Location: USA
Remote: No preference
Willing to relocate: Yes, to any major US city
Technologies: JS, Linux, AWS, blockchain, Three.js (see resume)
Resume: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qMnCVQbl65PkN9xfd_LNKGwVq62SfDa6EDKjetxKVCg
Email: resume4@mailcyr.(USA TLD)
On the first point, Amazon should strictly prohibit gifting free Vine items to others. It is inherently antithetical.
On the second point, no. I don't think it's possible to give free items to people and get honest reviews. The free-ness will often induce either charity or laziness in reviewers. The only way to get an accurate review on a product at its price point is to sell the item at its price point in the wild.
"non-guitarist Mom of skeptical daughter who didn't want or ask for Thingamagig but 'hey it's free'" is not our market, though. Thus, it is not a valid read on "market reception".
The whole point of my post is that Vine is pushing units onto the wrong people and for the wrong reasons and that others in my shoes should avoid it. I.e. I'm admitting an error using Vine at all.
Early reviews are critical to a product's trajectory. Of course I'm going to get upset about Vine giving my free guitar product to non-guitarists who turn around and leave poor reviews. It's absurd.
I thought about this and it's a good point. Maybe there is a carve-out for folks who can't review on their own - like elder care products or kids toys. But this is not that.
July 21st was when I had the "ok I have to pursue this for real" moment and it's been 24/7 coding and tinkering since then. I really need to go for a walk or something.
Give thingamagig a shot. I think you'll find that voice-control is faaaaaar from a gimmick. I have kicked my feet up and lost hours jamming along from track to track. The frictionlessness of it is really something.
Also, you seem to know quite a bit about the market. Would you be willing to talk? Email me at cyrus@ my product's domain name.
I thought about this too. Multiple choice A, B, C, etc... just play the chord. :)
But that's pretty challenging from an engineering standpoint and Alexa skills can't be controlled externally yet. I briefly added a footswitch and could get Thingamagig to cycle through the tones of a particular song with it, but the Alexa screen won't update on that "outside" information.
Amazon has said they'll consider it but my gut says that's way down the list of things they're trying to do.
I became aware of Spark a couple of weeks ago. On the one hand, I was irritated that someone else was on the same "voice-controlled guitar playing" thread as me, but then (a) it's validating and (b) they're not really going the same place I am.
Thingamagig understands the underlying composition which means it can automate tones, loopers, lights, cameras, etc. That need was the genesis of this project and that's where its going. Everybody else (including Spark, Fender Play) seems to think the playalong is the end goal, which is why they short circuit the hard work of building the composition library by integrating Spotify or whatever.
Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm right. Maybe we're both right. We'll see, I guess.
It's realtime raspbian. Headless ardour (lua implementation). A mix of guitarix and other amp sims. Proprietary cab sim IRs. Various other effects packages like rkr, ardour-native plugins.
Person speaks to alexa, alexa calls a series of lambdas (basically the not-yet-public API), and sends MQTT messages to the device which is tied to the user's Thingamagig account which is linked to their Alexa account.
Guitarix is really, really impressive and I'm eternally grateful, but it is raw. It takes a lot of work to get it to sound the way you want and is inconsistent from sim to sim. However, by having control over the hardware and the sessions (i.e. presets, basically) and totally bypassing the Guitarix GUI, I was able to make it work for this project.
BTW, I'm not using any of guitarix's cab sims. Instead I purchased a commercial license to professionally-shot proprietary cab simulation IRs which make all the difference in terms of tone quality. That metal portion of the demo is all about the cab sims.
Do you know of any modeling solution where you can pick up your guitar and play without your hands ever leaving the guitar?
Do you know of any modeling solution that will automatically change your guitar tones during playback?
And automate your loopers?
And scroll lyrics and chords in perfect time?
And (eventually) automate your vocal effects, lights, fog machines, drone cameras and dancing baby Groot?
For < $150?
Thingamagig understands the underlying composition which is a critical component of advanced automation. No other solution on the market does this. If it did, I would have bought it and been done with it.
The first is when the skill does a thing and then immediately starts listening again. The blue bar is already there and you don't need to say "Alexa".
The second is when the skill is still open but not currently listening. Takes a bit of hackery to keep the skill from constantly closing, namely, long-running APL commands.
The third is when the skill is closed and you're trying to get it to do something. I call this "deep launching" but it almost never works. Amazon has built an amazing system here, but the Alexa system needs work on recognizing skill names for deep launching.
I'm your technical co-founder. Send your ideas.