Backpack Band-IT - Guitar, Keyboard, Drums on the OTG

After hanging with my buddy Chris for the 4th of July, I was reinspired to look into how to do an extremely portable band system. He likes recording him and his buddies making music and fiddles with things like using his tablet for drums when he's on vacation or at someone's house. A real prohibitive factor for making music is the instruments require a lot of space and are a massive headache to consider when traveling. And an absolute no-go when flying.

As a first pass into a portable music system I consider using what I already have, with the exception of one item which would make this a really cool project: the short scale fold up guitar!

First what I already have: I conceive the SmartPhone to be the recorder since I will likely want to make fire hot music recordings go viral instantly. There is an app (Piano Extreme: OTG Keyboard) which allows you turn your OTG keyboard hooked up to your phone as a musical keyboard (assigning notes to each character button). I have a Boss Micro BR which allows you to do all kinds of home studio multi-track recording up to 4 tracks, plus a bunch of virtual takes. Limitation is that you can only record one track at a time. I would consider using the Micro BR for my drums since I'm terrible at drums and the unit has all kinds of preset rhythms. Lastly, I have a Vox micro amp which plugs into your guitar and has a headphone out so that you can listen to yourself playing those vintage chimey vox tones. The Vox unit also has an input which could come in handy for mixdown. Lastly lastly, I have a battery powered multi headphone system which allows 3 headphones to listen to the same output.

The component that I would need to manufacture to make this rig truly inspiring is the short scale guitar. I looked into options for short scale guitar production and saw that there are a few options available cheap. A training guitar which slides the neck into the strumming area. Getting a system like that to work would be the most space saving, but probably wouldn't sound very good. There was a $55 raspberry pi kit that produced an electric guitar about the size of your forearm. A lot of potential there, but doesn't fold up. Still, it's small size may mean it does not have to. Lastly, I consider making a short scale fold up guitar using an old clunker electric. An acoustic can be considered also, but then you need to think about electronics for recording (and it kind of takes away from your quiet system).

Thinking about the modded electric guitar, cutting the neck at 7-9 frets would give you enough finger board room to do what you want, and cutting down the body make the unit more compact. A hinge mechanism would need to be attached between the neck and the body, and some consideration for what to do with the strings when the guitar is in fold down position. Most likely, you would slacken the strings so that the neck could be folded away from the playing area on the body. Having the neck fold into the body would probably be the best way to go.