Several years ago someone was advertising a device that, when hooked up to a pedal steel, would produce real-time tablature of whatever the player was playing. Has any of you ever seen this device, do you know who made it and whether it's still in existence?
By the way, in case you're wondering, yes, of course, I already know how to play my stuff. I was thinking of buying it as a birthday present for Emmons!
Jim - the guys name that produced it was Chris Howie and his e-mail address was chowieram@aol.com although I wrote him about it and don't think I ever heard back. Jim Baron apparently knows the guy.
I saw this at St Lousi several years ago. As I recall, he had to put sensors on all the pedals and levers of the steel, as well as individual pickups for each string.
Unless you are tablature factory, it sounds pretty impractical to me.
However, many of us steel players are engineer types, so building a piece of software like this would certainly be a fun project, given a whole bunch of spare time
Alas, building such a thing would probably be easier than learning to actualy play this damn instrument that we love...