Auto Tune for Guitar

Secret80'sMan

Experienced
This looks cool and a more cost effective way to do what the Variax and Roland guitars have done: Auto-Tune for Guitar by Antares - Perfect Tuning, Perfect Intonation

Wonder how much the kits will cost? I don't care about tuning as I know how to play in tune but the intonation is compelling if it works well all over the neck. I thought it was just going to be the Peavey guitar which I wasn't to excited about but I might drop a kit in one of my shredder guitars and see what happens.
 
I thought it would be cool to have in my JTV-59, before it gets to the modeling portion of the Variax. Then, whether I use the pups or the modeling, the guitar would be in perfect tune for either option. The wiring to add that to the JTV would be pretty scary I imagine, but it would be something I'd definitely want.
 
Looks awesome, but wouldn't there be latency issues like there are with normal pitch-shifters?
 
I disagree. I've played these a couple of times and there's none of that robotic sound. Notes ring clear, bends/vibrato sound and feel exactly like they should, and no latency that I noticed. And the intonation was as advertised, all over the neck. On the other hand, I wasn't very impressed with the overall sound of it as a guitar - the "virtual" pickups don't sound all that good, but that's a tone thing, not an autotune problem.

I was hoping the Peavey would be a good inexpensive 24 fret guitar but wasn't impressed playing it. Put one of these in a better guitar, and improve the sound of the pickups, and I think it would be a winner. Seems like a perfect fit for the Variax.
 
Just because they call it Auto Tune, doesn't mean it sounds like the vocalist robot Auto Tune.
Check out their video's at the Antares site. Cool technology done right.
 
I did look at it. The intonation feature is sort of interesting, but the magic instantly-in-tune button makes the guitar sound very sterile. I could see it being useful as an emergency mid-song tuning corrector, but that's about it.
 
I've seen this previously and just watched the video again.
Do not want.

The instant tuning stuff is totally useless to me as I incorporate detuning the strings as part of the performance (Jim Campilongo stylee).
The intonation stuff isn't that useful either- unless every other player in the band is using true temperament as well, which never happens.
The sound of rock and roll is in the fluctuations of tuning and those little dissonances.
The 12 string effect sounds lame- there are better alternatives out there- The Tyler Variax is pretty good but honestly I'd rather use the actual guitar rather than a simulation of it.

I'm all for technology- I use a lot of it- but I can't find much about this that impresses.
 
Last edited:
The sound of rock and rock is in the fluctuations of tuning and those little dissonances.
One of the things I dislike about 80's music is the "perfect temperament" of digital keyboards. As guitarists we sweeten our sound by micro changes of tuning. Sometimes it's vibrato, sometimes it's 1/4 note bends, sometimes it's just moving slightly off by pressing the string a bit harder.
 
One of the things I dislike about 80's music is the "perfect temperament" of digital keyboards. As guitarists we sweeten our sound by micro changes of tuning. Sometimes it's vibrato, sometimes it's 1/4 note bends, sometimes it's just moving slightly off by pressing the string a bit harder.

I might be mistaken but I thought most synths were equal temperament, not true temperament by default.
Piano's are equal temperament and synths I thought followed this.
Certainly synths can be modified to use true temp.
I have it in the back of my mind that the DX7 was equal temp.

Maybe someone who is more knowledgeable about 80s synths can comment.
 
Got one of these Peavey's equipped with it at work the other day... Played with it.. Seems legit. Couldn't tell if it was modeling the tuning of each string, or if it was physically tuning each string at first. But it works just as advertised. Tunes right up...
 
Bottom line: Whatever sound this software reproduces is no longer the voice of your instrument, but a cheap approximation of what the software thinks the "ideal" voice is. It's every bit as bad as autotune applied to vocals.
 
I might be mistaken but I thought most synths were equal temperament, not true temperament by default.
Piano's are equal temperament and synths I thought followed this.
Certainly synths can be modified to use true temp.
I have it in the back of my mind that the DX7 was equal temp.

Maybe someone who is more knowledgeable about 80s synths can comment.

I read this this and my head spun LoL. :geek But I do know that the octave divider chips back in the day (70's) that derived the chromatic scale was a best fit because the chips couldn't produce the complex (read: correct) relationships between the notes. Meaning they divided one high frequency by an integer to obtain each note in the chromatic scale then divided those by two for each subsequent lower octave. I can imagine someone with a good ear could hear it. Back then I was too busy chasing skirt to notice :lol

I read somewhere how the math doesn't ever work out exactly in terms of relationships between intervals as you go up in octaves.
 
I read this this and my head spun LoL. :geek But I do know that the octave divider chips back in the day (70's) that derived the chromatic scale was a best fit because the chips couldn't produce the complex (read: correct) relationships between the notes. Meaning they divided one high frequency by an integer to obtain each note in the chromatic scale then divided those by two for each subsequent lower octave. I can imagine someone with a good ear could hear it. Back then I was too busy chasing skirt to notice :lol

I read somewhere how the math doesn't ever work out exactly in terms of relationships between intervals as you go up in octaves.

It is more that some of the harmonics in the harmonics series are not exact whole number multiples of the fundamental but rather are 'near whole number multiples' of the fundamental.
 
I've seen this previously and just watched the video again.
Do not want.

The instant tuning stuff is totally useless to me as I incorporate detuning the strings as part of the performance (Jim Campilongo stylee).
The intonation stuff isn't that useful either- unless every other player in the band is using true temperament as well, which never happens.
The sound of rock and roll is in the fluctuations of tuning and those little dissonances.
The 12 string effect sounds lame- there are better alternatives out there- The Tyler Variax is pretty good but honestly I'd rather use the actual guitar rather than a simulation of it.

I'm all for technology- I use a lot of it- but I can't find much about this that impresses.

Well said. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
 
Back
Top Bottom