Issue date: 8/22/06 Section: Music

In the Spring 2006 semester, a select few at the Stevens Institute of Technology had the chance to witness a demonstration of the Brian Moore iGuitar. The iGuitar is not like an ordinary guitar, for it has the ability to plug into a computer and interface box to accurately emulate the sounds of instruments that range from a string section to a trumpet, or from vocals to sound effects. Brian Murphy, an East Coast representative for Brian Moore, creatively demonstrated the guitar's versatility to us by playing Led Zeppelin's "All My Love" with a strings section sound and Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" with a Hohner D6 Clavinet sound. His examples sounded so authentic, it was as if Stevie Wonder was actually in the room with us.
Stevens and the guitar company have created an educational partnership, which is highly beneficial to the Music & Technology Department at Stevens. Murphy added, "At Brian Moore Guitars, we're looking towards education in labs as part of a curriculum."
Brian Murphy then went on to demonstrate how the iGuitar could be used for teaching. While the guitar was plugged into the computer, he brought Sibelius, a program used for music composition, onto the screen. As he said the words "now watch closely," Murphy pressed the record button on the program. Before you knew it, streams of musical notes were written on the screen as he played, which also included guitar tablature. When Dean Erich Kunhardt (who is a musician himself) first heard what the Brian Moore iGuitar could do, his eyes lit up as he exclaimed, "O wow! Super cool! Excellent! This is wild!"
After Brian Murphy's demonstration, the students present, who were also guitarists, went up to try the guitar out. The first person to do this was Steve Puig, who is the President of Castle Point Records at Stevens. At first, he jammed out using many different sounds, such as piano or organ, but when he came across the strings section sound, he played Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. "That's really cool," said Puig, "that is really cool." After Steve went up, Joel Condon, a freshman at Stevens (who is also involved with Castle Point), tried the guitar out. He smiled as he played the theme from Seinfeld using a bass sound. Robert Schmeley, who is also a student at Stevens, got up and shredded some metal licks on a piano sound. Towards the end of the semester, Robert actually did his senior thesis on the subject of "Melodic Metal" and used the iGuitar extensively for the articulation of his compositions.
Dr. Lisa Dolling, who is head of the Philosophy Department at Stevens and a guitarist herself, also wanted to try this interesting instrument out. She could not believe the sounds that she heard come from the guitar as she played different pieces, which included Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" on a flute sound. I'm sure that Eric Clapton would be proud of this.
I think that this guitar is definitely an awesome device. I found it easy to use, for all a guitarist has to do is plug it in and bring up a program like Reason or Garage Band. It is neat that guitarists could now have thousands of sounds at there fingertips instead of keyboardists, who have had this option available to them for many years. I could also see the Brian Moore iGuitar being widely used in live scenarios, because all a guitarist needs is the guitar, a laptop and interface box to operate. This guitar is definitely going to impact the world of music for the better.

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