I've come to realize that constraint drives creativity and innovation. The more options an artist has, the more difficult it can be to think of a solid idea. Without rules in music, the possibilities are so overwhelming that it would be near impossible to write something listenable. It's the rules and restrictions that give structure to an idea. Of course knowing when to break those rules is just as important as knowing what they are.

It's a well-established fact that a guitarist's acumen can be accurately gauged by the size of their pedal board- the more stompboxes, the better the player. Why have one box that can do everything when you can have many that do just a few things? Jokes aside, the idea of replacing an entire pedal collection with a single box is nothing new. Your standard, old-school stompbox is an analog affair, using a combination of filters and amplifiers to achieve a certain sound. Some modern multi-effects processors use software models of older pedals to replicate their sound.

This is the last of a five-part series on using neural networks for real-time audio. In this article we will go step-by-step to build a functional guitar pedal running neural nets in real-time on the Raspberry Pi. We have now covered three different neural network models and implemented them in real-time guitar plugins with the JUCE framework. As a guitarist and engineer, the next logical step for me is to build a guitar pedal using what we have learned from the previous articles. Amazingly, all the software tools are available for free, and the hardware costs around $150 (less if you already have the required power and audio adapters handy).

Let's get one thing out of the way right up front: Yes, the main conceit of the $329 Cooper FX Arcades is a little gimmicky. It's a guitar pedal into which you stick cards to apply different effects, kinda like a game console. But while the somewhat novel approach to building a multi-effects unit may have helped Arcades garner attention, this pedal is no mere gimmick. A post shared by Tom Majeski (@cooper.fx) Tom Majeski of Cooper FX is not the first person to take this approach. Line 6 had its ToneCore line of pedals in the mid'aughts, Elta had the Console and TipTop Audio sells the Z-DSP. But Z-DSP is a eurorack module, not a guitar pedal.