Any hemispheric stroke survivors or arm amputees out there who want to still be able to play guitar?
Basically, I am part of a medical robotics research group at UT Austin, and we saw that there were some stroke/amputee cases out there that took away right/left arm abilities of some musicians. We are currently working on a very very preliminary stage device that would allow not only alternating strumming, but strumming of any pattern. I mention this, because most of the devices out there for this only do alternating strumming and essentially takes away all creative freedom. Our device is foot controlled. The way it works is there is an attachment that is strapped on to your guitar. If you are left hemipsheric stroke survivor, you will probably need to use a left handed guitar so you can use your right hand for the actual fretting and chords and use the strummer for the arm that is paralyzed. This attachment on the guitar has an up stroke and a down stroke. These strokes are controlled by two foot pedals. When you press the pedal down, the strum goes down. There are two separate pedals. One for up and one for down. The reason we have two separate pedals is because we found that the easiest way to make the speedy switch between up and down strum in songs is to just separate them. So right foot is down and left foot is up. For example if you wanted to play riptide, you'd do [right] [right]- [left] [right] [left] -[right] [right] -[left] [right] [left] - [right] [right] - [left] [right] [left] - [right] [right] (if you can imagine slightly tapping your feet that way). I know it seems hectic to do two separate strummers, but this is because a lot of the devices out there for this ...again...only do alternating strumming so your right foot is either pushing down or relelasing (which causes the strummer to go up). This completely limits strumming pattern capabilities and strumming speed. We want the device to allow people to play however they want. We are also looking into creating haptic feedback into the pedals, so basically as you pass each string, a vibration is sort of sent to the pedals and you'd feel it in your foot, so you get the same sensation of what it is like to feel the vibration of each string through your strumming hand when you strum. Please if there is anyone out there that would be willing to message me about this or would like to be in testing stages of this device with us, send me a dm. We are looking for willing participants and people we can actually build this device for. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment. We wiill be working on this device throughout the summer and next semester as well. We would just like everyone to be able to play guitar if they want to. Music is healing for the soul and we want to put something good out into the world and possibly help people who have never played guitar due to paralysis or who have lost the ability to play guitar due to paralysis. BTW if you are left arm paralyzed, the idea is that you would use a non conventional "left-handed guitar" that would allow you to fret with your right hand and strum (use the strumming device and pedal) for your left hand.