Vintage Synth of the Day: David Company's Clavitar
From Keyboard Magazine Presents: Vintage Synthesizers:
If it weren't for the rock-and-roll world' perverse tendency to shovel lead synthesists into the guitar-hero mold, the remote controller idea might never have gotten off the ground. Even before Moog's guitar-necked portable Liberation synthesizer, remote controllers were appearing with everything but frets and strings. Case in point: The David Company's Clavitar, surely the duck-billed platypus of keyboard phylogeny.
David Clavitar in Vintage Synthesizers [Books.Google.com via Surroundhead]
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My old drummer has a keboard controller that went even further down this road. It looked like a bass until you tried to play it. You strike notes on it by plucking cords which approximate strings and have some sensitivity to how hard you plucked them (attack). They felt a bit like whatever they made clothesline out of. The neck had a bunch of metal strips running along it that allowed you to select notes by putting your finger on the frets. It plugged into a large metal box that contained its brains. It was a very weird and unpredictable instrument. I can't remember the name of it. Anyone seen one of those?
I love playing keytar in my band, Straight Punch to the Crotch. Its a (now discontinued) Roland AX-7 midi controller, modified to be wireless and to shoot fire. Here is an article on Create Digital Music with an image of my keytar and I.
http://createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?s=billy+hunt
PS Someone start making a keytar again. Maybe its just me (ok, probably), but I feel like the public needs a good, solid keytar in the marketplace.
keytards