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Music Workshop

"Mars Needs Guitars!"

But that 1990 CD title didn't specific which kind! So many possibilities: a nano-tech lab recently built a silicon guitar only 10 millionths of a meter long. Canadian mathematicians have devised the "tritare," which vibrates a Y-shaped network of strings. Gibson is putting Ethernet into some new Les Paul models. And traditionalist George Lowden is crafting guitars for the stars.

Physicists at Cornell University have assembled atoms into the world's smallest guitar. Each string is only 100 atoms thick (about 50 nanometers, i.e. 50 billionths of a meter). Unlike their earlier, static guitar-shaped creation, this one actually plays: firing a laser at the strings makes them vibrate, although at a frequency too high for human ears ( 40 megahertz, about 17 octaves higher than our upper limit).

They also have created a nanodrum from a diamond mesh, and nanoxylophone with tiny diamond bars. (No word yet on a nanovocalists, nanohecklers or nanogroupies.)

The point is not music, of course, but to demonstrate techniques that could eventually revolutionize manufacturing and medical technologies. (Ditto last summer's announcement from an MIT team that inscribed the entire New Testament onto a chip 5mm square. Each letter was the size of a single bacterium.)

Read Cornell's news release, and listen to the nanoguitar (scaled down to audible tones), or visit Cornell's Craighead Research Group or the National Nanotechnology Initiative

Most musicians need about this much math: "One – Two – Three..." Two Canadian professors (at the University of Moncton, New Brunswick) stumbled onto an idea for a new instrument while working on some much more abstract mathematics. [We're told: "the odd-number portion of the 'p-series' problem, a cousin to Fermat's Last Theorem." Whatever.]

Samuel Gaudet's and Claude Gauthier's theoretical musings led them to experiment with the acoustical properties of Y-shaped networks, thinking primarily about bridge design until Gaudet proposed applying them to a musical instrument. With the help of trained instrument builders, the tritare (TREE-tar) was born.Its six networks of strings have curious (and largely invisible) theoretical properties, and produce a range of sounds ranging from guitarlike to percussive.

Musicians familiar with the instrument have predicted that it will take decades to fully understand. Its inventors are still trying to master the underlying math problem.

Read a CBC story [in English] about the tritare (which includes a link to CBC streaming audio story, with the instrument playing in the background)

Watch a 5 minute interview [in French] or read the Guitariste.com article [in French] about the instrument's design

Belfast's George Lowden makes traditional acoustic guitars that are being hailed by the likes of Eric Clapton, U2's Edge, Mark Knopfler, and fellow North Irelander Van Morrison.

According to a recent Reuters article, Lowden started making "guitars" at age 10 – with nails for frets and fishing line for strings. It was the early 1960s, and he used his crude instruments to mimic the Beatles in his backyard. In the early 1970s he began making real instruments in earnest, with only a how-to book as a teacher.
Now some of the world's best guitarists rave about his instruments' "open sound, fast response, and good looks." Some fans are so smitten that they have even started their own Cult of Lowden web site.
Lowden's shop turns out very few instruments each year. He builds mostly with walnut, rosewood, cedar and koa, and he uses only the finest, laminated steel tools from Japan. Lowden's top of the line model costs around $17,000. Ironically, Lowden himself is not a guitarist.

Visit George Lowden's guitar shop, which includes a photo gallery about the making of the his guitars, or browse the Cult of Lowden site

Meanwhile in Nashville, Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz is plotting a technological revolution for his company's electric guitars. Named MAGIC – for "media-accelerated global information carrier" – he hopes his vision will catch on and become the first fundamental technology change in electric guitars in many decades.

Juszkiewicz is part of the management team that purchased ailing Gibson from its previous corporate mishandlers, moved it to Nashville, and restored its product quality and brand reputation.

The Les Paul model, one of Gibson's most legendary, was itself the product of namesake guitarist Les Paul's technical inventiveness in the early 1950's. According to a recent issue of WIRED magazine, Juszkiewicz wants to update the guitar by using digital technology to carry the signals created by playing the instrument.

It's a big bet – over $50 million has been invested in the project so far, and industry rivals have declared it a solution in search of a problem. But Juszkiewicz insists that musicians are increasingly using digital tools to shape their performances and recordings, and that the guitar must find a natural, seamless way to fit into that new world. And he wants the first breakthrough digital guitar to bear the Les Paul name.

Read a new profile on Juszkiewicz' quest for quality at Gibson (including their Baldwin and Wurlitzer keyboard brands), and the new product "Wurlitzer Digital Jukebox"

Read the WIRED magazine article

Visit Gibson and learn firsthand about their MAGIC project

Sample "Mars Needs Guitars," by the group Hoodoo Gurus, at Amazon.com (including reviews and audio excerpts)