In the early 1980s computers were the latest thing, bleepy sounding records started appearing in the charts and the sythesizer became established in the music industry. At the same time guitar synthesizers started to appear. There were synth guitars from established keyboard synth makers like Roland, Casio, and Yamaha. There were also some quirky guitar synths from small manufacturers like the Synthaxe and the Stepp guitar.
They did not really take off as expected, perhaps because they were expensive and sometimes technically disappointing with tracking and latency problems (also harmonics, palm mutes, hammer-ons, pull-offs, pick slides are difficult to capture on a synthesizer). Guitarists also tend to be a conservative bunch (most of us are playing guitars almost identical to ones from the 1950's): we like to just plug in and play and leave the big instruction manuals to the keyboard player. However some players, like Allan Holdsworth, have made some great music with synths and the guitar synth is a way guitarists to make a wide array of sounds previously only available to keyboard players and percussionists.
Most synth guitars conform to one of two designs:
- A conventional guitar with special pickups which analyse the pitch of each string, convert this to MIDI and use this to control a synth
- A guitar shaped MIDI controller, which senses directly which strings are being fretted (like the Synthaxe).
This project describes the SUB-COMMANDER, which uses neither of these approaches. What it does is buffer your guitar's signal, create a pulse waveform (at the same frequency as the guitar) divide it's frequency in half (sub-octave generator) and generate a gate when you pluck a string so you can control the SUB-COMMANDER's AR generators. It permits you to mix the sub-octave, original signal and pulse signal and then route them through the SUB-COMMANDER's Voltage Controlled Filter and Voltage Controlled Amplifier. By doing this you can generate some very cool synthesizer-like sounds and effects for your electric guitar.
If you have a multi effects unit you should find a preset on there that will sound a bit like the SUB-COMMANDER.