Not so revolutionary–the SynthAxe did that back in the '80s. It had strings (actually separate sets of strings for fretting and picking) that triggered the sounds by contact with the frets, which made left-hand bending possible.
SynthAxe, Kitara, Key-tar - anyone else rolling their eyes at what the Marketing geniuses come up with for names that are guitarrific?
- The CompuTar!
- The Midi-Tar!
You’re making my Key-tar Gently Weep.
Someone is making a current generation key-tar, but it’s something like, 600 bucks, so even I couldn’t justify that stupid thing, lol…
LOL
I’m very intrigued! Just to have an instrument that will custom retune between songs or transpose with no effort at all would be superb. I’d have to get one in my hands to find out what it can and cannot handle, but I’m feeling that burning desire!!!
This’ll do that too, and quite a bit more.
What this Kitara does that is interesting is the touchscreen parts that are not the fake strings, I think. I’m not sure what they are, but they seem to be basically on the fly modulations… like a Kaossolator built into the guitar instead of strings.
You guys do know that ‘kitara’ is the Finnish word for ‘guitar’?
Meh, the others I’ll give you but kitara is just Finnish for “guitar”.
edit: beaten over the head with a kitara by Toxylon
Ultimately, the source is the Greek Κιθαρα which became Cithara in Latin. C before i still produced the hard ‘k’ sound of Greek kappa at that time; it was later that c before became a soft ‘s’ sound. Latin had no equivalent for theta, so ‘t’ was the closest pronunciation. The Greek instrument was closer to a modern harp than to a modern guitar. Online Etymology Dictionary reference. Interesting article on kithar/guitar.
From there we get the words guitar, zither, sitar, etc… Other languages have altered the word as is appropriate, eg. French ‘Guitare’, Spanish ‘Guitarra’, Italian ‘Chitarra’, Finnish ‘Kitara’.
And here’s a much longer demo from NAMM.
As I thought. The ball mode has potential, but I’d hate to try doing anything with string mode.
But that’s just my perspective.
I’ve always wanted to play a synthesizer but I’m a guitarist, not a keyboardist. This looks pretty awesome.
Nope; per Le Ministre, I just assumed it was a phonetic variant that leveraged the etymylogical history of the word…which isn’t too far from wrong…
I bet Pete Townsend wouldn’t play one. 
Quasi