OK, so maybe you don't want to hear a playful tune as you skip up and down steps. It's still a fun idea and apparently showed a huge increase in individuals taking the stairs. [YouTube via Marco G.]

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]

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]

It's a decidedly critical take on Apple, the people who love the company, the people who live and breathe gadgets (*gulp*), and basically technology in general. Of course, many of you would argue that this list includes Pogue himself. However, as my old personal saying goes, if you can't laugh at yourself, then you suck. [YouTube via CrunchGear]

Files are stored onto the piano's hard drive and can be transferred via USB to a PC, and then easily burned onto a CD for in-car listening. Plus, if you hook up the piano to a TV, you can display lyrics and graphics for a song on it. The best part? You can stream songs from the internet and have the piano play it by itself, depressing the keys and pedals at the right time, fooling your parents into thinking you've learned the song when you've actually spent the time playing your NES! Win! [Yamaha]

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Available for $99.97. [Sweetwater via UberGizmo]

As you can see in the video, it actually sounds pretty good, and you can adjust the sliders to make the piano part happier, sadder, jazzier, or not quite so jazzy. The bad news is that this is just a Microsoft Research project, not an actual package you can buy. Maybe in a few years? [IStartedSomething via Geekologie via Dvice]

Professor Luigi Colani reimagined the traditional 88 keys and gave the classic grand piano a futuristic organic shape with some virtuoso upgrades. The Pegasus features a ergonomic curved keyboard ( i. e. the keys exhibit a slight curvature ) that encompasses 7 1/4 octaves, a electrically operated hydraulic lid that allows you to control the specific amount of projection desired, a fallboard "soft close" system, the original Schimmel Triplex Scale "CAPE" precision soundboard tri-dimensionally curved and formed with a "high performance" back assembly with tension collector, a Sostenuto pedal (middle pedal), a fully-adjustable integrated black leather upholstered stool extendible in width, height, and distance to the keyboard, and a hard-wearing professional lacquer finish resulting in a grand piano of breathtaking elegance.

The Schimmel Pegasus comes with all this and the guarantee that your skills won't get any closer to Prince's than when you played with your Casiotone.

Update: According to the Mr. Koveleski, they are asking only $110,000, and their highest bit is currently at $100,000. The piano is now located in Northern California. The original owner is not any famous person, however, but "the CEO of a famous San Francisco Bay Area music store." [Automorrow and Autoworldmobilia]

Mr Aardvark also plans on updating iAno with a complete 88-key keyboard, switchable sample sets, recording and playback, as well as support for loading .MID tracks. Well, what are you waiting for? Get composing.

*If it isn't a steaming turdfest, and it involves a great tune selection, e.g. Bohemian Rhapsody. This isn't legal advice—I'm not even an attorney. [Technabob]

Packing some serious hardware—Dual Pioneer DVJ-X1 DVD Players, Edirol V-4 Video Mixer, 3 Marshal LCD Monitors, 5 subwoofers, 3 tweeters, 1100 Watt Power Amplifier and an Allen and Heath Xone 92 Audio Mixer—the company still claims "there's not an ounce of excess."

The Baby Grand Masters are for sale, but the amount is disclosed by inquiry only. In other words, it might just make you baroque.

– Mark Wilson

Product Page [via therawfeed]

How to play Windows XP alerts on the piano [MusicThing]

Product Page [Via Gearlog]

Moog PianoBar + Other Digital Acoustic Pianos [Create Digital Music]