How music instrument innovation works
I might be a little late to discovering artist Moldover and his approach to guitar, but, alas, I can’t help to raise my hand and point out how his journey, as told in this video, illustrates the way instrument innovation happens (guitars in this case).
There’s always been a “chicken or egg” debate about how musical instruments are developed, whether manufacturers develop innovations and push them to musicians, or if musicians themselves dream up unheard-of sounds and then push to develop new instruments. Of course, it is both, I think. And the Moldover example is a beautiful expression of musicians/artists doing what they do, freely playing and dreaming up of ways to make sound and mold it into something musical, and in the process inventing new instruments and gear when the artists’ vision requires it.
Has Moldover’s Robocaster guitar and Guitar Wing taken off and sold like pancakes? Probably not, I would imagine; they are not hanging all over the product wall at Guitar Center. Our mainstream reaction typically insists that music and instruments stay natural, un-tinkered with, authentic, ‘real’ (like, not ‘electric’). I’m sure the mainstream had the same reaction when tinkerers like Les Paul made the electric guitar (’why would you want to tinker with the beautiful acoustic sound of the guitar?’), and today Les Paul guitars are a standard bearer of what electric guitars should be (along with Fender Stratocasters and others, and with the help of guitar amplifiers of course, the other half of guitar sound).
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