in the audience noticing.
- If you turn your guitar/amp down so the audience doesn't hear it, you probably won't hear it either. Do you know how the sound is wired at a gig?
- Re-tuning a string or two doesn't mean that you won't go out of tune with your other bandmates.
- Many professional players DO have tuners and use them during gigs, because only children think it's so badass to demonstrate your tuning ninja skills on stage.

Re:vocalists

[TheTomcat]

So, where's the line?

Should everything be live, off-the-floor, with a pair of large diaphragm mics (stereo), running into a 2-track?

What about drum loops? Can they be "trusted"? What if said loops are sampled as opposed to composed?

Or delay pedals? How about live-built guitar loops? Or a lead singer doing his own backup vocals? Is it ok to mic an accoustic guitar at the sound hole, AND at the base of the neck? How about something as simple as an EQ? Or reverb that DOESN'T come from a 30 foot tall, rock-lined iso.?

I'm not disagreeing with you, but.. there IS no line, AFAICT... gray areas..

I say, do what you need to do to make the recording sound as good as possible -- "good" being an artsy term, not a scientific one. And remember, there is much value in knowing that good album mixing/production is more than just setting up some mics, and moving the faders to the right levels?

S

Not meant for beginners

[sydbarrett74]

Whilst this may be a boon for experienced guitarists, it's a disaster for those just starting out. Learning to tune your own guitar teaches you pitch and trains your ears. Any musician worth his/her salt can quickly tune an instrument using the grey matter betwixt the ears and nothing else.

Re:vocalists

[kin_korn_karn]

I think we agree, basically.

Look at it this way. Rush recorded "La Villa Strangiato" (a 9-minute masturbatory instrumental that goes through a bunch of time signatures, if you're not familiar with the song) in one take, live, with no overdubbing or editing. They had it all together and knew what they were going to do well before the tape got rolling.

Today, they would probably record one part at a time and an engineer would cut and paste it together and smooth out the transitions with a plugin.

It's hard to know whether you should respect a band's musicianship or not because it's too easy to fake it now.

Now, whether you like Rush or not (most people don't and I don't want to get into that) you can't argue with their technical musicianship. Sure, they could have faked part of it then, but you couldn't cut and paste portions of individual tracks without loss like you can with today's systems and someone with good trained ears would be able to hear it.

Zappa used to say that the studio was where the composition gets perfected, so there's no shame in using studio tricks to enhance your music. I agree with that, but to me as an anal semi-purist I don't think you should use studio tricks to CREATE your music.

Re:Even more fabulous

[errxn]

Not only did Sonic Youth experiment with alternate tunings, they would also stick things like screwdrivers in the strings and play out of tune on purpose sometimes. They were one of a handful of bands from that genre that could actually make the noise and dissonance they created work. Interesting stuff.

Re:Alternate Tunings

[forgotmypassword]

Ummm the blues?

Blue notes?

Does nobody play the blues anymore?

Wow, a whole genre died and nobody told me.

Re:Sweetness...

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? 99% of all pop music is dumb simple and played on those first 5 frets! I would say that is where ALL the money is!