pianos
Design
These Piano Stairs Will Motivate Even The Laziest Of You
4:30PM Rosa Golijan | I’m a stair-taker because elevators and escalators give me nightmares, but for all those lazy folks who don’t have fear motivating them to take the steps, there are these piano stairs. How could you not want musical accompaniment like that? More »
Music
Austrians Can Make Even Pianos Talk
12:40PM Rosa Golijan | I have a weakness for piano players, but I don’t think I can call this Austrian guy a piano player: He doesn’t play them, he makes them talk. Freakin’ hell, here I am barely able to play the accordion. More »
Music
10:50PM John Herrman | Or maybe it’s just that cars and pianos are inherently similar: They both have pedals, hood-ish mechanisms, make noise, and sit users at some manner of control panel. If that didn’t blow your mind, then, well, you probably understand art. More »
Audi-Designed Grand Piano Is Unsurprisingly Carlike
10:50PM John Herrman | Or maybe it’s just that cars and pianos are inherently similar: They both have pedals, hood-ish mechanisms, make noise, and sit users at some manner of control panel. If that didn’t blow your mind, then, well, you probably understand art. More »
Gadgets
Yamaha AvantGrand Digital Piano Vibrates in All the Right Places
6:00AM Jack Loftus | High end digital pianos sound great, and have come a long way over the years, but ask any professional musician and they’ll tell you they just don’t feel the same as a traditional baby grand. More »
Gadgets
Rest in Peace, Olde Tyme Automatic Player Pianos
11:50PM John Herrman | The gradual, relentless digitisation of everything takes a little longer to seep into the more obscure technological quarters. The latest outmoded gadget to fall? The analogue player piano.
Gadgets
Portable Pianist Sounds Dirty, But Makes Sense With These Fingertip Keyboard Gloves
9:00AM Jack Loftus | There’s no definition for the word worthless in the Hammacher Schlemmer dictionary, so these Fingertip Piano Gloves are “ingenious”; a portable subway piano concerto waiting to happen. Each glove plays an entire octave in the key of C, and the final three notes in the scale are achieved by pressing down on the palm. The gloves connect to a wire that connects to a speaker, which allows the whole family to enjoy. They ship on October 17 for $US70, but the epic symphonies your little one will make using these five-fingered feats of engineering will be priceless. Or not. Ever strangle someone in the key of C before? [Hammacher Schlemmer] More »
Gadgets
Yamaha’s Disklavier Mark IV V 3.0 is the Most Gadgety Piano Yet
2:00AM Jason Chen | This Yamaha Disklavier Piano could be the most advanced piano we’ve ever seen, and we’ve seen several (forced piano lessons FTW). Not only does it have Wi-Fi to download MIDI files onto itself so it can play back songs, you can record performances—with vocals and other instruments—as well. More »
Gadgets
Schimmel Pegasus Grand Piano Could Probably Travel Through Time and Space
4:30AM Jesus Diaz | Looking like it belongs in Jeff Vader’s Coruscant bachelor pad, the hand-made Schimmel Pegasus has an ergonomically curved keyboard, over 200 strings under a total tension of 176,520 newtons, and a key assembly composed of 10,000 pieces. Only 14 were made ten years ago for people like Eddie Murphy, Lenny Kravitz, and granfunkmeister Prince. Now you can get into this exclusive club because there’s one for sale until March 15th. More pics and technical details after the jump. Updated with price and other information More »
Entertainment
Seiler Piano Supports Hands, Keys and Cars
12:45AM Mark Wilson | This “suspension” piano by Seiler brings everyone’s favourite style of bridge indoors and gives it a soundtrack beyond the typical roar of automobiles drowning out the subtle splashing of suicide jumpers. A meticulously crafted mahogany piano suspended on a cast iron frame, we’d be afraid to even touch a key lest we induce the sound of metal shredding expensive wood. But our guess is that the piano’s quite literal delicate balance between fluid fragility and rigid stability is its entire appeal. [seiler via dvice] More »
Computers
