The Guitar Zeros have taken a Guitar Hero video game controller and modded it into a real instrument. They have interfaced the guitar with a computer to trigger synthesized guitar sounds. In fact, they have done this with two Guitar Hero Xplorers, one for guitar and one for bass.

In the video interview on CNET News the lead guitarist gives us a few details on how exactly it is done. Basically they hooked the guitar up to the computer and then used a synth program called MAX/MSP to trigger the sounds. I’m not exactly sure how the interface works, but he says he uses the binary system to play notes. So basically you could program each binary number to a note in a scale. That takes all of the skill out of it though because then you could just button mash and never go off key.

Sadly, these guys are about 25 years ahead of their time. If they had have come up with this in the early 80’s [see Keytar] they would be superstar one-hit-wonders already. I do have to give credit where credit is due though, these guys are pretty big geeks. I love to mod electronics to use them in ways they might not have been meant to, so I envy their skills on this one. If you are interested you can check out The Guitar Zeros website for a guide on how you can hook up this rig for yourself.

[Via Now Toronto]

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