Tag: Music

I’m sure you’ve seen videos of floppy disk drives rigged to play music. Simon Schoar took the hack to the next level with RumbleRail, a modular floppy jukebox that plays MIDI files loaded to its SD card slot.

GoPro makes some of the most popular cameras out there for recording action sports. Typically when we see video made with one of these cameras it is on YouTube and often has people doing things that are dangerous.

A few years ago we featured a harmonica crammed into a NES cartridge. YouTuber basami sentaku’s harmonica not only has a Famicom cartridge case, it produces 8-bit sound with the help of a sound chip from a NES.

Hercules has unveiled a new and reasonably-priced controller for aspiring DJs to learn their art. The device is called the DJControlWave and it is designed especially to work with the iPad. The DJ controller connects to the iPad using Bluetooth and has no speakers of its own.

We’ve seen a way to play drums using normal objects and even a steering wheel. DrumPants takes on the final frontier: you. Despite its misleading name, DrumPants are not actually pants or even restricted to pants.

Remember when you needed a phone line and a dial-up modem to get online? Heck, I was using modems to connect to services like Compuserve and Prodigy before anyone even knew what the Internet was. One of the most annoying things about dial-up modems was that stupid squealing sound they made when you were trying to connect.

If you’re looking to make music with your iPhone or iPod Touch, check out this add-on, which looks pretty neat. The AUUG Motion Synth is a combination grip/case for your iDevice, which lets you use your hand and motion to play music.

A few months ago we heard about a supercapacitor designed by a high school student that could lead to quick charging and longer lasting mobile phones. The Blueshift Helium speaker gives us a taste of that future.

At first glance, Split might look like a pair of handy dandy wireless earphones, but they’re more than that. They’re actually self-contained MP3 players that you can control without a display or buttons. Greenwing Audio definitely succeeded in making the most compact music players I’ve ever seen.

I readily admit I’m not a huge music buff. I like to listen to some tunes when driving in the car, but other than that I’m pretty much music-free at all other times. My problem is that I can’t concentrate with any sound going on around me.

Nowadays it’s quite possible to create and play music live using a computer. You can also use MIDI controllers to make it easier for you to interact with music software and audio files. However, pushing keys and fiddling with knobs isn’t intuitive or fun to watch.

This is not your typical orchestra. The instruments look especially unusual, and that’s because each of them is made using decommissioned weapons. They were put together by artist Pedro Reyes in an effort to convert weapons into actual, playable instruments.

Not everyone’s lucky enough to have a musician for a boyfriend or girlfriend. If you want a song that’s truly created for you, then you might want to check out IDNAtity.

Keyboards and synthesizers are some of the most complex electronic musical instruments. Even the basic ones are loaded with a variety of tweaks that help you achieve a variety of sounds. But unlike a guitar where you can bend, pluck or hammer the strings to modify the sound on the fly, keyboards and synths require you to make your adjustments using separate sliders or knobs.

There are lots of drum kit apps for mobile devices, but they’re not that easy to use. Many of them look and are arranged like real drum kits instead of being optimized for touchscreen use. Also if you’re a drummer you’re more used to using drum sticks instead of your fingers.

There are plenty of apps which let you use your iPad like a piano, but to be honest, playing on a toucscreen is just not the same as using a tactile keyboard. And while Ion has been making a wired iPad piano keyboard for a while,  it’s not exactly the type of thing you’ll throw in your backpack.