Instrument

Ever since the dawn of electronics, inventors have looked at weird and wonderful ways of getting at the wealth of opportunities offered by synthesized sound. The instruments through which such sounds are controlled by a player have enjoyed much variety in form, size and functionality in the years since. While most have been keyboard-based, some – like the Theremin – have broken away from tradition to offer an altogether different way of playing. French sound and sensor innovator Eowave has recently updated an instrument that uses a more modern approach to the ribbon-based synthesizer technology used by the likes of Dr Freidrich Adolf Trautwein for his Trautonium – the Persephone Mark II. Read More

When not in use, a guitar tuner is unlikely to see the light of day and is destined to spend much of its life inside a gig bag or hard case. But not giving Tascam's new tuner access to nice, bright sunlight is very bad form indeed. The battery inside the tiny TC-1S is solar charged so if it goes flat, then so do you... Read More

It's much, much smaller than its Stradivarian cousin, but not even the Borrowers, Lilliputians or Blefuscudians are of sufficiently diminutive proportions to take a bow to the Micronium. The tiny instrument is made up of microscopic springs activated by combs to produce an audible tone. Half a dozen tone systems are placed on a chip and then chips combined to offer an orchestral range of sounds. Read More

Digital Audio Workstation software applications put the power of the recording and editing studio right in front of you on a computer screen. Tweaking the hundreds and hundreds of settings and parameters offered by such applications has been made easier with the addition of physical controls on a MIDI interface. But rather than be limited to a rigid set of pre-defined buttons, knobs and faders, students from the University of Applied Sciences Bremen have built a set of wireless, wooden devices with rotary dials called FlexiKnobs. Read More

Seeing the Airpiano being played, one can't help but be reminded of a graceful martial artist, musical conductor or mysterious magician. The innovative interface is activated and controlled by moving a hand in mid-air above the flat display surface and within range of a sensor array matrix. Driven by custom software, the device can put a huge library of tones and sounds at a player's disposal. Read More

After a disappointing year of sales for the industry’s leading rhythm games it would seem as though it’s time for a bit of a shake up, and from what we’ve read so far, Rock Band should be getting the upper hand. Following Harmonix’s announcement of Rock Band Network beta, it has now revealed details of Rock Band 3. Set to bring a whole new level of realism to the genre, the most immediate and exciting improvement is its compatibility with “real instruments," thereby offering budding musicians an exciting interactive platform on which to learn. Read More

Would-be Liberaces could soon be wearing a keyboard on their hands in the form of the Piano Gloves. Created by Scott Garner, the prototype gloves let the wearer play a piano on any surface via buttons on the tips of the fingers. Audio is processed via an Arduino microcontroller wired to the buttons and presently the software can be set to play a major scale or ten semitones, which would limit the gloves to playing tunes comprised of ten or less notes, but Scott is looking at ways to expand the repertoire. Read More

Among the many sounds emanating from the Tokyo Make Meeting 05 this past weekend was the unusually shaped electronic instrument, the Uda. It's played with two hands, and looks like it might be a less-flexible cousin of the accordion. Notes are played by pressing different sections of a rope that's coiled around the device, on both the right and left sides. Exactly where you touch it determines the pitch, and there's a one octave difference between one row of rope and the adjacent row. Read More

Scientists at the University of Tokyo have found a curious way to translate drawings and three-dimensional shapes into music. The prototype laser-based musical instrument known as scoreLight uses 3D tracking technology to generate real-time sounds based on the shapes and colors it encounters along the way, transforming doodling into a truly synthesized experience. Read More