But it will also cost $800 or less by the time it hits stores (the MSRP is $1000). The original (Tenori-On W) was $1200 when it arrived last year, but the official U.S. distributor has since dropped it down to $1000. You even get a free 2GB SD card.

The original Tenori-On W is also getting an OS update in January. No word yet on what that might include.

By the way, if you're super tight (and have an iPhone), you could also give the Tenori-On-like Melodica or PacklSound1 apps a go. [Yamaha]

It doesn't do it in real time, but there's a computer connected to this piano which analyzes human speech with the assistance of a composer and converts it to key-tapping. It's looks pretty great and is reasonably clear considering it's a piano that's "talking."

You'll quickly notice that the video's in German, but fortunately Hack a Day's Astera came through with a rough translation of the narration to accompany your oohs and aaahs:

Pretty amazing, how all of a sudden the words of the Declaration become understandable to a European Environmental Criminal Court. Wien Modern was one out of ten cultural institutions asked for an artistic contribution to the event in Palazzo Ducale in Venice.

The ambitious goal was to make this message audible with musical means, without falling back to a simple setting.

Berno Polzer: I think, its partially understandable, partially not. And it plays well with the limits of our construction abilities. That is, we hear sounds that obviously aren't normal music, but neither they are language, and one could say that sometimes, a bridging happens. Personally, I think you can understand individual words even without knowing the text, and the Eureka moment happens when you see the text, and suddenly, the language is there.

Yet another bridge: Miro Markus, an elementary school student from Berlin, narrated the text for the performance: Youth as a hope for the older generation.

The Austrian composer Peter Ablinger transferred the frequency spectrum of the child's voice to his computer controlled mechanical piano.

Peter Ablinger: I break down this phonography, meaning a recording of something the voice, in this case -, in individual pixels, one can say. And if I have the possibility of a rendering in a fairly high resolution (and that I only get with a mechanical piano), then I in fact restore some kind of continuity. Therefore, with a little practice, or help or subtitling, we actually can hear a human voice in a piano sound.

From voice to "pixels" to music back to speech. Incredible. Now. Who's gonna make a talking trumpet? [YouTube]

You see, you play this note/tadpole-shaped instrument by tapping or sliding your finger up and down the neck. But you can also adjust the pitch by squeezing the face at the bottom to open and close the mouth.

It's certainly not going to be included in any symphony orchestras anytime soon, but it's a whimsical piece of fun. And if you watch no other part of the video you owe it to yourself to watch the end, where Novmichi plays The Star Spangled Banner in a wig and sunglasses. Amazing. [Maywa Denki via Tokyo Mango via Boing Boing Gadgets]

You be the judge. I say, resoundingly, yes.

[YouTube via MAKE]

No, even more bizarre are the guitar pickups: The device uses 12 of them, focused on each of the 12 notes in the musical scale, feeding back what they hear to a speaker transducer positioned at one end of the massive "resonance hull."

Unfortunately, Oddmusic doesn't yet have sample tracks from the Harmonic Generator, which was created by a guy named Isac Zal and was not, as I had initially imagined, a joint effort of Tim Burton and the late Dr. Seuss. The site does at least describe the sound, calling it "a symphony inside the belly of a whale." Somehow, I think that would make ole Theodore Geisel proud. [Oddmusic via Make]

Think of it as the Robot plus the Moog synth guitar rolled into one. First and foremost, it's a guitarist's guitar, with three different kind of pickups—a humbucker, a single-coil and a bridge-mounted piezo acoustic—all capable of contributing their sound to an original, organic blend of totally real guitar noise.

Having anchored itself firmly in Gibson's traditions, it's also got some crazy new stuff. Like the Robot, it self-tunes (now up to 500 times on a single battery charge), and using the "Chameleon Tone Technology" it is capable of producing "every imaginable guitar sound," says Gibson.

The company is quite proud of the Master Control Knob—presumably with a bit of a Tron shoutout there—though I can only imagine that the "sophisticated full color matrix display featuring LEDs and high-tech light pipe technology" takes a little bit of a hike up the learning curve.

Those who know of Les Paul's guitar innovations will appreciate that Gibson is carrying on his tradition of complication as a necessary means for cooler guitar tech. Some of Les' personal guitars had tons of mostly unmarked switches on them, not to mention a few boxes off to the side.

Speaking of boxes, a lot of the digital mojo is facilitated by the guitar's interface, the Robot Interface Pack, which has jacks on the front for the guitar and headphones. On the rear there's a FireWire connector (hear that, new MacBook shoppers?) and a hex connector, which can be adapted for MIDI output. The good news for suckers who bought the first-gen Robot is that the upgrade will be available to them at a price close to cost. (My guess is they'll make the money on labor when you take your Robot in for the upgrade.)

Though Gibson won't promise "infinite sustain" like Moog, it does say that its body design makes "the Dark Fire one of the best-sustaining Les Pauls ever produced." Cool. [Gibson]

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Available for $99.97. [Sweetwater via UberGizmo]

And now it's back! From outer space! I'd love to say that it walked in here with that same look upon its face, but I would be a lying cow and you would all pay a midnight visit to Gawker HQ, flaming torches clutched in your paws, shouting, "Burn the witch." Ahem.

Anyways, Stylophone. The 2008 version has two sockets, one for headphones, and one to connect your MP3 player to, which will enable you to really murder your favourite songs, as well as, for the first time, volume control and three different sound modes. Costing a smidgeon under $30, the Stylophone runs on three AA batteries and there are a schwazillion clips of people doing hot Stylophone action on YouTube.
I couldn't decide between the Star Wars Death March, the William Tell Overture, something by Michael Jackson, or the Stylophone Orchestra of Great Britain, (relax girls, they're married) so I plumped for Bowie. [Firebox]

[Hammacher Schlemmer, via TFTS]

Unfortunately, the first run of the guitar will be limited to 4000 instruments (10 units in 400 stores); and I have no doubt that when the price is finally announced, it will be far out of the range of your average garage band. Still, if you would like to take a shot at picking one up, December 7th is the day to remember. [Gibson via Electronista]

Add that amount found in the guitar to all the cocaine the guy had mixed up in ten Thermos flasks in his luggage, and the grand total value (certainly inflated by breathless War on Drugs enforcers) was $5.12 million worth of the stuff. Just think of how many times this has been done without detection. [Music Thing]

See Eddie Van Halen launch into his famous solo on "Jump," trying in vain to somehow transpose to this otherworldly key that is nowhere to be found. This travesty of a performance happened earlier this month (in my hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina), and the funny thing is, the crowd was delighted with it. I shutter to think that no one realized something was terribly amiss, but those hometown folks always were overly polite. [RW370, via BoingBoing] (Thanks, Joel Johnson!)

• Disklavier 2.0 - $10,000 to $80,000 - Grand piano's brand new software streams digital player-piano songs over the internet, for a live piano via net radio. PDA remote operates over Wi-Fi.
• EZ-200 Keyboard - $150 - Learning keyboard for kids. Like many, it has light up keys to show you where to put your fingers. But this one will wait for you: it eases the tempo of the song down automatically to match your playing.
• Modus H01 - $12,500 - Sexy "velvet rouge" reimagining of the traditional piano. It's electronic, but with a natural feel. It contains a 40-watt sound system, and also comes in "amber glow" and "deep brunette."
• Clavinova CVP400 - $TBA - Do-it-yourself Barry Manilow workstation: sing into the mic while you play, and it automatically mixes voice and piano into a WAV that you can save on USB thumbdrive.

With reporting by Jennifer Hooker

It works by using piezoelectric pickups rather than the usual magnetic pickups used on most electric guitars, and these pickups are able to isolate the sound of each individual string. Underneath the pickups is a processor that senses the pitch being played, and sends a signal to the tuning pegs at the top of the guitar's neck to change the pitch until it's all tuned up.

Even though this machine may be perfectly accurate, turning a guitar can be a subtle art, where you can slightly change some of the notes to fit the key in which you're playing. However, for musicians who like to play various songs with the guitar tuned in completely different ways for each song, this technology could be extremely useful. In fact, the $899 it adds to the price of the guitar might seem like a bargain compared with buying two more guitars, each tuned in a completely different way. [Technology Review]

This gallery contains just a fraction of the crazy git-boxes Ed Roman has found, sold, commissioned or custom built. Some of these things have such sharp edges they're just downright dangerous, and speaking of dangerous, check out the Ted Nugent guitar with a compartment in the back for your Derringer. Might be handy to have that guitar on hand when you play one of those nightclubs where the stage is surrounded by a floor-to-ceiling cage. [Ed Roman]

Besides that one key fact of its body being flipped 180 degrees, the rest of this ax is faithful to Gibson's original 1958 design, complete with 1957-style humbucker pickups, that strings-through-the-body tailpiece (going the opposite way, of course), and a sweet-looking Trans Amber finish. No word on pricing or availability just yet. [Electric Guitar Review]

There hasn't been such an obnoxious cacophony since that fart-lighting frat party some of us Gizmodians went to a couple of months ago. [hipDisk, via Oh Gizmo]

For starters, it can make a tremendous variety of sounds and noises, and has a full range of synthesizer functions and recording capabilities. It can also hook up to your PC via USB, letting you send and receive MIDI and digital audio signals, record digitally onto your PC and interface with sophisticated digital audio workstation software.

This is not your basic tinkertoy piano/synthesizer, it's a highly sophisticated digital musical instrument aimed at musicians and gearhead amateur musician tinkerers. Too bad you can't just rent one to play around with it for a while, because this PSR-S900 costs $1815. Expect to see it shipping in the US sometime this summer. – Charlie White

Yamaha PSR-S900 keyboard [Software Headlines]

Spec List

If there were a reason why God invented the USB accessory, this surely is it. A roll-up drum kit that you plug into your USB port and drive your coworkers wild with. WILD, I say. There are six pads for you to play around with, and software that will teach you how to drum along to your favorite songs at whatever tempo you want.

And who cares if you're not musical? Want to announce to everyone that you've just closed that stationery deal and got the bargain of the decade on paperclips? Give it some stick. Perhaps you'd like Cheryl to make you a coffee—communicate how you want it (white, nine sugars) with a flurry of hi-hat. Then your boss can trump you with his USB cowbell to tell everyone you're fired.

The price is $30 until August, when it goes up to $45. The secret of good drumming is after the jump, following a beat-off between two of the world's best-known sticksmen.

It's timing. – Ad Dugdale

Product Page [Dream Cheeky via Mobile Mag]

More pictures, info and pricing:

Notice the sound hole is next to the guitar's neck rather than underneath the strings. Then, there's another opening called the stereo sound hole (the company calls this SSH, making it sound all scientific-like) on the guitar's head, in an attempt to maximize the resonance of this instrument.

There will be just 100 of these axes available, and pros taking this carbon fiber jewel on stage will certainly elicit the awe of any geeksters in the audience. But this Blackbird is going to have to do a lot of singing in the dead of night to make up for its $1599 price tag.

That price is not too bad, though, considering that the gold-standard Martin D-28 guitar costs at least $500 more than that. – Charlie White

Product Page [Blackbird Guitars]

Product Page [Via Gearlog]

There's a solid-state amplifier shoehorned inside there, powered by a 9-volt battery, and the sound comes wafting out the vintage American toaster's slots courtesy of a 6-inch Jensen speaker.

Who could resist the idea of first getting toasted, then having a hot jam session, laying down some smokin' licks until your ears turn to toast. It's distorted, but sometimes that's a good thing. – Charlie White

Product Page [Hottie Amplifiers Inc., via Red Ferret]

Product Page [Via Popgadget]

Roland's VIMA Concept Keyboard: Digital Media Hub and ... Karaoke Workstation? [Create Digital Music]

Good thing these harps can be detached from their central hub, because it would be hard to hold that harpists-favorite Shure Green Bullet mic up against this multi-headed contraption. The sextet of harmonicas (heh heh, he said sex) are tuned to the keys of C, D, F, G, A and B flat, and might make you sing the blues when you see their price tag, $299.95. – Charlie White

Product page [Hammacher Schlemmer]

Like other faux-luxury items, these Crystal Roc items aren't cheap (well, they are cheap, just not inexpensive), with the Retro Mike, the microphone I gather, costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,770 when it comes before the end of the year. – Nicholas Deleon

Crystal Roc Home Page [Crystal Roc via Gadget Candy]

Native Instruments Launches Audio Interface: Big Knob, Low Latency, Headphone Out [Create Digital Music]

The car is controlled by a mouthpiece. When the person blows hard it will steer to the right, and softer blowing will result in the car turning to the left. Much of the skill behind playing wind instruments requires good controlled breathing. The skills required for this gadget can significantly improved the controlled breathing, therefore improving musical abilities and filling the world with more waiters aspiring musicians.

How does it work?
The controller contains a MIDI breath controller which converts breath pressure to MIDI data. This is sent to MAX/MSP which converts MIDI to serial data. Serial data is sent via Bluetooth and PIC chip to a servo on the car which controls the steering. The forward and backward controls are hacked from a cheap toy car.

The Breath Car [WWMNA]

Line6's KB37 Guitar/Vocal/Bass-Processing Keyboard [Create Digital Music]

Do you feel attached to your carp? Perhaps you'd like to dip it in ink, rub it on paper, and create a special "memento" of your fish. If so, the Japanese performance-art-manufacturing group maywa denki has the complete kit for you. They've also applied their fish obsession to musical instruments, with a carp-shaped glass armonica (the 18th-century instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin), a beat box in the shape of a carp (look out, Roland), and a "winged" musical device with electronic finger snappers, in case your thumb is tired. These appear to run on batteries, but you can plug in your traditional, non fish-themed hardware using a fish bone extension cord. And if you actually can't stand fish, there's even a fish swatter. – Peter Kirn

Bizarre Fish-Themed Gadgets, Musical Instruments [Create Digital Music]

Guitar players will search far and wide for the perfect guitar pick, looking for one that will give them just the right bite to their sound. But few guitar players have scoured the entire solar system for that ideal strumming implement, until now. These astronomically-expensive Meteorite Guitar Picks are each unique, and are priced as if their purveyor had to personally go out into space to retrieve every one.

The Astrotone ($110) is the most popular model, shaped like a traditional guitar pick. The more triangular Enterprise ($120) is also touted as suitable for playing either guitar or bass. Then there's the odd-looking freeform "Custom Monulista Pick from Sweden" (aren't they all from space?), for a cool $135, holding the distinction as the most expensive guitar pick in the universe.

Wonder if they make the guitar sound any better. Sheesh, for half that price you can get a snazzy LED-flashing Light Pick that lights up your hand like a disco ball. Forget it—I'm a finger-picker myself. – Charlie White

Product Page [Meteorite Guitar Picks, via Music Thing]

Try as we might, we couldn't find an example of the sounds made by the Datasound even though the site teased us with the promise of downloading and hearing its noise music. Anyway, we're under the impression that you're able to perform musical songs by adding your own personal rhythm to the sounds coming out of it. The concept was created by Troika Design, a London-based group of artists who apparently have lots of free time on their hands. – Charlie White

Design Page [Troika Design, via OhGizmo]

These music makers, available next month, use proximity sensor technology, responding when you wave your hand over the tubes. Plus, you can plug in your iPod and play along, generating a variety of musical (and nonsensical) sounds. Looks like fun. – Charlie White

Blue Man Group's amazing range of musical toys [Music Thing]

The result is a highly unusual sound that's downright ethereal. It's more resonant than a conventional guitar, and the notes can be bent upwards or downwards for a slide-guitar effect. Best of all, the instrument is no more difficult to play than a regular guitar, and it can plucked and strummed, or even be bowed, or hit with sticks like a drum.

The instrument was first built in 2003, and there's a marketing effort going on at the website of the Tritare here.

Take a listen to this short composition played on the Tritare. It's like music from another world. – Charlie White

A New Family of Stringed Musical Instruments [ASA Meeting Paper, via Music Thing]

The Behringer BCD2000 B-Control Deejay would seem to cover all the bases on the cheap (US$200 street). For DJs and laptop music, there are 4 channels of audio connected to your computer via USB, with 2 phono preamps, headphone out, and mic in. (So, yes, you can do that whole "two turntables and a microphone" thing.) But this isn't just a DJ mixer: every knob, button, and fader sends MIDI, so you can use it to control whatever music or visual software you like. There are even jog wheels for simple scratching.

Australian VJ Jaymis Loveday reviews the gear, and concludes that it fits the bill, as a cheap entry in digital DJing or a do-all controller for music and visuals. The bad news: MIDI assignments are fixed, meaning some software will need some tricky workarounds. – Peter Kirn

BCD200 Review [Create Digital Music]