It reminds me of what the cyberpunk novels called 'skillsofts,' except you don't have to jack anything into your head; the thing is wholly external. I love the idea of being able to play a guitar, which I've never managed to learn even slightly in spite of several attempts; but now I could just put these on and play like Waylon Jennings, or the bass like Lemmy, or whomever else I wanted.
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Call me a Luddite or a paranoiac or both, but I don't want a computer to control my body, except in extreme extremis.
I especially don't want a semi-sentient, quasi-self aware computer controlling my body.
As for learning a musical instrument, that still has to be done by the human brain and muscles. If the computer is commanding my muscles, to whatever level of perfection, it's not me playing the instrument, it's the computer, using my body, that's playing the instrument. I'd be nothing more than the computer's pick on the guitar.
Eric Hines
I don’t know if that’s true. Presumably I wouldn't learn to improvise; but who knows? Maybe after a while muscle memory would develop because I'd know how it felt to hold the guitar in the right place to make the right notes. We will have to try it to see if it teaches.
The potential help for nervous system disease or injury is immense.
That's the extreme extremis I was talking about. Although it would help with the nervous system disease only after the disease had been stabilized and was no longer progressing.
Eric Hines
I would be willing to achieve unusually high rates of success due to special effort or better understanding here as elsewhere. :)
However, it may be that you're just pointing to the next step. Once we get it working, we can figure out how to engage the proper parts of the brain.
On guitar- perhaps the most cogent comment I have heard was from an interview with Mark Knofler- "it is really hard-you have to bend your fingers into all sorts of shapes"-or something to that effect.
And the motivator-"That cherry red Fender Stratocaster in the music store window- It was an object of lust". !
Stratocaster schmatocaster. What's hard is a flamenco guitar. Not only is there that pesky additional string, it's the individual fingers doing their individual plucking, requiring even more coordination than a piano, where it's only necessary for a finger to strike a key. In addition to which, those same fingers--or especially just a subset of them--are given over to thumping the guitar body in rhythm with the underlying music.
Rockers got it easy.
Eric Hines
Bend it ,vibrato it ,slide up to it and down to it, damp it, fingerpick it while palming the plectrum, use the plectrum for attack, hammer it on and pull it off, damp with the picking hand, tap a harmonic,
use a bottleneck, and all while entertaining a Chuck Berry stage shuffle.
It is all hard to learn, regardless of style.
The really cool thing is to see people noted for their expertise in one style of music, play in another. And just rip it up.
Additional string? Both have 6, don't they?
Nothing prevents you from playing flamenco on a Strat, just might have to slow down a bit. Or from playing rock on a flamenco, for that matter.
I'm pretty sure Paco de Lucia could bring something beautiful out of a Strat, and Knopfler could do the same with a flamenco guitar. Knopfler's done plenty with acoustic guitars, including an album with Chet Atkins which is pretty fun.
Speaking of Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler:
https://youtu.be/D2h8afU8ATo?si=XCnMlOPZZvOdv8LR
Not as fancy as flamenco, but fun.
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