GMICS to 'unlock the talent' of the musician

"GMICS (Global Musical Instrument Communication Standard) has been a big change for me as a player," said master guitarist Adrian Legg during a demonstration of Gibson's developing, open standard technology at NAMM last weekend to a rapt audience of journalists and manufacturers. Other sourcing and distribution technologies he has tried, such as MIDI, have been limiting. "I had to adapt (my playing) to it," Legg said. "Consequently, the music is not emotionally significant. Present technology limits creativity," he continued.

GMICS proposes to "unlock the talent" of the musician, said Gibson's and GMICS' director of research and development, Stephen Woolley. "It's an enabling technology," Woolley said. "The GMICS standard is not a product, but an open standard. If we're successful, it will be transparent to the player and listener, as it should be." With an extremely low latency of 250 microseconds, "There is no apparent delay between the musician's performance and what he hears," Woolley explained

"The music instrument industry is only beginning to realize the full potential of the digital revolution." says Henry Juszkiewicz, Gibson CEO and Executive Director of the GMICS project, who foresees the benefits of adapting digital computer network technology to the special needs of performing musicians. "Our vision is to embrace and extend the capabilities of the guitar - and all musical instruments - without changing the character or playability of the instrument. With GMICS, we are now able to offer the musician pristine, better-than-CD quality sound and new control options in a reliable, easy to use fully digital system," he adds.

To demonstrate, a hex pickup was mounted on Legg's custom guitar. Through the GMICS processor, Legg was able to control the position in the mix (pan) and relative gain of each string individually, enhancing the dynamic range of the performance. His stereo effects were panned hard left and right with each sting mixed individually in between the effects across five different speakers. "That is one of many opportunities the standard can unlock," Woolley said.

A semi-hollowbody Epiphone guitar with a prototype GMICS board mounted in it's cavity was on display. "We are reducing the size of the board to about the size of a standard floor effects unit but thinner," he said. In addition, GMICS can provide phantom-power, eliminating the need for batteries in the instruments. "We hope to have an evaluation board completed witin a few months," he said.

To learn more, read or download the GMICS Engineering Specification, Revision 1.1 right here. Post questions and comments on the GMICS Forum here. Answers to several musicians' questions are anwwered here. The GMICS team can be emailed at info@gmics.org.

Adrian Legg demonstrates the power and ease of use of GMICS technology.

Adrian played his own hand-built guitar
with a GMICS hex-pickup installed.

A retrofitted Epiphone guitar
was on hand to show how the
electronics could be mounted.

A close-up of the current version of the GMICS electronics.

This screen displays one application of GMICS technology. In this demonstration, each individual string is represented by a number and the 5 speaker PA sytem is represented by the boxes across the top of the screen. By simply clicking and dragging a string number, the relative magnitude and position of the string is changed in the mix.

Adrian Legg and Stephen Woolley show off some of the powerful applications of GMICS technology.

Adrian used his full accompaniment of pedal effects. The analog signal from the pedals was mixed with the digital output of the hex pickup.