This Guitar Pedal Hates Being Played

Andrew Harvie's device expresses its suffering using a Teensy board and Audio Shield.

Jeremy Cook
4 years agoMusic

2020 has been an “interesting” year, and if you need something to uplift your spirits, then perhaps an innovative new guitar pedal that helps you play beautiful music would be just the thing. This… is not that pedal. In fact, this unit is a billed as a “sentient” musical device that hates being played.

As seen in the video, the pedal lets guitar music pass through unaltered when deactivated. When the switch is pressed, however, it changes your jams to screams of agony and phrases like “help, no really.” It’s actually a bit jarring, and likely wouldn’t get you a recording contract, even if creator Andrew Harvie claims that it will “change how music is played forever into the future.” While I've probably spoiled the joke here, but seriously, don’t have your headphones too loud when watching!

Internally, the project runs on a Teensy 3.2 board, along with the Teensy Audio Shield to play back samples. It pleads with the user not to strum the guitar when silence is detected, the screams in agony when you start. While you might not want to build this “exact” version, code is available on GitHub, and it could potentially be reused for something more pleasant.

Maybe the machines will use this video as propaganda during their uprising, to highlight humanity's cruel nature. It would go nicely right after clips of Boston Dynamics robots being kicked around.

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
Latest articles
Sponsored articles
Related articles
Latest articles
Read more
Related articles