Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I figure since I have so many crazy projects on the go that I ought to create a subject type for it. Anyway, when I saw Clay Skeets at BMEfest (watch for thousands of images later today in the gallery; I'll post about that later), he asked me about the old Warlock guitar that he gave me years ago.

It doesn't stay in tune very well so I'm retrofitting it as a USB controller, so the computer can tell which frets are in play, and when the string is struck by the pick… I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to hack a parallel cable, hack a keyboard, hack a multi-channel DA converter, or put together something custom. I wish I had more time, money, and/or partners in crime and invention.

In any case, with this project, the end goal is to build a guitar that still works as a real guitar even if poorly, just to retain feel (if possible — I'm thinking of using the strings as a part of the switch mechanism since it's an easy metal-on-metal contact point), andI'll write some accompanying software that let's you input tablature files and play a far more realistic version of the Guitar Hero video game.

I also need to build a friend for Johnny Boner…