[Fruitloop]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

You'd *think* so, but clearly you haven't tried one :-) Actually, they still convert, they just convert 1 string at a time, so it's possible to communicate multiple notes on multiple strings. The ones that take a single signal from the guitar can't really handle chords, usually. I've been trying guitar synths since the 80's when the ill-fated Arp guitar synthesizer basically killed the company. They've greatly improved, but they're still touchy, difficult things to work with. For notation, there are a host of issues that would be a big challenge to solve, even if the midi interface was completely accurate. Solving that part of the problem - which hasn't been completely nailed after 30+ years of work - is only the beginning. If you think about it, there's a huge difference between capturing what you really played, and creating instructions (in the form of music/tab) for someone else to play it.

The closest thing I've seen to working on the extraction part of the problem is the Melodyne Celemony software, which can handle polyphonic material, analyze it, extract all the notes and timing, and actually prints out a crude standard notation score. Notation isn't it's core purpose, but it's tantalizing that it works as well as it does. I asked the creator about going after transcribing with it several years ago at NAMM, and he said he was aware of the potential, but wasn't sure it would get on their radar, since it'd be a lot of work (and likely a tiny market) to address.

Actually it doesn't do any converting, if you look more closely you'll see it doesn't have strings across the fretboard. It works much in the same way as a keyboard except you pluck the string. The fretboard is touch sensitive and registers your fingers.