Variant
Banned
This.
I don't know how many of you have used Spectrasonics Trillian, but it's capabilities as a bass virtual instrument are staggering. Nothing quite as extensive and honed has been presented for guitar, but honestly, it's only a matter of time. How the control/MIDI is implemented will be big part of determining the plausibility of such concepts. Some new ideas in the pickup/controller realm may come along to push these things forward and marry these concepts further. It may even be the end of modelers as we know it as well, as triggering a sample of an actual guitar through an actual amp that's been stored to a wavetable leaves the whole modeling debate out of it. I.E., when I blend the Ampeg tone in on Trillian, for instance, its the actual amp they had in the studio, so you're essentially blending two simultaneous samples, one D.I. and one the mic'd amp, yet NEVER leaving the digital realm. I mean, digital pianos have been around forever, string sections like L.A. Scoring Strings, the almost ubiquitous (here, anyway) Superior Drummer... how can you not think guitars are next? 
It likely wont replace guitar completely, as those haven't murdered their respective instruments either, but as tool (particularly in the studio) the power will be immense. Also, you guys are so narrow minded worrying about all metal sounding like Meshuggah or not, and moreover, the whole fucking djent thing.
It's become such a dirty word here, like bemoaning it has stopped it from becoming a sub-genre. I honestly don't even get the conversation. Most djent bands that are influenced by Meshuggah, are stylistically are more similar to Bulb's playing than Meshuggah's. None of the djent bands are all really popular. Periphery? Textures? Like they sell fuckall compared to a lot of pop-core outfits. Frankly, I'm tired of this forum fucking bitching about about a handful of bands that embrace the djent sound as if its as homogeneous and widespread as the glam rock sound was in the '80s, the nu metal sound was in the '90s, or the figgen' metal/death core sound is now. It's a pocket niche, representing a little stylistic diversity in the music. Be fucking glad its something new or different. So far as their prevalence goes, there's still probably a more active industrial, or grindcore scene in 2010 than there is fucking djent. The sevenstring.org "recording" forum is NOT representative of stylistic prevalence of anything. The future of the guitar is likely something a little more broad than than genrefication... I guess this is why I backed off on my "future of music" thread, because you guys can't have a damn conversation about the technicalities of popular western music without veering off into "this" band or "that" band. The future of guitar is primarily about the instrument itself, and how it will function to a wide variety of users. Honestly, I believe it will continue to be a horses-for-courses type situation, and really we should all be way more concerned with what options we might have, to chose or not, as the technology arc continues.
That would be awesome. 
