The Misa Digital Kitara, an open source, Linux-powered MIDI controller, brings shredding to the 21st century by dumping traditional guitar strings for buttons and a futuristic touch screen.

Update – on sale at Sweetwater for $1,099

So what’s it about?

So, in a nutshell how does it work? As a parallel to a traditional guitar: If you strum hard on guitar with strings, you play a loud note. If you strum softly, you play a soft note. Whereas on the digital guitar, if you tap on the left side of the screen you play a note with an effect parameter knob turned more to the left and if you tap to the right side of the screen the note is played with the knob turned to the right. Similarly with the top and bottom of the screen. Since there are two axis’ (X/Y) you can actually control two parameters at once.

Some guitarists really don’t like change. They think modifying a guitar is “blasphemy”. But in my opinion, the most influential musicians and artists have always strived to be different, and sound different. When Jimi Hendrix came out, isn’t it true the traditional blues players thought his music was just noise? When Eddie Van Halen started in ’78 he faced a lot of criticism too – especially when Van Halen released their “1984” album which featured… the synthesizer, and Eddie the “Guitar God” playing it!

Anyway, back to electronic music. Live electronic music is in the realm of the DJ – which is okay, but I’ve always wanted to see live bands play electronic music. That is what this instrument is about.

DETAILS

The guitar itself is CNC machined out of solid ABS plastic. This is an extremely solid body, not like injection moulded plastic which is thin, lightweight and hollow. The screen is an 8.4″ LCD 800×600 resolution. The CPU is a 500MHz x86 compatible AMD Geode which makes life easier, I guess. The operating system is Gentoo Linux which I’ve stripped down to be as lean as possible. Graphics (framebuffer access) is done with DirectFB which acts as a fast layer on top of the hardware. The neck is 144 “keycaps” sitting on top of a special keymat that I had tooled. They are not pressure sensitive – but I made the decision early on not to include this because I don’t feel it is neccessary, it would make the instrument harder to play and less reliable.

HOW IT WORKS

Even though the digital guitar itself runs Linux, it is compatible across ALL major operating systems, because it is MIDI compatible. The Linux side is just for the brains of the guitar. Some people have been asking whether you need a Linux PC and the answer is no! So as long as you plug it in to a MIDI compatible sound module / sound card, it will work. So to clarify – if you intend to connect the Misa digital guitar in to your PC, you will need a MIDI port or a USB<->MIDI adaptor!

The PC is one thing this digital guitar will connect to, but it also will connect to synthesizers and samplers. It is MIDI compatible, and just about every synthesizer on the market today has MIDI. It is a standard that has been around for over 20 years.

THE TOUCHSCREEN

The touchscreen measures an x/y coordinate pair. You assign these axis’ to “MIDI CC Parameters”. To explain this better: Lets say you are using some sequencing software on your PC, like Propellerhead Reason. And there is a synth you are using that has for example a “distortion” knob. Well did you know that knob is assigned a number by Reason (and you can change it) – but lets say its number 16, then that means the knob has a CC param of 16. All you need to do is go in the digital guitar config menu, change the x axis to “16” and suddenly when you drag your finger back and forth along the x axis of the screen it fades the knob on the PC! This is all standard MIDI, nothing fancy.

So as soon as you touch the screen, you can immediately have two parameters changed simultaneously. In the video on youtube, I have the X axis set to a “digitaliser filter” which makes the sound more crushed, and the Y axis set to note velocity. This is why when you hear me tap at the top of the screen there is a soft “mute” sound, and then when I tap at the bottom of the screen its a louder sound. And as I tap further to my right, the sound becomes more distorted. Notice how at no point do I have to strum and then move a knob – it is a single touch only. That is the key to this instrument. There’s also a blob in the centre of the screen: that’s another controller that lets you control another two settings – the difference is you have to drag this blob to make it work. In the video I used it as a whammy (pitch). So all in all 4 parameters are at your immediate disposal. It’s probably more than enough but if you ever wanted more, you just have to modify my source code!

OPTIONS

Many people have asked about options. Black and white are the two initial body colours to choose from.

There are no other options, really. Because the software is open source I’m hoping people completely change the instrument and share new “firmware” with others. Different graphics, different control ideas etc. It would all be free of charge. So I’m hoping that happens as the instrument becomes more familiar. For example, the next thing I would like to see is OSC output. OSC is like a more advanced version of MIDI, and while I haven’t implemented it, the ethernet socket is there and fully functional so I imagine it wouldn’t be that hard.

PRICE

There will be one set price, to be announced hopefully in the next 24-48 hours.