In the lecture notes on waves, we have shown that the waves on a plucked guitar string are transverse standing waves consisting of a linear superposition (i.e. sum) of harmonics of the fundamental (first harmonic) with the fundamental itself. A first-order mathematical description of the shape of the overall waveform of the transverse standing wave on a plucked guitar string is a triangle, or s...

This paper presents a new engineering approach to audio clipping preamplifier that can be used for the tone modification and volume control of electronic devices. The approach consists of a unique design based on a summation amplifier, Silicon Controlled Rectifiers (SCR) and RC networks that enables signal gain, improved frequency response, tone modification and signal shape clipping. The propo...

In this paper we approach the synthesis of the slide guitar, which is a particular play mode of the guitar where continuous tuning of the tones is achieved by sliding a metal or glass piece, the bottleneck, along the strings on the guitar neck side. The bottleneck constitues a unilateral constraint for the string vibration. Dynamics is subject to friction, scraping, textured displacement and co...

The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green. They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar." And they said then, "But play, you must, A tune beyond us, yet ourselves, A tune upon the blue guitar Of things exactly as they are." Wallace Stevens (1982) In this piecemeal essay ...

A platform for manipulation and examination the acoustic guitar is presented, based on a novel guitar design – the Chameleon Guitar – featuring a replaceable acoustic resonator functioning as the soundboard of the instrument. The goal of the design process is to create a tone as sonically close to that of a traditional guitar as possible, while maintaining an easily replaceable soundboard. An i...

People with a physical handicap are often not able to engage and embrace the world of music on the same terms as normal functioning people. Traditional musical instruments have been refined over the last centuries, developing highly specialized and powerful interfaces; but nearly all require two functioning hands. In this study we try to enable people with Hemiplegia to play a real electrical g...

Each acoustic instrument is one of a kind. Its unique acoustic properties are transferred from the physical characteristics of its source materials and a handcrafted touch. In contrast, electronic and computer-based instruments lack this distinguishing trait. Though the technology support in music instruments offers great flexibility, it tends to foster predictable and generic results, particul...

In this paper, we propose a method for improving the accuracy of MIDI guitars. MIDI guitars are useful tools for various purposes from inputting MIDI data to enjoying a jam session system, but existing MIDI guitars do not have sufficient accuracy in converting the performance to an MIDI form. In this paper, we make an attempt on improving the accuracy of a MIDI guitar by integrating it with an ...

This paper describes a technique to transform the sound of an arbitrarily selected magnetic pickup into another pickup selection on the same electric guitar. This is a first step towards replicating an arbitrary electric guitar timbre in an audio recording using the signal from another guitar as input. We record 1458 individual notes from the pickups of a single guitar, varying the string, fret...