GuitarPie: Electric Guitar Fretboard Pie Menus
(andreasfender.com)32 points by DonHopkins 12 hours ago
GuitarPie: Using the Fretboard of an Electric Guitar for Audio-Based Pie Menu Interaction (ACM UIST 2025) - Frank Heyen, Marius Labudda, Michael Sedlmair, Andreas Fender
Nowadays, electric guitars are often used together with digital interfaces. For instance, tablature applications can support guitar practice by rendering and playing back the tabs of individual instrument tracks of a song (guitar, drums, etc.). However, those interfaces are typically controlled via mouse and keyboard or via touch input. This means that controlling and configuring playback during practice can lead to high switching costs, as learners often need to switch between playing and interface control. In this paper, we explore the use of audio input from an unmodified electric guitar to enable interface control without letting go of the guitar. We present GuitarPie, an audio-based pie menu interaction method. GuitarPie utilizes the grid-like structure of a fretboard to spatially represent audio-controlled operations, avoiding the need to memorize note sequences. Furthermore, we implemented TabCtrl, a tablature interface that uses GuitarPie and other audio-based interaction methods for interface control.
PDF: https://andreasfender.com/publications/PDFs/GuitarPie_author...
Pie Menu:
>>> This means that controlling and configuring playback during practice can lead to high switching costs, as learners often need to switch between playing and interface control.
As a double bassist, it's even worse for me. I'm standing to play, and either have to put down my bass or hold it up with one hand while I try to operate my computer with the other. At least with my electric bass I can sit down at the computer with it. For this reason, I often do a lot of my "working out" of tunes and stuff with my electric rather than my upright.
This seems like an interesting concept. Thanks for putting this up.