Instruments
HITar
The HITar lives and breathes to give a digital dimension to solo acoustic guitar performance. Born from co-design with the percussive fingerstyle community, musicians who strive to sound like a one-person band when performing and arranging popular music, the instrument reimagines what's possible at the intersection of acoustic tradition and digital innovation. The concept centres on representing percussive gestures in the digital domain through machine learning, enabling digital manipulation of rich percussive gestural input for remapping, effects control, and unlocking performances that extend beyond the body of the acoustic guitar itself.
How it Works
At the heart of the HITar, the patent-applied-for Intelligent Expression (iX) technology extracts a robust, rich description of your finger taps in real time. It works all from within the guitar and it follows you wherever you want to go.
- Real-time AI tracking your percussive taps with a latency of 10 milliseconds
- Works from integrated contact pickups
- Bespoke embedded AI platform for ultra-low latency
- Built-in or retrofitted into existing instruments
More information is available at the HITar’s landing page.
Awards
- 2x Queen Mary Impact Fund Award for commercialisation
- 2023 MIDI Innovation Awards
- Third place: 2023 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition
Past Performances
- 9/3/2025: HARMONIE project launch night, Marseille, France
- 5/6/2024: Queen Mary AI Innovation Pitching Event, London, UK
- 10/11/2023: ISMIR 2023 music track, Milan, IT
- 7/10/2023: SynthFest, Sheffield, UK
- 10/7/2023: C4DM 20th Anniversary Celebration, London, UK
- 13/03/2023: Shadow Sound Studio, Macon (GA)
- 12/03/2023: Guthman Musical Instrument competition showcase, Atlanta (GA)
- 26/08/2022: HAID conference, London, UK
