Recently we found out about the MISA digital guitar, a project by Michael Z - a software engineer from Sydney (Australia).

Would you like to enhance your laptop project or just rock out on a guitar like instrument by plugging it into your laptop? Read what Michael has to say about this touch screen guitar. Is it set to play an important role in the future of electronic music?

What's the difference between playing a traditional guitar and the MISA? OK - you'll have to play the touch screen instead of snares, but how to play the neck?

"The buttons on the neck are each assigned a note, that corresponds to the note played on the guitar. So when you press a note, and then press the touchscreen - the note will play.

"The six rows of buttons/"strings" behave like real strings in that you only hear maximum one note per string. This allows for techniques like hammer-ons and tapping. If you set the glide/portamento effectively, you get a really cool sliding effect with this."

Was it difficult to write the software for the MISA guitar? Coding something that's able to interpret a person's actions on the touch screen seems rather complicated - how does this work?

"I am a software engineer by background…

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