piano
Gadgets
Spider Drill Piano Produces Symphony of Cacaphony
4:30PM Elaine Chow | Brazilian artist Paulo Nenflidio, who’s currently showing off his work in Arizona, creates weird noise-producing sculptures like this robot drill spider, which ends up sounding as frightening as it looks. More »
Software
Sting Teaches You to Play Guitar in Garageband ‘09
3:51AM Mark Wilson | In one of the odder announcements during the Macworld keynote, Sting, along with others like Norah Jones, will teach you to play guitar and piano in Garageband ‘09. More »
Design
Piano Doorbell Turns the FedEx Guy Into a Virtuoso
7:50AM Sean Fallon | Musical doorbells are annoying enough, but what if you gave your visitors the freedom to express themselves creatively? That’s exactly what designer Li Jian had in mind when he came up with the Pianobell. Unless you are friends with a lot of talented musicians, I don’t see much of an upside here. On the other hand, it could be amusing to torture your FedEx guy with a bizarre form of performance anxiety. Fortunately for him, the Pianobell is only a concept at this point. [Labexp via Freshome] More »
Gadgets
BodyBeat Metronome Keeps Beat Silently, Forgets Musicians Need Their Fingers
9:20AM Gizmodo US Edition | The Peterson BB-1 BodyBeat attaches to your finger/random appendage, sending tiny rhythmic pulses that you can feel on your skin. The non-aural stimulation will give you a silent way to count measures while playing the piano… and since you have to use your fingers to do that, you will have to clamp this to somewhere else. The question is where? More »
Toys
Although not the most tuneful of instruments, this plastic finger piano was a freebie with a kids/2.jpg" alt="" />
Although not the most tuneful of instruments, this plastic finger piano was a freebie with a kids/2.jpg" alt="" />
Finger Piano the Freddie Kruger Glove for First-Graders
9:16PM Addy Dugdale | Although not the most tuneful of instruments, this plastic finger piano was a freebie with a kids’ magazine in Japan. I reckon it sounds like that high-pitched “weee” sound you get just before a bomb goes off in the movies. And until we can fit a baby grand into our apartment, this shinky-shonky toy will just have to do. [Geekologie] More »
Software
iAno iPhone App Gives Your iPhone C-Minor Key
9:30AM Haroon Malik | Between iAno – the newly released iPhone app that turns your mobile into a piano – and the earlier released PocketGuitar, which does much of the same but with a guitar, it is only a matter of time before we see the first iPhone band. That will be awesomely groundbreaking, and what we ask is that you send us the video. We’ll post it, we promise*. Back to the present, iAno installs on Jailbroken iPhones and offers a fully functioning multitouch piano, as you can see in the great video above. A four-octave keyboard is represented in iAno, and the arrow keys at the top are used to navigate around. The software was put together by a developer going by the name of Mr Aardvark, and he managed to pack in polyphonic sound that allow five key presses to be heard simultaneously. Sweet. More »
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Piano in a Can is Useful in a Strapya Kinda Way
11:00PM Addy Dugdale | Strapya might just have come up with this year’s most useless thingy, the Piano Can. Housed in what looks like a babyfood tin is a polythene keyboard that may or may not have been made out of an old plastic bag. More »
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The Classiest DJ Setup
6:30AM Seamus Byrne | Most DJ setups consist of a park bench, some crates and a beat-up trash can. This Grand Master DJ setup? Much classier. Someone took a grand piano, added four subwoofers, some tweeters, and the standard fancy DJ controls to where the keys are supposed to be. Here are the full specs: Dual Pioneer DVJ-X1 DVD Players, Edirol V-4 Video Mixer, 3 Marshal LCD Monitors, Allen and Heath Xone 92 Audio Mixer, Dual 15″ Subwoofers, 18″ Subwoofer, 12″ Subwoofer, 3 Bullet Tweeters, AB 1100 Watt Power Amplifier. [Digital DJ] More »
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