WOT RE: Re: Guitar synth guys (no loop stuff)

["Jonathan El-Bizri" <jbiz@linkexchange.com>]

I just bought a mini-Z fro Ztar systems. It's a mid controller set up like 
a
touch style instrument. It has six, two-octave 'strings' (rows of
buttons/keys) and you can set the tuning and splits any way you want. One
very interesting 'tuning' that I have seen mentioned is setting up the
strings in straight octaves (each string corresponds to one octave higher.
This makes for an intuitive, symmetrical finger patterns and lightning fast
scales and arpeggios. Of course, harmony, chords and polyphonic playing is
more difficult, since you need both hands to play a melody line (to span a
whole octave of button/keys), and chords become very wide stretchs.

Anyway, it's being built as we speak (I hope) cost me ~$1300 (with a
joystick as well as the thumb expression controller) and there is a one
month return policy. You can get them shaped like guitars, with 'string'
triggers, with 'drum' pads (that you can use to send any controller
messages) and even with a wave table synth built in.

I don't know if I can recomend them yet (I have yet to see mine) but I have
talked to a number of satisified customers. If anyone is interested, I'll
dig up the web address. Their site has lots of pretty pictures for the
curious.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: M3chakucha@aol.com [mailto:M3chakucha@aol.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 1998 12:12 PM
> To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com
> Subject: Re: Re: Guitar synth guys
>
>
> That's how the SynthAxe and the Stepp Guitars both work, by the
> by...  Both
> were awesome instruments whose tracking was absolutely unparalleled.  
>They
> only suffered one slight problem, both beasties were rather prohibative 
>in
> their pricing.
>
> Lee-ohki.
>
>