guitar

When your favorite band rocks out on stage, they're coordinating more than their jams and their dance moves. A new study suggests that pairs of guitarists playing the same melody simultaneously have significantly similar brain waves. The research, published today in the online journal BMC Neuroscience, is the first to measure the brain activity of more than one musician playing at the same time, and may have broader implications regarding how our brains interact when we coordinate actions with other people, like matching our walking speed with another person, playing in a band, playing sports, and dancing. The findings may also apply to social bonding behaviors, like coordinated gazes between a mother and child or between partners.

In the September issue of Popular Science, Mike Kobrin reviewed the Moog guitar—an incredible instrument whose electromagnet pickups actually change the string's motion. Stick it in "mute" mode and you're playing a banjo; turn on "sustain" and it holds notes indefinitely. It turns out, however that writing and reading about the guitar can never be quite adequate. So Kobrin sat down and filmed it in action. Rock on, after the jump.

Eric Clapton wannabes have strummed the classic riff from â€Layla†on imaginary Fenders for decades. Now, thanks to a virtual-reality rig developed at the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland, air guitarists can finally hear themselves jamming. The best part is that the machine can actually make them sound good.
To play, you simply put on a pair of bright orange gloves and start strumming. A webcam records your hand motions and relays the data to a PC.