A Laser Guitar, For Real?

Laser MIDI controller guitar by M3i   26-Jul-11

This is really a laser-equipped guitar! M3i announced the LPD at Summer NAMM, and the laser system is designed to interpret what's played on guitar and transfer it into a real time MIDI signal, which can be plumbed into your DAW, MIDI activated synths, or even games such as Rock Band.

Here's the technological low-down from the company:

The patent-protected LPD™ (Laser Pitch Detection) is an exciting new state of the art, breakthrough technology pitch detection system, which is able to sense the pitch of a forthcoming tone before a string is plucked by a finger or a pick. The maximum length of a guitar string, between the bridge and the nut, determines its deepest note. By shortening the string with a finger or another object along the fingerboard, higher notes are generated. The LPD™ system measures in real-time, precisely the distance between the bridge and the shortening object. It uses this information to calculate the frequency of the note that will be played.

An LPD™ equipped guitar can be used to play games like Guitar Hero® or Rockband® with the feeling of real strings instead of plastic buttons.

The collected data can be converted into MIDI signals which can be used to drive synthesizers or record directly to your DAW with notation or sequencer software.

The system can also be used to learn and practise with Smartphone applications. These are easy to develop and there are already numerous available on many popular web sites. With a Bluetooth interface the LPD™ guitar can talk directly to an iPhone® or Android® based Smartphone or any other computer based application.

http://www.m3i-technologies.com/

Rich Beech
www.StudioParanormal.com