Sound Box Pro

1Book SectionSub Section

1Book SectionSub Section

Table of Contents

Research

Definition of the Problem

DIrection & Influence

Process & Development

Final Interface Design

1–16

17–22

23–24

25–34

35–50

Instruments related to the guitar have had a history in Asia, Northern Africa, Greece, and Rome. These instruments are typically clas-sified as lutes. Lutes are a string instrument which has a long neck, bears frets, has a long neck, and rounded body with a flat front. The most traditional guitars have a history in Europe dating back to the 13th century, yet variations of guitars have been made over time. The most modern versions of the guitar come from Spain and England and date back to the late 16th century and late 18th century.

Overtime the guitar has had many develop-mental stages that have led to the current electric and acoustic guitars available today. In the early 1900’s the electric guitar was created, which has been through its many

A Brief History of the Guitar

developments. Different wattage powers, and ways to amplify sound have been improved over time. Effects pedals were developed to changed the sound of the electric guitar in the 1960’s. The advancements in the quality and control of these effects are still being updated today. Acoustic guitars body shapes are still played around with today to achieve different sounds from the guitar itself. This holds true for much electric guitars as well, but with more modern technology, the advent of the amplifi-cation of sound, where is the future of guitars, guitar amplification, and effects going?

2ResearchHistory

Old fashioned guitar using double strings to heighten the sound of each note hit.

Zoomed in version of a Marshall amplifier. This amp would be used as a practice amplifier, a studio amplifier, and a live concert amplifier. The functionality and sound produced from it is versatile. However the user interaction on it is basic, and it does not change from any of the other amps out in the market.

4Research

Research

Playing the guitar is an experience that has a number of factors that effect the experience of playing. If a passionate guitar player’s strings are too old on their guitar, they will notice and feel the need to change their strings out. If an amp sounds wrong one night while playing a show, then they will notice and be a little ag-gravated. Every aspect involved in the guitar playing process, including the guitar amplifier, the chords, the effects processors, the guitar, and the guitar player effect the experience of playing the guitar.

This project was initiated out of viewing how guitarists interact with there equipment. Several questions were asked as a result of viewing this: how easy is it for a guitarist to change the sound of their guitar while playing a riff, how does an amp currently function, and what new types of interfaces could be brought into the guitar playing experience?

Many different settings arise for a guitarist who loves to play music. In each of these settings the guitarist may be writing music, practicing musical pieces, experimenting with a particular musical scale, playing along to music, and so on. If the guitarist is doing each of these things than it is difficult for them to change the sound of the amp with their hand. From each of these situations a problem arises.

Environments

Musicians are always playing in their practice space. On the contrary to what people may think, musicians don’t always stand on their feet when they play. These musicians are sitting and practicing music. On the floor below one of the guitarist is an effects pedal with nobs on it. If this particular guitarist wanted to changed the sound of the effects coming out, he would have to struggle to bend over and turn the nob on his effects pedal.

6Research

The above guitarist also does vocals for his band while playing live shows. Here he is playing and singing. What if he needed to slightly change a certain effect within his song. He wouldn’t be able to because he is too occupied.

This guitar player is in his studio recording guitar parts. He is highly concentrated on the musical piece in front of him, and can’t shift his focus too much from it to bend over and change the sound of his amp or effects pedals.

Environments

There are many types of music out in the world that could probably be classified down into hundreds of sub-genres of different music. Depending on the type of music that a certain guitarist plays, writes, or explore, the guitarist will need to need to change the sound of their amp and the effects pedals that they use with it. Some guitarists may have a more solid approach to writing songs, whereas others may take a more experimental approach and play while constantly changing the sounds of their effects to write music. In any case this process becomes repetitive and redundant.

The Guitarist

1ResearchThe Guitarist

Guitarists tend to utilize effects pedal boards to achieve different sound mixtures from their guitars. This is what any user created effects pedal board may look like. It is very complex utilizing many chords to connect each effect to one another. Settings are also controlled by hands on this. Visit these two links to see how an effects pedal board may work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvQA13awWd8&feature=relmfuhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoVyQpKcbV8&feature=relmfu

Blackstar is a high quality amp making company. Their highly powered ampli-fiers produce good sound, but don’t have much sound control on the amp them-selves. On this guitar head of theirs they only have two channels that control the sound. Both of these channels are only for the tone of their guitar, and the volume of that particular channel.

Behringer is a company that makes a large number of products ranging from amplifiers, to heads, to effect processors. This particular model of their heads has sound control for a clean guitar amp, an overdrive/crunchy guitar amp, and an effects portion of the guitar amplifier as well. Each portion of this amplifier is controlled by knobs on the amplifiers interface.

10Research

The equipment used to make a guitar’s sound change is great. There are many options that can be chosen to change the sound of a guitar. Guitar heads are quite frequently chosen for the great sounds they produce. Sure quality sounds can be made from current amplifiers, but how can the interaction with amplifiers be changed to create more custom sounds?

Guitar Amplifiers

Crate is another company that has been creating some unique guitar amplifiers for years. This guitar am also as clean and a crunchier channel setting on it.

The design of the interface is also very attractive, but the head itself, just on the other amplifiers, utilizes knobs that physi-cally have to be turned by a guitar player’s hands.

Equipment

Research has let to watching numerous videos of people playing guitar, while using effects. These people have their effects set to a certain level before they start playing, and do use their feet to control what happens to an effect when a pedal is pressed down. The problem here is that guitar players have no control over the sound of their effect pedals while playing. They also cannot control the sound of their guitar head if it changes highly because of one of these effects. Utilizing some of these effects processors, heads, and effects pedal boards would be very hard for a new user that is new to these interfaces. The image to the left shows a YouTube screenshot of a guitarist who is using his hands to operate an effect pedal board.

Effects Pedals

12ResearchEquipment

Effects Pedals

As previously mentioned, Behringer makes a large portion of effects proces-sors. This is their V-AMP Pro effects processor that is made to be combined with a guitar head/amplifier. This processor has some great capabilities: 16 different effects, 32 different amp sounds, control of sound via bass , mid, treble, etc., saving presets out, and so on. But the interaction between the user and this device get quite confusing in terms of how to save out and select saved presets, as well as select preset with the two pedals that it comes with.

This is an example of an effects pedal board that comes pre assembled with a number of effects. To use a certain effect a pedal must be pressed down by a foot, but the settings on the pedal will already be set, and its difficult to control these setting while a guitarist’s hands are busy playing the guitar.

Nobs that have to be controlled by hand, when this is meant to be a foot pedal.

Bank settings have to be shifted through one at a time, instead of easily being selected at once.

Foot pedals that have two functions to them.

Amp models and effects must be changedby hand on current effect processors.

14ResearchEquipment

A series of 18 nobs on the Eddie Van Halen 5150 II Peavey Guitar head. Each one of these nobs has to be turned individually to change the sound of a amplified electric guitar. They cannot be turned simultaneously while a guitarist plays a riff, which creates for some difficulties while searching for a desired sound while playing a guitar.

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How hard would it be to control the sound of your guitar using some form of touch screen that could be operated with your feet while playing the guitar?It would be interesting to be able to slide your foot from side to side to give di!erent sound levels instead of forward like a pedal. I'd worry about the strength of the screen because it would need to be able to hold someone's body weight while using it. "e touch screen would be very useful though if you could set some kind of presets and have di!erent parts of the screen give your guitar di!erent sounds, and since it's all in an interface you could set up di!erent buttons and sounds for each song and easily swap the interface to a new preset for a each song you play. It would open a lot of great pos-sibilities and make the user experience a lot more productive. I don't believe it would be any harder than using a pedal, the only di#cult part is knowing where on the interface/touch screen your pressing while not looking because with a traditional pedal you can of course just feel form of it.

Probably pretty di#cult if you’re playing live. It would be hard/frustrating hitting the correct button with your foot. Plus durability could be an issue with a touch screen e!ect pedal.

Do you use any effects while playing guitar? I would like to use e!ects more often. However, I only have a small foot pedal that is not extremely customizable, so it’s pretty di#cult to get the sound I truly desire.

I got really into delays at one point and really would love to get into guitar looping. Delays aren’t necessarily hard to control, the troubling part is getting the delay to go along with the tempo you’d like.

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Do you wish you could control the sound of your guitar while playing through an amplifier?

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Yes I do. Sound control on guitars is currently di#cult to control live when I don’t use any kind of e!ects pedal besides the one that came with my marshall. It would be nice to have some sort of pedal that does more than switch between channels that would come with an ampli$er when it’s $rst bought. Even if it costs a little more.

More sound control will always be a plus. I struggle constantly to achieve the sound that I want from my ampli$er and it always wastes too much time. Being able to change the sound while i’m playing a song would be a huge plus.

To get better feedback from other people who play guitar a series of questions were formed and sent out. These were a few of the main responses coming back from the people that had answered them.

Questionnaire?

Definition of the Problem

Guitarists must use both of their hands to play guitar, and write music. Achieving a specific sound for a certain musical piece is very difficult to do while one hand is strumming the guitar strings, and the other is fiddling with some nobs on an effects processor or guitar head, because the actual musical piece is not being played nor explored with both hands on the guitar. This causes a problem for a guitarist who wishes to have complete control over

the sound of their amp, their effects, and their equipment whenever they are playing music.

From each portion of the research I developed a concrete set of problems that my research proved to contain. The next few pages display the core problems that will be solved for.

18Definition of the Problem

PROBLEM 1 Nobs on guitar amplifiers and effects pedals interfere with achieving a guitarists truly desired sound.

PROBLEM 2 Having effects pedals be on the floor creates for moments of having to bend over to change certain effect sounds, which interrupts playing music.


PROBLEM 3 Guitar interfaces have not changed much since the advent of the electric guitar. The interaction between the user can be made much simpler.

PROBLEM 4 Current effects pedals utilize a ton of chords, which can get very confusing. Certain features on these pedals also have more than one function.


PROBLEM 5 Current guitar heads are very analogue, and they aren’t capable of saving presets. Saving presets is something that every amp should be capable of.

Direction & Project Influence

Creating a new user interaction for a guitarist to have more control of the sound of their guitar will have to eliminate all usage of the gui-tarists hands from their amplifiers and effects. Since current amplification heads and effects have some sort of pedal that is controlled by the guitarist’s foot, eliminating the hands will involve the guitarist using their foot to control the sound of their equipment.

I will design a new interface for a guitarist to interact with. This will involve the use of foot pedals to control the overall functions of the head. The display of what has been controlled will show via screen on these pedals as well

as the amplifier head itself. The interface would combine the use of software with the minimal use of hardware. The guitar head would still be able to be controlled by hand on the head, but this interface will be screened based, and controlled by touching it. Having this software driven aspect of it will allow for updates to be purchased on the guitar heads interface and capabilities, rather than having to by anew head.

24Direction & Influence

Inspiration for look and feel and functionality of pro-grams such as garage band were sought out. These programs helped in providing a visual jump-start for the look of the newly designed guitar head.

26Process & Development

Process and Development

An in depth development process was explored to create the final guitar head and pedal inter-faces. Sketch upon sketch was drawn out and several different interactions were explored into wireframes. In the end one direction was chosen because of its simplicity, and the ease of which the interaction could take place. Ideations ended proving that the screen based interaction was the smartest and most renewable way for this guitar head to take place


Each section of a few different guitar amps and effects processors were broken down onto sticky notes to explore where each section of these objects should go on the redesigned amplifier.Each section was color coded according to what type of control it had over the amplifier, then cards were moved around and eliminated if there was any overlap.

Sketch development helped lead towards the final amp interface design. These sketches display different layouts that the amp could have taken. The top most sketch displays one of the earlier renderings of the final amp design.


Sketches of what the shapes of the amplifier and its pedals would look like were also explored. This was important to do because the amplifier is meant to be something that is real, not just something that is an interface.


Several sets of wireframes were created from the sketched out interactions. This above one is a more refined version of the head. From these wire frames and the walk through created, looks and feels for the interface was explored.


The look and feels began to explore color, and how the final interface would look on screen. Questions such as: what should be lit up, what should change when something lights up, how does this thing work as a touchscreen, and what amount color should be used were thought about when creating the look and feel for this design.

Final Interface Design

The final interface design uses different variations of the color blue to show what is lit up and what is not lit up. A make-shift name was also created. Sound Amp Pro is meant to give people the pro-fessional and correct sound that guitarists wish to have over their guitars. This screen to the right is a section of what the amplifier would display when the boot up button is first pressed


Guitar Head

Guitar Amplifier

Effects Pedal

Guitarist

Guitar

Amplifier Sound Pedal

This scene shows the basic environment in which any guitarist may play. It shows the two guitar pedals and the amplifier on top of the guitar speaker cabinet. This shows the interaction within its context of having a person play the guitar with the amplifier and pedals around them.

38Final Designs

This is the mock-up drawing of what the shape of the guitar head would look like. The amplifiers interface would sit on the front portion. The top portion is flat so the guitarist can set guitar picks, drinks, or whatever else needed on top of it.

Both foot pedals for the design of Sound Amp Pro would look like this. The interface of these would lay on top of it. This interface would use hardware for the guitar player to press with there feet.

This is a small circular piece of hardware that would be multiplied on the foot pedals. This hardware would easily be pushed down and released to select an option on the food foot pedals for this amplifier.

40Final Designs


This is one of the final screen designs for the amplifier head. Since this is a screen based guitar amplifier, it will have to utilize some sort of computer system that requires to boot up. After the amplifier has booted up, the power button could be pressed to fuel the sound of the amplifier though a guitar cabinet. Whenever the amplifier is turned on, it would show whichever setting the guitarist had on it previously. From here the guitarist can choose to change the sound of their guitar to something else either using the foot pedals or this interface which would be on the guitar amplifier.


This is the foot pedal that is meant to control the amp through the use of the guitarist’s foot. The gray circular illustration with the hexagon and a circle inside of that is the illustration of the hardware buttons over the interface. These are the buttons that the foot would press to make a selection on the pedal board interface. Hence in the image to the left, a foot hovers over one of the hardware pieces and a brighter blue light is selected. This indicates the hardware has been pushed down and a selection on the pedal board has been made.

When things are selected or a control is at a certain level, it is indicated by a brightly illumi-nated blue. This blue is also used on the head’s interface to show what things are selected, and what level a certain sound control is at.


This is interface of the effects pedal board. The functionality of the board is the exact same as the functionality of the other amp control pedal board, except it controls a different part of the amplifier.

The format on this pedal board has also changed from vertical to horizontal at a certain point to make this board more distinguishable from the other amp control pedal board. Everything within these two pedal boards would be screen based, and fully operable by a guitarists feet.

These gray circles are the only hardware driven part of the pedal boards. These would easily be pressed down by a guitarist’s foot, providing them with full control over the amplifier.

All nobs within this interaction have been replaced by a pedal. They are now pedals to be selected by a foot, and they do not require any touch of the hand to be changed.

The gray bars here indicate that the amp setting for this can be turned up higher. The blue bars indicate that the amp settings have been turned up to that certain point.


Blue lit up letters represent that a certain letter or word has been selected on the amplifier.

These black colored rectangles are also pedals that can be pressed with a foot to change amp settings. When the pedal light bar is lit up blue than that setting has been selected. When the bar is gray then the setting is not selected. When the bar is blinking blue, then the particular setting has not been saved as a preset or other function.

The guitarist’s foot can control every facet of the amp through each of the pedal boards that come along with it. This eliminates the difficulties of having to stop playing the guitar to change the sound of an amplifier.

The overall interface is new and has not been seen before in the world of guitar playing. It is pushing the envelope of electric guitars and amplifiers to a new state of practicality.

Problems Solved

This new guitar amplifier interaction has solved for all of the main difficulties within playing the electric guitar.

All the nobs on the amplifier and it’s pedal have been removed, creating for a simpler and more controllable interaction.

Having complete control over the all of the ca-pabilities of the amplifier through a guitarists feet creates for much easier user experience, where the guitarist can continue playing music while adjusting the sound of his or her guitar.

The guitar interface has a fresh new look to it that is that is simple to use.

The two pedalboards would only utitlize two chords that would connect to the amplifier. Presets can easily be saved and selected through the use of a guitar players feet.

Each one of these things can also be done by hand if it is needed, but the use of feet to control the amplifier makes the process much easier.


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