The stories Mari Lesteberg tells won’t put her on the New York Times’ bestseller list, but that doesn’t make them any less fantastic. Watching her simple side-scrolling tale of a little girl venturing into a dark cave isn’t terribly exciting, until you realize the artwork is actually playing the accompanying soundtrack
The surfaces of ROLI products practically beg you to touch them. Unlike the slappy, clicky keys or gorilla glass surfaces on most new tech, they’re coated in a responsive, almost fleshlike silicon rubber that’s at once alien and intuitive. So what are you waiting for? For the first time in the company’s history, the…
Keys is a MIDI keyboard, built with aspiring piano students in mind. It's a pretty small guy, making it a great traveling companion (who says you can't play a keyboard by the campfire?). But the coolest thing about Keys is it incorporates gestures—so you can travel up and down octaves by just waving your hands.
Audiophiles have a laundry list of reasons why you should be buying your music on vinyl, but with DJ Qbert's new album Extraterrestria, aspiring turntablists now have a reason to skip the MP3s too. Using printed MIDI technology from a company called Novalia, the artwork in the vinyl's sleeve doubles as a DJ…
In the music video for his aptly-named track Arcade, M4SONIC is seen playing a custom-made arcade-style joystick that's actually a MIDI instrument. Instead of using a piano keyboard, or a rhythm pad filled with countless buttons to trigger MIDI samples, this creation let M4SONIC channel his childhood Street Fighter…
YouTube is about to hit peak saturation on those 'old computer hardware plays random song' videos thanks to Simon Schoar's RumbleRail. Instead of random components all hastily hacked together, it lets anyone build a rather elegant-looking floppy disk jukebox that plays any MIDI file from an SD card.
NAMM is the musical instrument industry's annual woohoo of a trade show where all the big names show off the fancy new wares they want the musicians of the world to embrace. But if you don't actually go to the show, the best part is watching demo videos full of crazy sound and batshit blinking lights. Here's our…
DJ TechTools has updated its arcade button Midi Fighter midi controller with a 3D gyroscope allowing parameters like pitch and volume to be controlled by simply moving it about. But only DJs with a penchant for performing might be interested.
Forget about using keys, buttons, knobs, or pads on a MIDI device. With the Pulse Surface Controller, you create sounds by banging on your desk, computer, or anything, really.
It's easy to make fun of Guitar Hero now that the craze is over, but one thing is for sure: It created a new enthusiasm for the guitar as an instrument, in these days of DJs and remix artists. We've seen a rash of startingly innovative new ways to teach people how to play the guitar, from the Rock Prodigy series to …
Akai's original MPC revolutionized music forever by combining all of the tools a producer needs—a sampler, mixer, multi-track recorder and editor—in one device. The new ultra-portable iPad version of the hardware might do the same thing for a new generation.
The iPad can help you make sweet, sweet music. And I'm not talking about karaoke or strange virtual guitar concepts: artists like Gorrillaz have managed to record full songs using them. Throw in a MIDI interface, though, and things could get really serious.
This is not some guitar hero hack. Maayan Migdal hacked together this cool drum kit that uses his sandals and a pair of freaking garden rakes to make his sound.
The not-so-cleverly-named turntabletar is something that should never be used IRL. Still, there's no denying its novelty. Two midi turntable controllers have been melded with a mixer and strapped to something resembling a guitar neck. But instead of fret bars and strings, the neck has a crossfader, which, of course,…
You're about to watch a video of Performer. Know first that it's an iPad app that lets musicians control their instruments by moving shapes around in real time. Know second that you are definitely tripping out.
Rasmus Nyåker is something of a music tech freak. Bored with all his synthesizers, and desiring a music machine with pressure-sensitive ribbon controls, he just up and built his own.
I was pretty pumped about the prospect of multitouch music apps before the iPad's release, but iOS 3.x didn't give developers too many audio options to work with. iOS 4.2, however, will, so we're gonna get sweet stuff like this.
What a pleasant surprise! The fellows over at Create Digital Music have discovered that iOS 4.2 will allow iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches to support MIDI devices over both USB (via camera connection kit) and Wi-Fi.
The folks of ArcAttack—a crazy group of performers who use singing tesla coils to create incredible melodies—have built a lightning-proof guitar for a performance on America's Got Talent. They've decided to tell us how they constructed the instrument and how it works:
This isn't the first multi-touch DJing we've seen, but something about watching this guy navigate his transparent control station—a homebrew touchscreen running a Traktor Pro controller called Emulator—really makes me want to do the robot. [PabloMartin via Engadget]