Future quantum leap in steel design

Barry Gaskell · From: Cheshire, UK

The volume pedal has gone from mechanical to electronic, computers are controlling and succeeding mechanical devices. The piano has been superceded electronically as have drums, effects et al. What lies ahead for the pedal steel ?.
Computer controlled electro-magnets to sharpen or flatten strings, controlled by (like pianos} touch sensitive pedals that are allied to a computer that senses a pedals travel and tunes it to a pre-programmed pitch and maintains it, regardless of fluctuating temperatures. No rods or bell cranks, just sensors that continuously monitor the strings which are roughly tightened to tune and then a sensor tunes to pitch , again by electro magnets, all watched over by a miniature on board computer that you programe and set all your pedal and lever sharps and flats. You can change your pedal set up simply by re-programming your computer, you can set your pedal feel and travel for preference. Included would be all your effects and amp modelling facilities and it would be connected to your volume pedal so you could set the taper to suit. You could adjust your harmonics to an octave higher than the played one. If a string tolerance wouldn't normally allow a triple raise, you could have it raise a tone and then electronically have it raise another semi-tone. No endplate window or adjustments necessary.
The guitar weight would be drastically reduced and cabinet drop would be non existent. You could download any sound, chopedent or tuning. You could even change tunings and pedal set ups between songs.
There would be sensors that plotted and recorded digitally all the notes and chords you played that night to a hard disc so you could relisten at home and diseminate your playing.Then you could cut and paste the best bits and use them in recordings at a later date.
It does sound a bit far fetched I know, but I bet someone somwhere is thinking about it.
After all, if someone can aim a laser device at a window pane from 10 miles away and using the glass as a diaghram, hear every conversation in that room, then such a futuristic guitar seems a reasonable next step.................food for thought.

Jeremy Threlfall · From: now in Western Australia

Yep - and the servo machines could fine tune the guitar's temperament to suit the key each song is played in.

No end to the madness

Kevin Hatton · From: Buffalo, N.Y.

Bad idea. We play pedal steel guitars here Barry, not computers. They are played by humans. I notice the violin has never been computerized and still exists in it's original form. I wonder why?

Paul Redmond · From: Illinois, USA

There was a brief thread on this a few months ago. Dekley had just the system you allude to in the works when Jim Gurley got in trouble back in, I believe, 1981. He personally told me how their system was going to work and it matches what you suggest 100%. I agree. . .the violin is still a violin. As sophisticated as synthesizers have become over the years, there still is no substitute for the real thing. I can't imagine a 'synthetic' oboe or flute, or a synthetic French horn or bassoon. Those instruments are being re-created all the time today with electronics, but the 'human factor' can never be fully synthesized no matter how sophisticated the technology.
PRR

C. Christofferson · Posted 10 Apr 2007 5:16 pm

That'd be cool! By then though someone will have built a robot capable of playing it. Then we can All sit in the audience.

My site

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

I don't think servos and linear motors would be an improvement. Added expense, added weight, and reduced reliability would be key issues. The most obvious technological upgrade (to me, anyway) would be to eliminate the strings altogether, then you have no need whatsoever for the majority of the associated mechanics required to raise, lower, and tune.

The concept (which I've already worked out) is really pretty simple, but I can't divulge any of it here, or I'd lose patent rights.

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

Ha - this thread oughtta be good for a few rants. My formal training is in Physics, EE (Control Systems and Signal Processing) and Computer Science, and I've been working in one or another of those areas for a long time. But I don't think these kinds of gizmos will ever substitute for an acoustical instrument. Far from being superseded, the acoustic piano is still king of its realm, IMO. Its electronic counterparts have certain convenience advantages. I know lots of musicians who use them, but not one who thinks it remotely compares to the real thing. Even though piano is one of the better synthesized sounds, there's still nothing like a nice Steinway grand, and I honestly doubt there ever will be.

People have been talking for decades about replacing guitars by synths. They sound like cheap toys to me. The part that is always a dead giveaway is trying to emulate a good electric guitar player bending the strings. Similarly with violin - I can just picture trying to come remotely close to Itzhak Perlman on the violin - not a chance, IMO. I think one of the main reasons it's possible to get reasonable synthesized piano sounds is that it's a purely fixed-pitch instrument.

Pedal steel is another one of those hard-to-capture sounds, IMO. There's something about a vibrating string resonating against a physical body that I think is very hard to synthesize using signal processing. It's a distributed vibrating system with a huge conglomeration of linkages to other vibrating components, and requires tons of work just to analyze it well, much less make it synthesize accurate sounds in real time, especially when a musical figure is being bent, as in bending or sliding on a string or activating a pedal or lever change.

Of course, there is the obvious question about "why" one would want to do this. Music, and art in general, is one of the very few areas where the whole shebang is about what humans, not a machine, can do. To me and a lot of other people, it's art if and only if a human creates it.

I'm not against progress in musical instrument design at all. But to me, the issue is how to give the human more control over the creation process, not less. I think that servo-controlled pitch, tone, rhythm, or frankly, any important musical aspect, diminishes the human role more to an operator, not a musician. The reason I switched from piano to guitar at age 14 was the fact that one had so much more control of the pitch on a guitar, and got frustrated with the "tyranny of the 12-tone keyboard", as David Lindley put it so well the other night. This is my criticism of vocal pitch-correcting devices - in our obsessive but misguided drive for the mechanical perfection of the machine, we throw away that which is most important - the unadultered human voice.

Naturally, IMHO and YMMV. Smile

Bob Carlucci · From: Candor, New York, USA

Its no biggie really.. I already thought about a solenoid activated design, using a frequency monitoring control unit... It would never be out of tune as long as you set a base point for string tension.. 5 solenoids at each end of the guitar, moving heavy brass rollers under the strings.. activated by the solenoids the rollers would minamalize string breakage,. string gauges wouldn't matter either, depending on how much "reach" the solenoid/roller mechanism had.

Probably would need 10 individual inputs.. pulse generators.. another words PICKUPS! The freq module would control output to the solenoids based upon what it saw from variable resistors[pedals/knees...

Its the same principles being used on automotive engine management computers for 25 years... The solenoids cound react way faster than you could play, maybe 60 corrections a second..

Wanna buy the design??? $1.50 and we're square.. Who would want it???.. who NEEDS it??? not me brothers...
The technology has been here a while.. I hope no one ever acts on it... Solenoid goes out, pack up and go home.. same for the frequency controller.. or wiring.. or one of the variable resistors..etc etc etc.. pyuck... bob

C. Christofferson · Posted 10 Apr 2007 8:02 pm

Barry, Are you talking about synthesizing steel sounds, or an actual steel, being operated by the new type of mechanism which is software supported? One aspect of it that would be expansive and fun IMO wld be that capability to click on a personal preset (or maybe touch a number on a touch screen on the guitar) to instantly change the set of pulls that a pedal makes.(!)

My site

mike nolan · From: Forest Hills, NY USA

When I read these posts, I always start thinking about steam power......

Mike Perlowin · From: Los Angeles CA

What I want is a guitar that will capture all the licks of anybody who sits down at it and magically implant them in by brain.
_________________
Please visit my web site and Soundcloud page and listen to the music posted there.
http://www.mikeperlowin.com http://soundcloud.com/mike-perlowin

Barry Gaskell · From: Cheshire, UK

Hey Guys
I like steam trains, I like analogue, I like mechanical.I like my simple principle lever system on my steel. I was mentally wondering how to get a pedal to perform a function on a string that would obviate the inherent problem of tuning that 90% of steel players experience. Maybe the co-efficient of expansion of various metals would be largely eliminated from the equation. The feel and emotional expression, and even sound that players achieve, which is so varied and expressive, that is the human spirit, would still drive the hands and would still exist. You'd still have to play it. OK I did maybe pursuit it a little further than the initial mental remit, but it was rather late at night and I was bit a reflective and do in fact mourn the passing of the simple and user friendly devices.
Anyway what would steelies talk about if not the question 'How do I etc......' Maybe we need a Fallible grail to maintain a mutual and group adhesive. Maybe it's the quest and not the solution, the journey and not the arriving.....Damn!!!! it's getting late again

Rob van Duuren · From: The Netherlands

Please move to "Electronics"...... Wink

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

There's a substantive argument that too much efficiency is a bad thing. In the most efficient economy imaginable, all the fruits of everyone's labor would shoot directly to the pocket of the richest person (we're closing in....). It's the inefficiencies - the eddies and backwashes - that result in employment for the most people.

In the context of a musical instrument, it's the inefficiencies that personalize the sound and differentiate one instrument from the next and one player from the next. If Paul Franklin and Buddy Emmons both used the absolutely most efficient problem solving strategies available in every single aspect of their playing, they would sound identical (You could argue that classical musicians are closing in on this).

Learning and/or mastering the quirks and inefficiencies of an instrument is part and parcel of the enjoyment of the process, to me. People need complications. If we could all just plug our brain directly into a computer, lay back in our rocking chairs and imagine music - and it would come shooting out of a speaker, exactly - it might be great; it might also be a cacophonous war zone. Time will tell, I spoze.

jim flynn · From: Salado,Texas

Yep, steel guitarist are thinkers(over-thinkers sometime)' but as it was, and is with the drum machine,
the SOUL is gone. If you want to use technology in pedal steel and have the time,( sacrificing practice for analysis) try looking at bar position for a given
chord as performed by The biggies, B.M, J.D, CC, LG etc, Things like how far before the fret did the chord start. for how long, how long did the pedal get squeezed, was it all at once or some incremental movement as was the bar. You would then have the ammunition to argue these points on the forum forever.
Come on guys, get behind your old clunker and pour your guts out. I Love you guys & gals.
Jim

Brint Hannay · From: Maryland, USA

Curt Langston · Posted 11 Apr 2007 5:59 am **Huh?**

Ray Minich · From: Bradford, Pa. Frozen Tundra

The problem with automation is that it requires standardization with the resultant inhibition of variablility.

(You ain't gonna getta machine to have personality...)

Forum Index > Pedal Steel		Next oldest topic :: Next newest topic