I bought a Z7-S because I could play chords with one finger with one button by programming them in that way. This frees up brain capacity and fretboard space for playing bass and lead along with those chords. You could feasibly program all the chords to a song on say seven fret/string crossings just for arguments sake. When you stop a "string" on the high end. It doesn't prevent you from playing a note below on the same "string."

You can play chords in the left hand on the low end (if you haven't programmed them onto one note like I'm going to do) and play lead above or visa versa. You can also have multiple midi patches assigned to different zones.

So I can have a bass patch assigned to the area near my right thumb, a clean rhythm guitar patch assigned to my one-finger chords for the right hand fingers and a lead sound assigned to my left hand. You could also combine 2 sounds like clean rhythm guitar and a synth string pad. One reason I have the left hand playing melody is I plan to play it table-top fashion. Also, my dexterity as a seasoned guitarist is all in my left hand.

It's also small so I can play it like a stick too seated cross legged on the floor. I have the options of using it like a stick, like a guitar, or table-top. Freaky cool. The fret-board doesn't have the issue of needing the frets to be too wide at the top and too small at the bottom. Compared to a classical guitar my 12th fret exists about where the classical guitars eighth fret is and it's got more than 24 frets.

There's a lot of reasons why more people don't use them. Actually, I think the people who have them don't get into using them to their fullest advantage and so don't tell their friends about how cool they are.

People don't like to spend time programming it, like how a click of a button changes to several possible tunings or octaves. I think it's the guitarist for Linkin' Park who uses one on tour and swears by it.

But it has other issues that will bother people. You can't get a natural sounding vibrato. It's got expression tape on the back of the neck and an expression strip just under where you'd finger pick the strings. It's also got a keyboard synth style expression joystick none of which will make a blues guitarist happy.

God forbid you ever accidentally touch any of these things while you're playing. Most people turn off the ones they don't intend to use because inevitably you touch all of them by accident much too often.

Another issue they have is the difficulty prospective buyers have in finding out useful information about their product without drowning in a sea of useless user specific data. Their website has the useful videos buried instead of prominent on page one and even those are piece-meal.

I had to spend a lot of time looking for info on Youtube, in reviews, and existing users. Not many customers are going to have that high a level of commitment. If you can't tell most people in 30 seconds why they want you, they're ALL gone.

Lastly, they haven't got the customer service thing down yet. They desperately need someone like Emmett with experience to handle it. Their forum is down and seems like it's not coming back. Emmett could totally help them with that. He had an arrangement with Steinberger. Why not Starr Labs too?

My Z7-S didn't come with the power adapter for the Air Wireless system it needs to function correctly and when I plugged in the midi cable from something that was plugged in, it burned out the Air Wireless system.

Fucking hell if I want to send it to them and have them send it back after they've fixed it. Because it was what? more than $3,000 for the instrument and the import duty to Indonesia was about $1,500 not including the air wireless system.

Emmett would have prevented any of that nonsense before it ever occurred. I imagine the company is beleaguered with customer inquiries, and existing customer issues which is not only preventable, it's essential for the company to run smoothly and profitably.

Either they think the website issue isn't important or just can't seem to make the time for it. They're wrong if they think it's not a very high priority of theirs.

Also, although the gear is not very complex to hook up, I could see a newbie giving up because there wasn't even one piece of documentation to explain how to set it up or what should have arrived with the instrument. A picture, something... just throw us a bone please.

Right now I'm waiting to see if the TV electronics people down the street can fix my burned out Air Wireless system.

My external sound module doesn't have a midi port so I'll have to buy one of those little midi connections or something to finally make it all work. But I wanted WIRELESS.

That concludes my review of the Z7-S. Videos coming soon to a Stickist.com forum near you.

In regards to doing a project together, did you want me to use those same sounds like on Rainbow Earthquake? Those are the software synth sounds of Mystic and Prologue etc... that came with Cubase. I've also got sounds I've recorded myself; cans, bottles, tearing paper, flowing water, rain, pots and pans. And stuff from Kontakt 4 too. Any of that sound fun?

What do you want to do, have me weave a carpet and you play on it? You create a carpet and have me play on it? Or we create a carpet together and no one gets to play on it? haha

Ok, so hit me at tragnast@gmail.com.

But yeah I think a good start is a full on free for all on both our ends. Like a true artsty anything goes and if we hate what the other does oh well. Well some limits like maybe we start in free time and then do a part at least locked to a bpm. Thats my thought.
Basically Im not worthy to try and follow your harmony so I would go on feel and instinct alone.

So it's basically who starts? I say you, but be nice haha or not.
And I can start one too maybe. I follow the leader....

Start in free time and maybe change to an actual meter...got it. I wasn't going to give you difficult harmony except maybe as a long drone like is played on the Japanese Sho reed mouth organ.

We could also operate from some metaphor. In my previous pieces I used how the grains of sand cascade down the dune when the number reaches a certain limit. I also played with the idea of the decaying orbit of a rock of ice in the rings of Saturn and the last piece that you liked was based on infinity and terror.

Maybe we could use one of my even earlier devices which was playing with diffraction and pixelation. One example of diffraction is when you have two grids that were in aligment but then you rotate one of them and that creates an effect of a resultant pattern. In music one part can play slower and slower or one part can play more and more out of tune. I like to do both at the same time.

If we're using normal instrumentation I make the keys go out of tempo and the violin go more and more out of tune but the electric guitar has a wammy bar and could be the one to go out of tune. The rhythm guitar could be the one to go out of tempo. Vibrato on chords in the rhythm guitar is another way to create an out of tuneness which is not so noticeable as being wrong in a defiant way.

Pixelation is what you get when your satellite signal for your TV goes wacky and people start looking like Picasso's cubist experiments. In music that would be pointillism if using a classical composition technique but we could create actual glitching of the signal and make the music sound more random like a TV looks when it's freaking out.

I used Pointillism in the last tune I posted when the solo violin is first jumping around in wide intervallic leaps and then the electric guitar, celesta and finally clean rhythm guitar.

What sounds good to you? Or maybe you'd like to choose an entirely different metaphor or just go with what you already explained.