Morpheus

Morpheus Guitar Sound Morphing System
Responsable
STARKIER Michel
DASSATTI Alberto
Période
October 2014 - September 2016
Partenaires
Benti SA
Axes
Hardware-oriented Efficient Information Processing

The basic idea of this project consists of an innovative guitar sound processing system in a box, named Morpheus, which enables guitar players exploration of two endless and new sound spaces. The first one is created by transforming the sound of any guitar into the sound of well-known high-end references, or new ones. The second sound extension is enabled by transforming any guitar into a controller for external MIDI synthesizers through note detection of the guitar connected to the box.

The user can connect plug-and-play, (i.e. without an additional pickup installation), to the box through a standard analog audio cable jack. He can play his own guitar with his specific expressive style, and he can use this system in studio, at home or on stage. Moreover, Morpheus offers the player the capability of selecting the available guitar sound presets, composing the virtual instruments or morphing the selected guitar element parameters.

Schema

Prototype architecture of Morpheus: Guitar microphone signal is processed by the pitch extractor section. Extracted pitch information drives the physical modelling section. Generated sounds from physical modelling are output as audio signal. Pitch extractor produces played notes information on MIDI out and, alternatively, MIDI in signal can drive the physical modelling operation.