Have you ever wondered why is it that you can never recreate the guitar solo of your favorite song despite practicing for months? Musicians would like to tell you that perhaps it’s because you lack the “feel” of the song, which is unique to the artist who wrote it. While that sounds plausible from an artist’s perspective, in terms of science, perhaps you have not managed to bend your strings to the exact pitch or give enough vibrato.
Alternatively, if you’re the type who enjoys “shredding” on their guitar but wishes you could have captured that particularly brilliant solo, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films in Germany might have a solution for you.
Placed on the tailpiece of a guitar, the DiaForce film is based on amorphous carbon and is piezoresistive, which means when the player changes the string tension the pressure on the film also changes. In turn this leads to a change in resistance which is then measured by the electrodes on the film, which is then sent to electrodes on a laptop which translates the movements into a digital recording.
If the engineers figure out a way to start mass producing the DiaForce film, guitarists could be looking at an alternative to the electromagnetic pickups commonly found on electric guitars. With musical instruments not exactly making technological leaps, perhaps the DiaForce film could be the one to revolutionize it all.