Who Needs Guitars When Your Keyboard Has A Whammy Bar?

Remember last week, when we asked Can a virtual instrument replace the electric guitar?

Reader cyrusg_dotcom noted this video of the Crash Kings, doing their takes on Rolling Stone magazine’s greatest rock guitar songs of all time, with nothing but drums, bass and a custom clavinet rig.

To which I ask – who needs guitars when your keyboard has a whammy bar?

Check it out and let me know what you think about adding whammy bars to keyboards!

12 thoughts on “Who Needs Guitars When Your Keyboard Has A Whammy Bar?

  1. I would love to see an aftermarket version of one of these. Mod/pitch wheels are too small. Big movements are important on stage, and bending notes on a keyboard just doesn't look as epic as it does on a guitar.

  2. It has long been my firm opinion that synthesizers are severely limited by the total lack of imagination shown by keyboard/controller manufacturers. There is such a massive scope for more expressive control of synth sounds that is almost completely ignored by the typical mod wheel or stick arrangement.

    Even knobs, faders and X/Y pads don't give you much more because the problem with all of them is that the travel is so short that it is very hard to get precise control, especially if you want a wide range as well, which you pretty much always do.

    Shame on you controller manufacturers for such a total lack of imagination and innovation, shame, shame, shame.

  3. another problem is that few sound designers take into account the kind of timbral changes that occur when you pitch bend any acoustic instrument. This makes the patches sound 'fake' when pitchbend is applied.

  4. DudeMG: First, he's *not* just using it as vibrato. Second, the unchanging vibrato generated by a triangle-shaped LFO is nothing like the nuanced vibrato you get from wiggling a physical object. Third, mod wheels tend to be over-pushed because they don't put up any physical resistance, which makes the vibrato sound more blatantly fake.

  5. Great idea, and well performed in general, but IMHO an unnatural bending/vibrato phrasing. A guitar player with a great phrasing (especially bending and vibrato) cannot be replaced by this instrument.

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