I showed some interest in music playing visuals early on. It was the time of MS-DOS and I would grab frames from the game Space Quest by Sierra that had some aliens playing music -inspired by popular Star Wars scene. I would animate those frames in BASIC following notes, or more like beeps because it was before the time of sound waves. It kind of worked.

Many years later, with a long lived passion for guitar and music education, and being a fan of 3D animation encouraged by Blender 3D, I had the same itch of my teen years to animate music but now with precise guitar playing. Much more challenging, actually the feat seemed nearly impossible.

This is a brief summary of the evolution of Autohans 3D – our guitarist simulator

Rotoscoping 2017

Early Disney cartoons used this technique with great success in old Disney movies like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The technique consisted in having a live reference footage to draw each frame. So, I did the same. We recorded Otto Reina playing a Vinnie Moore lick and that was my reference video. Using Blender, I tried copying the hands over a 3D model. Well, it was difficult!. I learned that I had to move many controls every single frame. One wouldn’t have to position a finger, and be done with the frame, I had to move the wrist and others fingers accordingly. Not so easy. So, I write a python script to help with some of that work, but it was massive amounts of work anyway.

Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNZFXUk2Fr8

The result was ok, so I included this animation in the app ‘Jump Start Guitar’.

Scripting 2021

The itching returned years later.  I knew that more level of automation was possible, so I started writing a more complex python script to automatically animate ASONGS (Amparosoft’s file format). That was the purpose. I now was able to place the fingers and the right hand more or less where I wanted. There were a lot  of issues though, and version of a script would work fine for a lick, but badly for another. So, I found myself tweaking the code for each lick, but without a general solution. It was progress nevertheless. I also had to manually fix some issues with the animations that I couldn’t avoid at the time.

First Renders 2022

Another limitation at the moment was that all the ASONGS had to have explicit fingers assignments and technique on every singe note, and that was also time consuming and a bit cumbersome to be honest. Anyway, we produce some licks and integrated them in ‘Best Licks- Intuitive Guitar’ as prerendered videos. The reception was mostly good and encouraging.

Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0FFull5Dt4

Autohans – Stand alone tool with automatic animation – 2023

What I really wanted was to build a tool that even non-animators could use. This meant that solving this by Blender scripts was out of the question. As much as I love Blender, it is not for casual users, it’s powerful but takes time to learn.

So, I started porting my script to a standalone application and tried game development frameworks, game engines, 3D libraries, many options where I made progress before I found myself in nowhere land. That is, missing a vital feature for my project. Missing Blender already. Until I found my path and coded myself the missing pieces.

This initially felt like a big step backwards because the resulting animations looked doomed, weird hand positions, movements, etc. Low quality visuals too.

Best Licks App with Autohans for Android – 2024

I didn’t quit despite the resulting low quality animations and focused on other aspect in the meantime, like automatic technique generation, which was one of the pieces that really took creative solving, many sleepless nights and a clear mind, because it was awfully difficult. I somehow solved it and it helped me integrate Autohans in our Android app ‘Best Licks’ now called ‘Intuitive Guitar: Lick Library’ which has an extensive collection of more than 650 licks. So animating 650 licks in 3D would’ve been impossible without this tool.

Adding Autohans to iPracticeMyMusic – 2025

The real power started unlocking with the integration of Autohans in iPracticeMyMusic, and the real reason why I took the hardest road. I had envisioned a tool in which one could change a note, assign a different left hand finger, or switch from alternate picking to economy picking on the fly and see the animation change right there in an instant. That is, a tool not only for animators but for guitar enthusiasts to help them expand their knowledge of the guitar fretboard and experiment with the many hidden playing possibilities. Also, a tool that could animate any guitar pro file out there, on the fly, without moving controls and having to tweak movements, just an animation controlled only by a guitar tab. If I wanted to change the animation, I would change the tab, and it would readjust. We managed to accomplish just that!.

This has been monumental work to say the least. But now importing guitar pro files is possible and creating ASONGs. It’s now possible to render video (create video files like mp4s) at any desired angle, and also export the GLB animation for full control in 3D suites like Blender. This is for the advanced users, and I have yet to publish a video showcasing its unlimited possibilities.

Demoing full songs – 2026

The animation quality has improved so much since the initial stand-alone versions, including a more relaxed and natural looking animation, and with SSGI (screen space global illumination) for better visual. We keep eternally improving iPracticeMyMusic and Autohans, we want it to be the NEXT level of guitar tabs and the ultimate practice tool.

Reference playlist (All songs animated): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjHmcMAP45A&list=PLnzIffxSYW4rFnS9fry7WSsH45Mw4zlgI

I’ll notice the use of real recordings in those animations, and one powerful feature of iPracticeMyMusic is its tools for automatic syncing, it’s powered by an original algorithm, as we always do. Sometimes it requires a click to work, and always presents the opportunity for easy manual tweaks. Forget sync points, we think as musicians, so our approach is different to the one’s in Soundslice and Guitar Pro.

Download iPracticeMyMusic for free:

https://gum.co/TDKEt/freeplayer

Purchase advanced features for iPracticeMyMusic:

https://amparosoft.gumroad.com/l/comjk

Don’t forget to watch the video:

Written by Juan Reina

By the way, if it’s still unclear, this is not A.I! At least not generative AI or machine learning. We get a lot of hate from people misunderstanding what this is, and partly due to ourselves not explaining much. Hope this is a step in solving that.