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Originally Posted by GeneticKiss
Not to offend anyone who wants a quick and easy way to reach altered tunings, but I find the idea of the Robot Guitar kinda insulting. I mean, are we so lazy with our modern conveniences that we can't even tune our guitars anymore?
The Variax just seems like an instrument that imitates others, as opposed to one that has its own voice.
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I couldn't agree with you more! i consider myself not a very technical guitarist, been playing the instrument for 10+ years... at first i strictly used standard tuning and just made alot of "no-wave" racket though at this time i was a big sonic youth fan and tried to figure out how they made their guitars sound the way they do, not very long after i found on the internet (beacuse you can find anything and everything on the internets) a tuning chart for guitar and then it struck my like a brick in the head or a light bulb went off and whamo ALTERNATE TUNINGS ARE PRETTY SIMPLE BUT CAN OPEN A NEAR ENDLESS COMBINATION OF COMPLEX AND SIMPLE CONFIGURATIONS!!!
I think if you are somewhat serious at wanting to play the instrument (in a traditional sense and not necessarily just "prepared" guitar) it is pretty important to understand tuning(s) and how to achieve them. and this stuff like the Robot is just being LAZY. surely though the inconvience of having only one instrument and writing in many tunings is crazy (unless we are a band like SY with an army of guitars at our disposal) its fairly easy to find many tunings that are relatively close to each other and simple to alternate between without too much of a struggle.
not sure if its been mentioned but string gauge is just as important in alternate tuning, especially if you are stretching a tuning way beyond standard on any particular string (as they can obviously break under too much tension and be too slack at way under tension).