The idea being that repetition builds muscle memory, and you'll improve faster.

You'll need to email for pricing, but it does look like the included software works with any MIDI file. Less certain is if there's an evil teacher mode that turns up the voltage when you misbehave. [Concert Hands via The Raw Feed via DVICE]

Leaf Trombone World Stage includes new, never-seen-before iPhone features, such as:

Self tutorial — a music box accompanies users as leaves softly float toward the correct notes, enabling users to learn the song, simply by following the leaves on the screen and moving the Leaf Trombone up and down; similar in concept to Guitar Hero

Judging capabilities — Anyone can perform a tune on the Leaf Trombone before a global audience

Once a player has submitted a song to the World Stage, self-appointed judges, randomly selected from anywhere in the world, providing an instant critique of the performance, using a combination of emoticons and text

Judges can rate each performance using a 1-10 scale. The evaluation is then added to player's standings and the player's rank is updated

Sophisticated browser-based composition tool provides unlimited new music

A new interactive learning tool enabling anyone to compose and create music for the Leaf Trombone

This is from the same people who made the Ocarina app, in case you were wondering about its pedigree. Some more demo videos here, here and here. Just don't load them all at the same time like I did, and pass out from the cacophony. [App Store]

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.

It gets better. There's also a guitar canceling capability that substitutes your playing instead. It'll help you keep time with its metronome, and it also has a tuner built-in to keep that intonation on the straight and narrow. No pricing was announced, but it'll be available first in Japan at the end of this month. Man, I wish I would have had one of these when I was a beginner guitarist. – Charlie White

Tascam MP-GT1 [Far East Gizmos]

It's stuck at $3,800 right now, so head on over and bid. – John Biggs

eBay of the Year: Kraftwerk's original vocoder [Music Thing]

It appears, however, because each devices uses old-timey tubes and contains some lead, Allen & Heath might have to stop producing some of their more famous models. Thanks to the England's Reduction of Hazardous Substances Act—originally designed to prevent unscrupulous junk vendors from dumping loads of toxic crap on an unsuspecting public—these classics will probably go the way of the dodo.

Product Page [Allen & Heath]
Allen & Heath Xone DJ Mixers: Risking Extinction [RetroThing]