How I Built a Guitar Picking Robot
The idea came to me while listening to a great Seattle guitarist, the late Klaus Lendzian, at a favorite local restaurant. I had heard him play at various venues around town since the 1980s.
Watching him play I thought, "He's really good. Lyrical, great sense of timing. Wow, I wish I could play like that. What makes it all work is his right hand , his picking hand. It's like a machine."
A machine, I thought at the time. I can build a machine.
Above: The current version of the Guitar Robot, in action
Why build a guitar picking robot?Here are some of my reasons, in no particular order:
I've been playing guitar, off and on, for over 40 years. At this point, I'm a semi-competent flatpicking guitarist. But I've always been interested in the sound of fingerpicking. I am 65 years old. Do I still have 40 years to learn fingerpicking? I wanted to be able to play patterns on the guitar that would be difficult or impossible for me to play. Or for almost anyone to play. (Notwithstanding John McLaughlin or Yvette Young.) I am a writer and software developer. I type a lot and my hands and wrists wear out. My sense of rhythm is poor.What does this all mean? I need help playing the guitar. So I build a prosthesis to help me, just like I wear glasses to improve my myopia.
Why didn't I just switch to using MIDI instruments? There are some really good guitar sims out there, after all. It wasn't what I wanted.
What I want is the sound of the guitar string, vibrating through the air, under the influence of other vibrations, and my fingers, in a room, from an amp, through the body and neck of the guitar.
At the same time, I wanted something I could interact with, an extended instrument. Not just something that would play a given song at the press of a button. I think that would be boring. I think interaction and improvisation is where the music happens, and I'm not particularly interested in "songs".
When my friend Jon Singer talks about one of his current obsessions (building organic dye lasers or glow-in-the-dark ceramics, for example), he says, "It just grabs me by the throat." This project has stuck with me for a long time.
I haven't strictly tracked the number of versions of the guitar bot I've built. At least 20 years old, over 16 years old.
Over the years I have used Microchip PIC microcontrollers and various Arduino platform devices to control the robot, but recently upgraded to a Pimoroni Servo 2040 - this board combines an RP2040 microcontroller and servo controllers. I am using CircuitPython to program the board.
The program is very simple - when a MIDI note comes in, choose the string. I use the range from E-1 (MIDI note 16) for the low E string to A-1 (21) for the high E string. THE...
The idea came to me while listening to a great Seattle guitarist, the late Klaus Lendzian, at a favorite local restaurant. I had heard him play at various venues around town since the 1980s.
Watching him play I thought, "He's really good. Lyrical, great sense of timing. Wow, I wish I could play like that. What makes it all work is his right hand , his picking hand. It's like a machine."
A machine, I thought at the time. I can build a machine.
Above: The current version of the Guitar Robot, in action
Why build a guitar picking robot?Here are some of my reasons, in no particular order:
I've been playing guitar, off and on, for over 40 years. At this point, I'm a semi-competent flatpicking guitarist. But I've always been interested in the sound of fingerpicking. I am 65 years old. Do I still have 40 years to learn fingerpicking? I wanted to be able to play patterns on the guitar that would be difficult or impossible for me to play. Or for almost anyone to play. (Notwithstanding John McLaughlin or Yvette Young.) I am a writer and software developer. I type a lot and my hands and wrists wear out. My sense of rhythm is poor.What does this all mean? I need help playing the guitar. So I build a prosthesis to help me, just like I wear glasses to improve my myopia.
Why didn't I just switch to using MIDI instruments? There are some really good guitar sims out there, after all. It wasn't what I wanted.
What I want is the sound of the guitar string, vibrating through the air, under the influence of other vibrations, and my fingers, in a room, from an amp, through the body and neck of the guitar.
At the same time, I wanted something I could interact with, an extended instrument. Not just something that would play a given song at the press of a button. I think that would be boring. I think interaction and improvisation is where the music happens, and I'm not particularly interested in "songs".
When my friend Jon Singer talks about one of his current obsessions (building organic dye lasers or glow-in-the-dark ceramics, for example), he says, "It just grabs me by the throat." This project has stuck with me for a long time.
I haven't strictly tracked the number of versions of the guitar bot I've built. At least 20 years old, over 16 years old.
Over the years I have used Microchip PIC microcontrollers and various Arduino platform devices to control the robot, but recently upgraded to a Pimoroni Servo 2040 - this board combines an RP2040 microcontroller and servo controllers. I am using CircuitPython to program the board.
The program is very simple - when a MIDI note comes in, choose the string. I use the range from E-1 (MIDI note 16) for the low E string to A-1 (21) for the high E string. THE...
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