No strings attached: The guitar with a touchscreen



The Kitara is a keytar for the iPhone generation



You can 'play' the Kitara by strumming the virtual strings (it's multi-touch, like the iPad), or hold down one finger and move it up to increase the sustain. The prototype was built by an engineer in his spare time, but after a million views of his YouTube demo, he went into business...

The Eighties revival now appears to have lasted longer than the actual Eighties did, and it shows no signs of letting up.



No instrument is more evocative of the dry-ice-clouded synth anthems of the decade than the 'keytar' - a keyboard shaped like a guitar, usually paired with an extremely large hairdo and outfits made of synthetic fabrics.



The Kitara is a keytar for the iPhone generation: combining a multi-touch touchscreen, a fretboard and a fully fledged synthesizer, it enables you to assign 100 different sounds to its virtual 'strings'.



If you'd handed one of these to Duran Duran back in the day, it would probably have caused a guitar solo that would still be going on now.

The Kitara's 8in touchscreen can be 'played' with the same delicacy you'd use with a normal guitar (just touch the relevant part of the screen to pluck, or stroke it to strum), but unlike on a 'real' stringed instrument, you can make the volume of a note rise or fall - as well as apply sustain, delay and distortion effects by sliding your finger around.

Early reaction to demos has been good; expect the Kitara, at the very least, to cause a rise in demand for hairspray...



The ABS version is priced at £589 and the limited edition £1,996, misadigital.com



The full, 24-fret, 144-note fretboard (left) will give guitarists a head start with the Kitara - but the virtual strings are very different to the real thing... Drum machines became de rigeur decades ago, and thanks to auto-tune even singers have 'gone electric' - will hairy rock warriors take to the Kitara, though?

