A keyboard guitar is a light-weight keyboard that is held in place by a strap around the neck and shoulders, similar to how a guitar is held. The keyboard guitar, also known as the keytar, was created to combine the benefits of both keyboards and guitars. It was designed to be more user-friendly than a guitar and to provide a wider range of motion than traditional keyboards.
Many 1980s musical groups popularized the keyboard guitar, which was first commercially produced in 1980. The keyboard guitar’s popularity began to dwindle as bands moved away from 1980s musical styles. The popularity of this instrument began to renew in the late 2000s, thanks in part to new software innovations and a revival of the musical style known as Synthpop.
Only a few companies have made keyboard guitars, but they’ve gone through a lot of changes in their brief existence. The Moog Liberation®, released in 1980 by Moog Music, was the first true keytar. It was one of the simplest of its kind, but it did have several controls for pitch, volume, and other parameters located on the instrument’s neck. The Roland AX-7®, which was produced from 2001 to 2007, was a popular later model keytar. It had many more advanced features, such as velocity-sensitive keys, an LED display, and proprietary sensors that detected nearby movement of the player’s hands using infrared light.
The popularity of the keyboard guitar has spawned a slew of related instruments. Some children’s toys, such as those shaped like a keytar but with limited capabilities and poor sound quality, fall into this category. Vinson Williams, an instrument builder, has also created two instruments based on the keyboard guitar’s concept and appearance. His Keytar V-1® and V-2® combine a guitar body with a piano keyboard and strummable metal strings similar to those found on a guitar.
The V-1® and V-2®’s strings are fretted differently than guitar strings. The instruments have rubber pads that, when pressed, fret the strings instead of strummed with one hand and fretted with the other. This technique is similar to the way clavinet strings are fretted. These advancements represent yet another musical innovation, putting Williams’ instruments in a class separate from the original keyboard guitar.