One of my neighbors on the 3rd floor of the MIT Media Lab, Amit Zoran, has been working on a great idea that has been getting a lot of press about his thesis project, which makes my job sharing it with you easier. I just wanted to highlight it here and encourage you to read about it. I think he’s onto something.
His idea is to use a real guitar (strings and real resonators that are interchangeable) as a sound source for synthesis, which then can be extrapolated to model a whole guitar body made of the resonator material (or really then do anything with the sound). Amit is a true craftsman, and his resonators are artistic as well as interesting sonically. Several times a day as I’m walking to the cafe room I get to see him whittling away on these things. Last week for a few days there was a smashed guitar on the bench. I almost always approve of smashed guitars.
I love it here.
This is a really good idea and is, I guess, the next logical step with modeling, after amp and mic modeling. There is a real need for something like this for getting acoustic guitars to sound good in a live situation. Currently the only solutions are mic-ing, which has a limited range of motion (and other inherent problems), and pickups, which sound like sound like suck and nothing like an acoustic guitar. I remember Roger Manning used to bring along a graphic EQ on his tours so he could tease a better sound out of his thin sounding pickup, but that always took forever to set up. Hopefully they are also thinking about modeling resonator (Dobro) and banjo resonators. That would be extra cool.
i’ll mention it.
It is very promising especially when he talks about the unknown sound possibilities.
The way I see it, emulating the sound of the acoustic guitar/banjo/dobro is of little importance comparatively since this only allows for amplification benefits and not the emergence of a new sound such as what the invention of the electric guitar brought about.