The End For Guitarists: A Machine That Plays Guitars

An incredible technological effort from Georgia Tech Institute   01-Aug-13

Imagine our delight in the office when we stumbled over a machine that actually plays guitar all by itself. As guitarists, we can just put our feet up, press a button, and let the machine do the work for us.

Boffins at the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Engineering built a machine called the Crazy J, which can fret and pluck notes, and is programmed using a MIDI sequencer.

The routing goes from the MIDI sequencer, into a HC11 and then the control board and power board which together control the solenoids and switches responsible for fretting and plucking.

Teflon plectrums are powered by the solenoids, and if the sound clips on the Crazy J website are anything to go by, it can certainly do the job.

The machine doesn't cover the entire fretboard, but it is able to play a total of 29 notes. Personally we'd love to see a video of it in action.

You can listen to it here.

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@sonicamped