Lava Genie sampler guitar is a stringless axe from the future
The most advanced air guitar you’ve ever played?
Stairway to Heaven a step too far? Sweet Child O’ Mine a blues-riffing minefield? If fingering the frets of a traditional guitar only leads you to frustration, how about taking your musical adventure in a more futuristic direction?
The Lava Genie from Lava Music may look like a guitar invented in Area 51, but it’s really closer to a sampler than a six string. Forget the Keytar — with a stringless fretboard and cut away body, it lets players tap their way along onboard samples, rather than forcing them to contort their fingers into chord shapes to strum through.
The touch-sensitive fretboard’s sections can be programmed to register as up to 21 chords from any key — you just hold down the section corresponding to the chord you want to play, and tap at another touch sensitive ‘TapPad’ part over the body to make sound play from the onboard speakers.
The TapPad has multiple points of touch sensitivity, letting you play with different sample style across the same chord, while there’s also sections to trigger accompanying percussion and dial in its tempo. Lights along the edge of the fretboard, and another touch-sensitive arpeggiator section, help you navigate this weird instrument, as well as plucking out individual ‘strings’ from each sampled chord.
A companion app lets you tweak the onboard samples (acoustic, electric, synth, pop rock and electronic presets are listed), and also helps teach newcomers how to play this funky instrument. It has access to ‘thousands’ of licensed songs, so you can learn new tunes while playing along. There’s also an AI driven transcription tool onboard, turning your chords and lyrics into a music sheet for others to play along with.
It’s all battery powered — a single charge will get you roughly six hours of play time — and portable, too. The Lava Genie is collapsible, letting you dismantle the fretboard from the body to go on the road to your next gig with an included carry case.
Currently fully funded by backers on Kickstarter, the Lava Genie will eventually sell for $399 (about £310), but you can nab one for your next gig now at an early bird price of $349 (about £270). It’s shipping now, so might make for an interesting Christmas present for the curious guitarist in your life.
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