The Endangered Guitar is a journey through the land of unending sonic operations, a true hybrid interactive instrument between a guitar and a computer. Fascinated by the wide range of electronic music developed in the 20th Century, I got frustrated by the limited possibilities of electric guitar pedals. I'm interested in the relation between multiple sounds, placing them in order or juxtaposing them to create a sonic progression. This led me to explore the concept of mechanical guitar preparations, combined with a software that "listens" to me, constantly analyzes my playing, to then determine the parameters of the live sound processing - and surprises me once in a while.

The guitar is the only sound source, but the same sound is also used to control the software. Sounds of the guitar are processed in realtime, pitch and various other parameters of the actual playing serve as control source of the processing. I may use up to two independent guitar channels of input, both can be used as controllers as well. On multichannel systems I pin one single channel against several surrounding channels, thus creating two independent "classes" of sounds at the same time. The software analyzes parameters like pitch, velocity and "events", and uses this data to control the processing of the audio.

A proximity sensor situated on the guitar allows me to create a third voice when my hands are already busy playing two voices. As many do these days, I added the iPhone to the mix, to control various parameters of the software while tormenting the strings with the metal case of the device.

The sound is played into several recording buffers, the processing might just affect the recorded sample by playing (parts of) it at different speeds, or by applying comb/resonant filters, feeding it back, or using bit degradation, convolution with other parts of the signal, and many other processing tools. Other buffers are used to create various rapid rhythms and non-repetitive pulses, or provide basic material for a granular engine.