Hasta La Gadget!

We were pretty impressed with what Roli showed off at SXSW back in March, and now the company’s rubberized keyboard is up for pre-order. The instrument is built in a standard piano configuration, with a soft surface that allows you to directly bend pitch and add vibrato and other effects to the notes as you’re playing them — sort of like bending guitar strings. The Seaboard Grand comes in three price configurations that hit a pretty wide spread, starting at $2,000 for the 37-key Grand Studio, all the way up to $8,888.88 for the massive 88 key Grand Limited First Edition. Only 88 of the latter will actually be sold — a vaguely superstitious pricing scheme, it seems. That one will be shipping in December of this year. The others will start arriving in fall of next year.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

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Source: Roli

Eyebrows in the way? Singe them off with Adafruit’s DIY flame organ, debuting just in time for the holiday weekend. If fireworks aren’t enough to put the sizzle in your Independence Day party, all you need to light up your very own MIDI instrument are a few relays, solenoid valves, a digital music workstation (Adafruit recommends Livid Instruments’ BASE paired with Ableton Live and Pure Data) and a blatant disregard for your own mortality. The official tutorial is still in the works, but you can watch the flame organ blaze with a patriotic tune after the break. If you’re brave — or foolish — enough to attempt to build one of your own, just promise us that you won’t drink and DIY.

Filed under: Misc, Alt

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Source: Adafruit

I’m not a musician. I never learned to play the guitar, although I tried when I was a kid. When I couldn’t go from beginner to full-on rock star in a month I gave it up. But despite my lack of musical ability, one thing I do know is that guitars can be pretty easily broken. If you’re the sort of person that likes to travel off the beaten path and keep your guitar handy, a fragile wooden guitar can be a problem. This is where a company called Alpaca steps in with its durable Carbon Fiber Travel Guitar.

Not only is carbon fiber lightweight, it’s also incredibly strong allowing the guitar to go anywhere the musician might want with the ability to withstand elements. In addition to carbon fiber, the guitar is created from flax fabric, and bio-derived resins.

Alpaca promises that this combination of materials creates an incredibly strong instrument that still offers a brilliant resonant sound. The guitar also has an embedded daisychain on the back giving a universal attachment to any of your outdoor gear, and its strap is made from rugged paracord. The Alpaca Guitar is built in the United States and will cost you $575(USD).

The only downside is that you can’t smash this thing on stage.

Music, MIDI and mobile? Seen that before, right? Well, yeah, but sometimes something comes along that surprises everyone. Artiphon’s Instrument 1 is one such thing. And after all, there’s more than one way to crack a nut. Artiphon’s method involves creating a high-quality muli-instrument device that uses an iPhone or iPod touch as its brain. So, this is no plastic (bear with us) “appcessory.” The Instrument 1 is made out of special quality African hardwood, and centers around an intentionally ambiguous design. There is a pair of high-quality custom speakers that give impressive 30W onboard sound. There is, of course, a line out and MIDI in / out too. The prototype we saw today doesn’t have a built-in battery, but final production models will, making this a truly portable, complete solution. Dr Mike Butera, the firm’s founder, was keen to explain to us that this is intended not to replicate one specific device (though it does a great job of guitar, violin, banjo and more), but rather to enable musicians to be able to work in a way they want to. The Instrument 1 works with any core MIDI enabled app, but there are plans to release a companion app for more detailed / custom mappings in the future. We got a private tour of the device, to tip-toe past the break for more.

The first thing we noticed was how authentic it felt. Authentic what? Well, ok, that’s a little harder to explain. It definitely felt more like holding an instrument, than a MIDI device or an accessory component though. The oiled wood finish, metal speaker grilles and overall quality of the device make it feel like something you’d wield with care. The iPhone section is also pleasantly discreet. Sure, it takes somewhat center place, but at the same time keeps it out of the way when you’re playing. Under the neck you’ll also find some additional controls that steer the Instrument 1 in more dedicated instrument directions (bass mode for fret tapping, banjo mode with arpeggios etc). The small black box below the iPhone housing serves as a strum-surface (or when in violin mode, the area you “bow”), and the neck section is largely akin to a guitar neck, but when approached creatively, can be used in all manner of ways, such as drum-pads when resting on your lap. For those that want to know, it’s currently sporting a 30-pin connector, but has room enough so that you can also use it with a lightning adaptor. There’s also a physical volume control and a USB port.

As for the MIDI options… there are plenty. Polyphonic aftertouch, vibrato, versatile modulation and mapping, to name a few. There is an octave switch on the neck, also, so that you can get a wide range of musical notes with ease. Mike showed us that as there are two sensors on each neck-note, you can effectively cram two octaves into the same space too, should this better suit your needs. As mentioned above, currently this is the third prototype, but full production is expected soon. How much, then, does Artiphon want for the Instrument 1? That’ll be $800 when it eventually rolls out towards the end of this year. A tall price for a MIDI controller perhaps, but you’ll be replacing your entire band at the same time. Just don’t tell them yet. Go south for the demo video.

Billy Steele contributed to this report.

Filed under: Misc, Handhelds, Peripherals

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Music lovers will often tell you that Roland’s TR-808 gave birth to modern music. Acid house, rap, techno and other genres owe some of their original (and even current) sounds to that synthetic beat. Moritz Simon Geist appreciates the effort, but has built a solution for those who think the drum machine is a little too perfect: his MR-808 installation has robot limbs playing all the equivalent real-world instruments, right down to the cowbell. A laptop musician at the helm sends MIDI input to an Arduino controller that then triggers the robot’s instrument motors and matching lights. The effect is a unique mix of flawless cues with imprecise, almost organic sounds — imagine 808 State or Kanye West replacing each and every machine with a live band and you’ve got the idea. Although the sheer size of the MR-808 sadly nixes chances you’ll ever see one at the local nightclub, it could give any of Geist’s recorded music one of the more distinct vibes we’ve heard.

Continue reading MR-808 recreates Roland drum machine with robot instruments, puts them in an 808 State (video)

Filed under: Robots, Alt

MR-808 recreates Roland drum machine with robot instruments, puts them in an 808 State (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Nov 2012 18:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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