Google Homepage Honors Les Paul with Playable Virtual Guitar

Posted by Christopher Sung on Jun 9, 2011

If you've spent any time Googling today, you may have noticed an industrial-looking graphic above the search functionality. This, in fact, is a playable virtual guitar with 10 individual strings covering 10 distinct pitches.

Users can hit the record button to save up to 30 seconds of noodling (or brilliance). When finished, you can play it back, and a short url is provided to share your ditty.

This feature is part of Google Doodles, and was created in honor of the late, legendary guitarist/inventor Les Paul, who would have turned 96 today. Les Paul is often known for ushering in the era of multi-track recording, overdubbing, and delay. However, he may be best immortalized for popularizing the solidbody electric guitar, culminating in the Gibson model that bears his moniker and that is favored by a litany of famous guitarists.

As far as the doodle's design, as you can see below, the strings are quasi-arranged in three distinct chords -- G, C, and D. Thus, you can strum most of your favorite tunes that fall into the "three chords and an attitude" category.

People have already starting posting various tunes using the doodle, often cleverly working around its simplicity by changing octaves when necessary. I imagine these will only become crazier as the day goes on.