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At CES 2025 I get to demo the LiberLive C1 – the “world’s first stringless guitar” – and yes, it is basically Guitar Hero in real life.
Aspiring rockstars can enjoy and share their music courtesy of the C1’s inbuilt speaker system comprising a 3-inch Mid-Woofer and 0.8-inch Tweeter. Simply play the guitar by holding one of the chord buttons on the fretboard and then strum the switch on the body, with the strength of your strumming translating to different dynamics in playback.
Beginners can use the app to show them interactive chord sheets which help to learn new songs. Then, when you want a more advanced setup, you can rely on the transpose knob to modulate the guitar’s standard chords, use the app to create custom chords which you can assign to the neck’s 21 buttons (seven rows of three), and even emulate an acoustic guitar with the C1’s fingerpicking pad and six virtual strings.
You can also have the C1 sound more like a bass or piano to further customize your music-making experience.
Not for purists, but it is for me
The music purists amongst you will likely be a little horrified at the LiberLive C1, and may even scoff at its $799 asking price – it’s currently on sale for $499 – but I think it’s a lot of fun and I can’t wait to test it out properly.
Yes, I don’t expect the next world-famous frontman will be relying on a LiberLive at their band’s next concert – nor will musicians like Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran swap their trusty acoustic for a stringless guitar. For performers who love to sing but haven’t mastered another instrument, however, the C1 seems like an excellent choice to simply play your own custom backing rather than relying on a premade track.
And while buskers might want to consider a speaker with a bit more oomph eventually – in the noisy convention center it wasn’t the loudest – as a starting out all-in-one package (ignoring a microphone for your singing, which you might not need at first) it doesn’t seem like a bad choice, especially with its up to six-hour battery life on a single charge (using the in-built speakers, it goes up to 12 hours with an external sound system).
I’ll want to try it out further before delivering a final verdict, but in terms of tech solutions for democratizing music-making this seems like a far better solution than a soulless AI beat generator.
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