Music

This half-pendulum half-harp musical instrument is the creation of New York based interactive design company, Pattern Studio. Dubbed "The Gravity Harp," it was commissioned by Icelandic musician Bjork for her recent Biophilia tour. The innovative device features four robotic pendulums, each housing an eleven string harp. Hanging 20 feet above ground, the pendulums slowly swing back and forth whilst communicating with a control computer using an RS485 network. In order to maintain an even sequence of notes, each pendulum swings 90 degrees out of phase with its neighbor and is controlled by a motor attached at the top. Read More

Sony has taken the wraps off its first Android-based Walkman media player - the Z-1000. Running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), Sony's would-be iPod touch rival comes well spec'd with its 4.3-inch WVGA (480x800) touchscreen, NVIDIA Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core CPU platform and 512MB of RAM. Read More

Having a calming voice like that of John Cleese or Ozzy Osbourne shout out directions to supplement the visuals on your GPS navigation device is an effective way to make sure that you don't miss your turn. Relying on visual navigation is a big distraction for cyclists too, dangerously diverting focus away from the road ahead. To help overcome such issues, a research team in the Netherlands has reported promising results from an audio-only navigation system that uses an Android smartphone connected to a pair of headphones to help guide users to a target location with music that's artificially shifted to the left or right to indicate direction. Read More

While more and more music is being created on computers with a QWERTY keyboard, researchers at the University of Southhampton are looking to bring the tangible interface one gets from actually playing an instrument to creating music on a computer. The Audio d-touch system uses a computer, a standard webcam, a printed sheet of paper and physical blocks that are moved around to determine how the computer samples and reproduces sound. Read More

Ever since the bizarre-looking Birdfish guitar was first shown at Frankfurt's Musikmesse in 1995, there's always been a certain buzz surrounding new releases from acclaimed German luthier Ulrich Teuffel. The recent Summer NAMM in Nashville played host to a new high-end, light gray version of the teardrop-like headless Tesla guitar - featuring three custom pickups with noise controls, aircraft grade aluminum hardware and pickup covers, control knobs and fingerboard made from exotic timber. Read More

During those important early stages of learning to play guitar, when you need to grab every possible opportunity to practice, digital teaching aids like iPerform3D and the upcoming Rocksmith can be on hand whenever the mood grabs you. There are also solutions that make learning available wherever your instrument happens to be - such as Castiv's Sidekick (along with an iPhone and the Rock Prodigy app) - and it's to this camp that the Tepoe Guitar belongs. Rather than positioning the device screen at the end of the fingerboard, inventor Michael Tepoe Nash has sliced away a section of the upper horn of the guitar and placed a small computer there instead. Read More

If you’ve ever heard the eerie electronic music at the beginning of a 1950s science fiction movie (The Day the Earth Stood Still, for example), then you’ve heard a theremin. Invented in Russia in the 1920s, the instrument is unique, in that the person playing it doesn’t touch it at all. Instead, they move their hands around its two antennas, causing it to emit different sounds by altering radio frequencies that the machine emits. Although still used by some modern musicians, theremins can be a little pricey, and somewhat difficult to master. That’s where the $35 Beep-It optical theremin comes in. Read More

We recently took a look at the iPerform3D online guitar lessons for those looking to unleash their inner Hendrix, but if you’re thinking tinkling the ivories might be more your style then Ion Audio’s Piano Apprentice could be worth a look - at least for a basic introduction to playing the piano. Following the Simon school of music instruction, the Piano Apprentice features a 25-note keyboard that docks with an iPad, iPod touch or iPhone to demonstrate how to play as the relevant keys on the device light up. Read More

The iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad are now established favorites for the mobile muso with new synths and sequencers seemingly coming out every week. Until iOS 4 however there was no standardized method for getting MIDI control signals in and out of the units for interfacing with ‘proper’ equipment. Some enterprising developers created methods using the Apple Camera Kit USB connector whilst Line 6 created its own proprietary method and the MIDI Mobilizer dongle to go with it. In the iOS 4 software release Apple ported the CoreMIDI programming interface framework from MacOS and developers finally had a standard method with which they were familiar. Though iOS4 was released a year ago, compatible MIDI interfaces are now only beginning to get to market. Read More