2012 NAMM Show: Antares has announced Auto-Tune for Guitar, a new hardware DSP system, about the size of a business card, that is designed to be installed in a guitar and provide real-time tuning and pitch processing.
Auto-Tune for Guitar technology is designed both to provide automatic tuning and new creative playing options, such as alternate tunings.
Features:
- Tuning – You can tune all six strings instantly with the push of a button (no motors or gears required). Simply strum the strings, trigger String Tuning via a button or foot switch, and your guitar is instantly in tune.
- Intonation correction – Auto-Tune for Guitar equipped guitar constantly monitors the precise pitch of each individual string and makes any corrections necessary to ensure that every note of every chord and riff is always in tune, regardless of variables like finger position or pressure or physical limitations of the instrument.
- Alternate tunings – Auto-Tune for Guitar lets you quickly select from among familiar alternate tunings as well as tunings that would be physically impossible without Auto-Tune for Guitar.
- Pickup modeling – Antares’ proprietary modeling technology lets you select a guitar/pickup combo and then select from the pickup configurations that would be available on the original guitar.
Antares is partnering with guitar manufacturers to incorporate its Auto-Tune technology. Expect products from Peavey and Parker soon.
Uhhh… it really isn’t that hard to tune a guitar, even while I’m playing it. The tech is cool I guess, but is this really a problem for anyone? And I don’t know any guitarist who would be willing to let his axe be completely out of tune just to use this thing. The neat stuff is how you can adjust tunings on the fly… that could be useful. But will the tech be cheaper than just having a second guitar tuned the way you want it?
intonation correction is a good thing, though. any guitar without buzz feiten tuning system or similar will have problems sounding in tune with both open chords and barre chords. this system takes care of that.
People aren’t going to use this to keep their guitar in tune, they’re going to use it to keep their solo in tune! Now guys like Lil Wayne or the latest indie buzzband can rip epic solos and always be in key. Also this takes all the awkwardness of playing to a backing track out of performing for those aging rockers who just can’t be arsed to keep their skill up, now they just have to get the notes somewhere in the ballpark and wham, bam, autotune does the rest, the audience cheers and everybody goes home happy.
It’s nowhere near that simple. This alone will not allow people to play faster, have better phrasing, or make better note choices. It will, however, keep their guitars in tune. Guitars have frets; hitting the notes is never a problem like it can be with singing. Keeping the instrument in tune can be a problem, however.
Of course it will let people play faster because if you miss and you’re off by a semi-tone it just puts you back where you should be. People will abuse this, just wait. Auto-tune was originally just to fix up a couple missed notes in a long passed recording session not turn non-singers into rnb crooners, but if you lived the last decades you know that was exactly how it was used.
How will it cope with pitch bend? Oops, that’s one popular expressive technique out of the window. One more step from “guitar player” to “Guitar Hero”.
Presumably it handles pitch bend, doesn’t say anywhere it doesn’t. This isn’t cheating, guitars are already pitched instruments and need to be in tune regardless of skill level (and as far as i’m aware guitar hero uses 5 buttons to convey this). Vocals on the other hand have the potential to be all over the place and it takes actual skill to be able to sing perfectly to pitch.