Synth guitars

http://www.blemby.com/gallery/images/cripples-4.JPG
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Who do you think first thought of this idea?

My vote: EDGAR WINTER!! check out the old gray whistle test dvd for a great live version of Frankenstein w/ lil' rick derrenger on guitar.

I almost died when i realized that rick and the bass player looked like Merry and Pippen from LOTR, and Edgar Winter ? Gandalf the White!

Woot woot!

Yes indeed.

Yes, people still use them.

Midi guitar != keyboard you wear round your neck, fules!

Pat Metheny, Jerry Garcia, Trey Anastasio, Charlie Hunter and others also used these kind of things. I think all of the members of late period King Crimson had their instruments wired with this kind of setup.

http://www.hollis.co.uk/john/synthaxe.html

http://www.artistdirect.com/showcase/modern/photos/sixfi.gif

What's real freaky is this thread has "14 new answers, 13 total".

Proprietary algorhythm.

Anyway...

Bob Mould's usage of guitar played through a keyboard in "Egoveride": CLASSIC.

-- Ian Christe (ia...) (webmail), March 15th, 2004. (Ian Christe)

What a fantastic band shot that is.

(Never heard it, actually, but supposedly there's guitar synth all over it.)

it's those wild high-pitched synthy sweeps, kind'a out'a control sounding, even if guitar synths were hard to control in those days

(as to "6 finger sattelite", imo, those instruments & poses do not disguise or excuse that group's inability to produce anything but the most simplistic banal garbage)

i'm being curious, not argumentative -- i like the sounds Belew makes, but since it's a synth at the end of so many keyboard or guitar (driven) synths i find it hard to tell precisely who's playing what noise

it would be nice to know what ring modulators too, for instance, as they're effects i associate more exclusively with synths from that period, though i certainly wasn't hanging around those studios so i imagine there were free standing ring mods from that era too (and that's a moot point really anyway)

(and i associate those single warm siney tone lines with a synth, guitar or otherwise, even if the synth includes a ring modulator which i think of as adding a much more transient flickery sound, but I can imagine one of them creating that grainy feedback-like Belew sound too)

more trivially, do you think that still means he should be called a guitar player or a "guitar + treatments" guy ? (i'm going to have to dig up that "Lone Rhino" album, even if it is a bit late)

I haven't followed his career in years, but I have always understood him as primarily a guitar player rather than a guitar + treatments guy -- most of his tricks have as much to do with how he manipulates the strings as with how sound is processed afterwards.

NONE OF THESE ARE KEYTARS.

The early 80s Roland guitar synths (GR-300) were analog and used a type of CV to control them.

Andy Summers also used that model.

From the sound of it, Gibson is betting the bank on this HEX / MaGIC system, putting ethernet cables in all new guitars.

You play an "A" MIDIed to a string patch and your brother's Outkast sample comes out, sort of thing.

That's the big advantage of wired-fret systems: tracking is much better, and they're not thrown by bent strings. The disadvantage, of course, is that bent strings don't register AT ALL.

I think the typical "guitar synth" sound is one of the few last strongholds of cheesiness that I can't breach.

What do you mean by "guitar synth" sound exactly?

When a guitar is played through midi synths on traditional synth sound settings and you get that kind of near-synth but thinner and bendier end product. I particularly associated it with certain jazz fusion guitarists during the 80s and 90s.

I realize "guitar synth" can be a lot broader since you could play midi guitar through pretty much anything, but that's what I'm thinking of.

Can you post an example?

will later

OK!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GtbBmNEEWg

yeah, he was a name that came to mind, and Mike Stern

Holdsworth is so weird -- I don't think there's ever been a greater talent who had a worse concept of what sounds good

Uh, OK, I am not familiar with this stage in the development of guitar technology, and not too unhappy to have missed out on it tbh.

Wasn't there a quote from - Zappa? Can't be Zappa. But it was something like "why would a first rate guitarist want to sound like a third rate saxophonist?"

Like, here, people forget Adrian Belew is on this track. Granted, he is a special exception, but here (2:10?) on the/a bridge I think he is playing guitar synth to sound like sort of fake horn stabs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGEz7fwcmlY

Why not just get a synth to do it?

But then, listen to this Lloyd Cole track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMdyuUk94Ao

It's not guitar synth, likely some variety of compression, but it is functionally the same concept and super cool.

It's super fun, though, to control synths with virtual touchscreen fretboards in iOS. I get into a nice L Shankar/Jon Hassell place with that shit

I love the sound you're talking about on the Simon track, although I never had any idea what it was. But I think it's far enough from sounding like third-rate horns to not be in uncanny valley territory.

Also worth noting that a lot of now standard effects pedals were developed to evoke other instruments (I remember somewhere hearing that either distortion or fuzz was developed to imitate saxophones). But like I said, uncanny valley.

guitar synths different from synth guitars, ie. the DIST. GUIT setting on your Casio keyboard. i just wanted to rep for those cos they are cool.

wait which is which

oic synth guitar = synth trying to sound like a guitar, whereas guitar synth = using your guitar as a quasi-interface for a synth

yeah. guitar as a sample rather than guitar as sampler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsYeH3Md0VE

I remember David Byrne in a maybe 1985 magazine piece saying that he was using the Roland guitar synth as a normal guitar cause he liked how it played.

jerry garcia played around with this stuff, it was pretty bad.

http://pascalmartos.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/lee_ritenour-earth_run2.jpg

haha i actually don't mind the cheesy holdsworth sound. the garcia stuff with midi guitar is a whole different kind of wack. can't find an example on youtube...

http://line6.com/fm4/

This is my favorite pedal. Sorry.

Why not just get a synth to do it?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, January 22, 2016 8:55 AM (3 hours ago)

because you prefer playing a guitar to using a keyboard or turning knobs?

"I remember David Byrne in a maybe 1985 magazine piece saying that he was using the Roland guitar synth as a normal guitar cause he liked how it played."

Yeah, the Matsumoku-built GR-303 (Matsumoku was the factory that built Aria, Vantage, Westone, and a few other cheap-but-terrific brands in the 80s) was a very fine guitar, much better than the Ibanez-built predecessor.

xpost Hey, I like guitar synths and processed guitar in general. Love Fripp, Belew and other dudes who do the impossible. You can do some really cool things. But sounding like another instrument, let alone another processed instrument, is pretty hit or miss. The jaggedness of guitars passed through analog synths in particular, a la what Eno does to guitars a lot (see: Manzanera's awesome solo on John Cale's "Gun"), is pretty great. But guitar synths? There is often something as innately gross about them, like the Yamaha DX7's presets.

Why not just get a synth to do it?

Guitar synth is is a synth. There's nothing more inherently 'synthy' about using a keyboard as a controller.

Idk, the Holdsworth/Metheny guitar synth thing = fun for me, even if it may not be the most adventurous thing you could do with that technology.

Where does the Moog guitar fit in with all this?

The jaggedness of guitars passed through analog synths in particular, a la what Eno does to guitars a lot (see: Manzanera's awesome solo on John Cale's "Gun"), is pretty great.

Surprised "Who Are You" hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread. Townshend wrote that he nearly "blew my brains out" coming up with the exact patch/sound/filters he was looking for, but obviously came up with something pretty enduring.

https://youtu.be/bmt-DotAZB4

I always liked the look of this early Roland guitar synth. It's like a Gibson Explorer meets ski equipment.

http://guitar-addiction.co.uk/images/2369612751_8811313a47.jpg

Surprised "Who Are You" hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread. Townshend wrote that he nearly "blew my brains out" coming up with the exact patch/sound/filters he was looking for, but obviously came up with something pretty enduring.

Wow, somehow I never knew that was guitar synth.

The pic earlnash posted were the ones Judas Priest used circa Turbo

The one truly excellent use of synth guitar in popular music that I can think of is Chuck Hammer's contribution to Bowie's Ashes to Ashes. The pad sounds throughout, as well as the solo at the end, were created with a Roland GR-500. There's a hauntingly delicate quality to the instrument's timbres, that I would imagine derives in part from the fact that the performer controls it via strings rather than a piano-style keyboard.

Why not just get a synth to do it?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, January 22, 2016 8:55 AM (3 hours ago)

because you prefer playing a guitar to using a keyboard or turning knobs?
― sarahell, Friday, January 22, 2016 2:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah I'm a pretty solid guitar player and a hunt and peck "new order melody line" level on keyboard

This is a pretty awesome solo in general and one of my favorites by Pat Metheny. It just continues to build and build. Two different guitar synth patches, one that sounds vaguely like a melodica/harmonica and then the solo has a muted trumpet sound although both with a warm analog synth blanket.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6I02UdoT6w

(Psst: the melodica sound is Lyle Mays' keyboard.)