So I had this idea.
Take an old Guitar Hero Guitar that nobody wants and turn it into a basic synthesizer. Press one of the 5 neck buttons for a note, push the strum bar down for 3rd octave notes, leave it alone for 4th octave notes, and pull it up for 5th octave notes.The whammy bar could be a pitch bend and the +/- buttons can be a hold-for-modulation thing. There will also need to be an audio jack for speakers, to amplify the sound.
Due to being totally new to modding and such, would anybody have any idea how hard, how long, and how possible it would be to build?
If it's too hard for newbie expertise, then just tell me and I'll bug off. I just want to get an idea of what I would be getting into if I were to do this type of thing.
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The Wild Wintery North
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Tokyo, Japan
To be honest, if you have't done any modding / electronics at all before I would start out with some really really basic kits first and work up to this. Building your own synth, even a basic one is not an easy prospect.
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Czech republic
I'd start with making it into midi controller. I'd be actually very easy to do with arduino - just connecting a few switches and writing small sketch to read em and ouput coresponding midi note. Read up on arduino & midi / diy arduino midi controller etc.
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http://puredata.hurleur.com/sujet-1662- … controller
PureData can run on a Raspberry PI. So you could technically use the Guitar Hero-controller as a HID-device, stuff a RPI into it and build a synth with PD. I think it's better than Arduino since you can run it all on one thing.
Last edited by _-_- (Apr 14, 2013 5:14 pm)
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Austin, Texas
A local guy here built what you are describing; he calls it the "Guitar Meister".
That reminds me, I need to email him and get samples of his drum machine… 
Last edited by Telerophon (Apr 14, 2013 5:20 pm)
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
Awhile back I ran across a page with a Max/MSP patch for using a wired GH ax as a midi device with a DAW/VST.
Well just Googled and found this
http://miditarhero.wordpress.com/
Couldn't be easier
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Columbus, Indiana
kaossilator guitar work for you? http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a- … or-Guitar/
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Sweden
I did it with glovepie and Reaktor at some point. I set it up so that each combination of buttons was a unique binary index in a scale table. That gives you 32 tones! It was kind of awkward to play, but on the other hand I learned how to count really quickly in binary 