What new instruments will we see in music stores next?

One could certainly be the creation of Keith Groover, a North Greenville University adjunct professor who made it into the ranks of today’s most innovative instrument makers when he won the 2019 Margaret Guthman New Instrument Competition.

No doubt he felt in his element at the March 9 event, hosted at Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center for the Arts and featuring musicians from the world over: Groover, who teaches guitar in NGU’s Cline School of Music, has been playing instruments of all shapes and sizes since he was five.

He Was the Family Band

“I started out on the piano when I was really little and then switched over to the trombone in elementary school. I started playing guitar when I was in ninth grade and then things like the electric bass and the upright bass and the French horn — kind of a lot of random instruments. The banjo, the accordion, that kind of thing,” he trails off, as if there’s more he could list.

But Groover says his family didn’t have “a ton of money” when he was growing up. And, as anyone who’s signed their kids up for music lessons can tell you, new instruments easily run into the thousands. So, as he took interest in one instrument after the next, he would either have to find a cheap rental or, more often, borrow an instrument from a friend.

By the time he was in high school, Groover had a pile of these borrowed instruments. In fact, one day his parents were showing their house to sell, and one of the potential buyers pointed at the pile and asked, “Do you have a family band?”

“My parents said, ‘No, it’s just our teenage son playing all these instruments,’” Groover laughs.

Trashing the Musician Filter

No one was surprised when Groover decided to study music composition at the University of South Carolina and then pursue a career as a music director and teacher.

During more than a decade of teaching, he picked up on some of his music students’ key challenges, and they bothered him:

“Traditional instruments often filter the kind of person who becomes a musician. As a music teacher, I saw the obstacles that students face, whether it’s nonstandard anatomy, financial limitations, or an inability to stay in one spot for a long time to practice an instrument,” Groover adds.

Cut to 2016, and Groover had begun scribbling down ideas for a brand new instrument that almost anyone could play.

“My guiding principle with the whole design was accessibility,” Groover adds.

He went on to make an instrument from scratch that looks similar to two video game controllers connected together. You can play if you’re standing up or sitting down. The instrument is adaptable. And you can play it if you’re right-handed or left-handed. The controls are ambidextrous. And you can play it if you’ve got cash to spare or you’re tight on money. The cost is $150.

What Brings It All Together

But what else makes Groover’s instrument unique?

Groover based his instrument around the accelerometer, a device used to measure increase in speed. Accelerometers are what power cellphones to switch between horizontal and vertical views when we tilt them, he explains. When applied to his instrument, the accelerometer gives the musician surprising control over the elements of not only pitch and tone, but also volume and vibrato.

“The biggest feature of the instrument is that you can play one note, and then you can change your fingers around and glide to a different note: aah-aah,” Groover demonstrates in a singing voice, with the second “aah” several steps higher. “That was one of the very last features that I came up with, and that feature brought it all together.”

That feature is also the namesake of Groover’s now patented instrument, The Glide. In its completed realization, it consists of two hand controls with a total of five buttons, joined together by a thin cable. Using Bluetooth, you can pair The Glide with a phone, tablet, or computer and then play it through any synthesizer app.

Off the Cuff

Around the same time he wrapped up his prototype, Groover learned about the Margaret Guthman New Instrument Competition, an annual event “aimed at identifying the world’s next generation of musical instruments,” according to its website.

He heard back just days after applying for the competition that he’d been invited to participate in the 2019 competition at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA, along with an elite handful of instrument inventors from across the globe.

Groover couldn’t wait for the big day, when he would taken advantage of the opportunity to present and demo his instrument in front of hundreds. Now, he just needed to pick the best song to showcase The Glide.

“I had considered using a backing track or doing a song that everyone knew for my final performance, but I decided that I wanted it to be as exposed as possible and to have an improvisatory feel,” confides Groover. “That’s the heart and soul of what I envisioned for The Glide: that it would be an instrument that would make it easy to make music off the cuff.”

His performance went off without a hitch. During the comments for each contestant, the judges gave him high praises for “[taking the instrument] all the way from idea through engineering and design all the way to . . . a very compelling performance.”

The Margaret Guthman New Instrument Competition ended with an awards ceremony, with contestants on stage waiting with bated breath to hear the winners.

Third place: a tie between AirSticks and Spinstruments.

Second place: GeoShred.

Groover had felt certain GeoShred’s popularity would make it a shoo-in for first, so he closed his eyes as the judges continued.

First place: The Glide.

He beamed the whole way, as he walked forward to shake hands with the judges, accept his prize, and acknowledge the cheering crowd with a cheeky bow.

The Future of The Glide

The Margaret Guthman New Instrument Competition under his belt, now Groover looks ahead to the future of The Glide with greater optimism than ever.

“I’ve poured countless hours into The Glide,” Groover says. “This win made me really hopeful for the future of the instrument.”

With his cash prize of $5,000 in hand, Groover plans to continue production of The Glide and possibly to develop a smaller version of the instrument designed for children.

He also foresees making the software behind The Glide open source, empowering other musicians to alter what the instrument can do in the days ahead.

“I would love for The Glide to help usher in an era of increased accessibility of music-making for everyone,” Groover says. “If I could have had an instrument like this as a kid, I think I really would have taken off with it.”