Oh wow! I’ve never seen one of those before, it looks awesome!
I’ve kind of gone in the opposite direction lately, I got me one of these…
I’ve been getting my Fripp on!!!
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That’s brilliant! Not a bad price either. Thanks for sharing; I didn’t know anything like that existed.
My friend has a similar pedal, though not as elaborate. I’ve found that I can layer pretty efficiently by plugging my guitar into the Roland FA-06 I use as my main workstation keyboard (though not the most mobile solution).
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Of course fretless strings are a cakewalk compared to the best instrument I never learned to play…
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I’d never heard of them until a month or so ago, and once I found out about them it turned out pretty much every artist I listen to has used one at some stage. I’ve heard of a similar sustain pedal, and there’s a pickup mod from Fernandez that does the same thing built into the guitar, that’s pretty amazing.
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It sounded so familiar, I think I must have lived in her neighbourhood once.
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The friend I mentioned is a part-time sound engineer, and she introduced me to this guy who makes all these amazing one-off pedals for local Austin musicians. It’s the sort of art where you didn’t know you needed it until he invents it!
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My first violin arrives next Monday. So stoked! And scared. I can handle any plucked string instrument, but every time I pick up a violin, I am lucky to coax anything out of it.
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Inspiration 
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I gotta admit, that was part of the reason I finally pulled the trigger after a year of hemming and hawing.
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I don’t remember disliking violin technique when I was 6 years old. The only reason my brother and I hated it was that lessons coincided exactly with maximum cartoon time every Saturday morning. After listening to us gripe bitterly for the half hour car ride there every week, our mom let us quit after a few months.
There’ve been times later in life I sort of wished I’d kept with it, but it’s tough to blame my younger self for feeling that one of my great enjoyments at the time was being stolen from me.
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Saturday mornings were sacred (to my sis and I) when we were kids. I think to our parents too since it was the only she and I spent together without some level of fighting* 
*We’re best friends now.
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I didn’t dislike the technique so much, I didn’t know any better, but in retrospect I think it gets in the way of the gratification you get from playing something well for the first time.
I think its an amazing instrument and that same technique allows great expression, but as a first instrument I find it is too much of a chore. You need months of practice to play a note well and clearly, and you can achieve that on a piano the first time you site down in front of it.
Of course, YMMV!!!
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Each time I struggle to get a song out on the guitar, I have to block off the part of my brain that wants to sit down at a keyboard and bang it out. It’s hard being busted back to private 
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That animated gif of her playing the violin really communicates the essence of what she’s doing.
The Human Lyrebird!
I am the very definition of a gentleman: someone who can play the bagpipes… and doesn’t. 
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Which DAW are you using?
I’m still in a rack, using a GR-30 for midi & the delay, particularly when switching strings, can be… annoying. How’s the 301?
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I used to complain about those gifs until I got uhmmmm … motivated enough to install a plugin for my browser that de-animates gifs. And that improved my experience on other sites than BoingBoing as well.
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Last year I switched from Pro Tools to Studio One (and got PreSonus’s Notion software for scoring because I like to see the sheet music). Best decision I ever made. It’s easy and intuitive with a minimal learning curve. I also use Ableton Live for performances, but I prefer S1 for workflow. That said, most DJs I know like Ableton. My recommendation is to download the free trials if you’re looking for a DAW. The features aren’t that different, but the layouts are, and much of it is what sort of layout appeals to personal work styles.
I’d stay away from Pro Tools unless you’re a studio engineer and you need your files to be industry compatible (even the engineers I know tend to just use Pro Tools for conversion and do their work in another DAW of their choosing). Pro Tools gets clunkier (and more expensive) every year and the licensing is a nightmare, IMHO.
The Fishman pickup is completely wireless, so there’s no MIDI cable, just a wireless USB receiver stick. You’d need a rack with USB MIDI on it. From what people have told me, the quality is comparable to Roland’s guitar MIDI pickups. But the Fishman doesn’t have any pedal. All controls are through the software or your VSTs, which I suspect could be a pain if you’re used to hardware. Personally I’m a huge fan of Roland’s hardware. I use an A-88 MIDI controller as my weighted keyboard. The only other electronic keybeds I’ve found that rivals it are the much more expensive Kurzweils. Roland’s sounds aren’t the most realistic, but for that I have NI Komplete.
ETA: Also, while the software for the Fishman pickup (13 GB you have to download since they don’t include a disc) isn’t very impressive and kind of poorly thought out, it isn’t really necessary. The hardware you mount on the guitar outputs a standard MIDI signal, so you can use it to directly control any DAW. I gave up on the Fishman software inside of a week and just use it as a MIDI controller for my VSTs. As I said, room for improvement. But for the price, a lot more capable and accurate that I expected.
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