Guitar Dreams

In the first clip, the musician – jazzman John Schott – is filmed in UC Berkeley's Hertz Hall using the guitar, some foot pedals, and a Tactex touch pad (similar to a touch-sensitive mouse pad) to improvise a soundtrack for an old black-and-white film, The Acrobatic Fly. In the movie, a fly that appears to be lying on its back twirls a number of increasingly ridiculous objects (a blade of grass, a twig, a ball of paper, a mini-barbell); meanwhile, Schott improvises a frantic, animated piece to complement the playful visuals.

With this combination of technologies, Schott is able to improvise in a way that would once have been impossible. The foot pedals, hooked up to a computer, allow him to start or stop recording a loop of high, rapid notes; the Tactex pad, also connected to the computer, then allows him to manipulate the loop with one hand. He plays the guitar over the recording, creating dense layers of sound.

"You wouldn't be able to do this unless you had seven hands, because this is live," Schott says on the video. "It's the equivalent of twisting seven knobs at once. It's so cool."

In a second demonstration, Schott shows how the digital guitar can "listen" to his playing, setting off sound samples he has programmed into a computer. For example, when Schott plays the note D 10 times in the course of a song, the guitar can trigger a sample of Debussy or Coltrane, which provides another level of melody underneath his playing.

Schott says he's amazed by what the technology can do for his music. At the same time, he confides that he's a borderline Luddite and was initially skeptical of the digital guitar. (He agreed to work with CNMAT in part because it was a paid gig; despite his work on the instrument, he says he won't be able to afford the guitar when it hits music stores this year.)

"As [the guitar] was presented to me, it was along the lines of, 'You can have a fuzz box on the three low strings and a wah-wah on the top three strings!,' and that felt to me like a very uninteresting way of utilizing the technology," says Schott, who has played guitar for 30 years. "And moreover, it was a way of playing that had nothing to do with my experience of playing the guitar."

But Schott says the instrument has opened new musical doors for him. "My interest was not in duplicating things that could already be done with things found at Guitar Center," he says. "My interest was in collaborating with people who really knew what computers could do for me ... [to] collaborate with people who are really interested in the extremes of what computers are capable of, and building a computer interface that could challenge me as a musician."

Like Schott, other guitarists are likely to greet the new Gibson MaGIC with skepticism. "Guitar consumers are notoriously conservative," says Joe Gore, a Noe Valley professional guitar player who has performed with artists like Tom Waits and the Eels, and who used to edit a guitar magazine. "Between the price point [of the digital guitar] and the seeming complexity of doing the setup, I wouldn't imagine there'd be a huge user base. On the plus side, it is an interesting idea. An adventurous, tech-savvy person could no doubt get some really striking sounds out of it."

"Something like this comes out every couple years these days, and it's always resisted by musicians," adds Count, a San Francisco-based music producer. "It could be the coolest thing ever, and totally eliminate every problem ever associated with the original electric guitar, and still, it's going to take a while to catch on. Guitarists don't want to be the guy that looks uncool."

Freed, meanwhile, shrugs at the response. "I don't care [if the guitar is popular]," he says. "But it would be nice if people could enjoy what all the possibilities are there [in music]. I don't care how they get there."

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On a rainy Friday evening in mid-December, CNMAT's blue gate remains open to guests for a music performance in the building's main hall. Wessel has stationed himself at a small table next to the entrance, to greet attendees and sell $10 tickets. But as is typical of him, Wessel good-naturedly waves almost everyone in for free.

Freed, his wife, and two of their six children arrive early, taking seats scattered about the room. Donald Buchla, who made some of the first synthesizers (along with Robert Moog) and who designed a Space Age-y keypad-instrument called "Thunder" that Wessel plays, arrives minutes before the music starts. Edmund Campion, CNMAT's composer-in-residence, and his fiancee find spots in the second row. Former and current graduate students and regulars straggle in late, filling the remaining empty seats.