The Concert Hands system teaches users how to play piano using a 10-finger feedback system that hooks onto your hands, sending a small pulse to the fingers that should play, and current to your wrists to guide your entire hand up and down the keyboard.

It supposedly can read any MIDI file, and operates under the idea that repetition will develop your muscle memory. The problem in that, as my old band instructor used to say, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent!” There’s no way to have proper technique with that bulky thing on your hand, so you’ll be creating muscle memory for poor form.

It’s kind of like a cross between Puppet Master, Electric Chair, and Stage Mom. None of which are any good… for children.

Some of the best comments I’ve seen on it so far:
“Less certain is if there’s an evil teacher mode that turns up the voltage when you misbehave.” – Danny Allen @ Gizmodo

“You can do this at home without worrying about electric shocks or any additional costs.
Every time your daughter misses a note, punch her in the face.” – OMG! Ponnies!

Creepy “Concert Hands” Teaches You To Play Piano… via Electrocution is a post from: wax&wires

Designers: Stefano Pertegato, Massimiliano Rampoldi, Eloisa Tolu, Francesco Schiraldi & Giovanni Mendini

I’ve already written about one particular cassette-like flash drive, the Mixa. The NVDRS one-ups the Mixa by adding MP3 playback, self-charging, and more. The Mixa is a bit more hip on the cosmetics side though, as you can customize the case and such that it comes in.

Read more on the NVDRS here.

Finger Power Works Cassette MP3 Player is a post from: wax&wires

Related posts:

1. Free Amazon Cloud Drive + Cloud MP3 Player

I love where this is going. David Merril demonstrated Siftables at TED this year. Siftables are small blocks used to manipulate data based on their rotation, placement near other Siftables, and other gestural cues. At about 4:45 in, he demonstrates a sequencer using the blocks, and it looks incredible. Don’t just fast forward to that part though, as the rest of the demonstration is absolutely fascinating and inspiring.

It reminds me a bit of the reacTable interface, and even has a name that begs comparison. These are definitely two different beasts though, even if they do accomplish a similar musical goal. In case you need a refresher on the reacTable:

I think intuitive interfaces are going to be the next big break through in creating an environment more conducive to music making for all people. Being at the front of that movement will be a huge advantage for you as a musician.

Other than running Fibonacci Sequences and playing Scrabble (which looks like a blast by the way), how can you harness interfaces like this to influence your life and music?

Siftables Bring Sequencing To New Interfaces is a post from: wax&wires

Natural wood, with its unique grain patterns, is what gives traditional acoustic instruments warm and distinctive sounds, while the power of modern electronic processing provides an unlimited degree of control to manipulate the characteristics of an instrument’s sound. Now, a guitar built by a student at MIT’s Media Lab promises to provide the best of both worlds.

The Chameleon Guitar –so named for its ability to mimic different instruments– is an electric guitar whose body has a separate central section that is removable. This inserted section, the soundboard, can be switched with one made of a different kind of wood, or with a different structural support system, or with one made of a different material altogether. Then, the sound generated by the electronic pickups on that board can be manipulated by a computer to produce the effect of a different size or shape of the resonating chamber.

Read the full story.

‘Chameleon Guitar’ Blends Old-World And High-Tech is a post from: wax&wires

[via engadget]

The world needs another instructional guitar tool like it needs another hole in the ozone layer, but in all seriousness, this one is stupendous. Er, it exhibits remarkable potential, considering that it’s not yet beyond the concept stage. Designer Eugene Cheong has dreamed up the Maestro, an attachment that can supposedly be adapted to work on any guitar (of the electric variety, we presume) and teach you what frets to mash in order to actually become a halfway decent player. Put simply, the device accepts MP3 files via SD card, and then it breaks down the tunes into tablature which can be displayed via lasers. Once you see the beams lighting up your fretboard, you mash / strum in order to keep up and “learn” the songs. We can only hope this thing adds a slowdown mode should it ever hit store shelves, ’cause even the amateur probably doesn’t want to tackle select Dream Theater tracks at full speed.

It should be reitterated that this is only a conceptual product, and there are a lot of potential problems that I forsee with it. I’ll list them out here, as well as thier solutions.

1) I wonder if Gibson will let them keep the name “Maestro” as is.
SOLUTION: Rename it. Maestro’s not that catchy of a name anyway.

2) The product claims to rip the guitar parts out of your favorite MP3 files for transcription to their laser-guide system. I’m not sure how they pull the guitar part out. Even with advanced FFTs, Melodyne’s DNA and the like, there’s a lot of room for error in any software being able to properly identify and single out just the guitar part (especially in songs with multiple guitar tracks).
SOLUTION: Figure out a way to import song files from Guitar Hero or Rock Band, as those have the guitar parts pulled out. From those, analyze and produce the appropriate tablature cues.

3) How does the device detect whether or not the song at hand is played in an alternate tuning?
SOLUTION: If the solution to #2 above is employed, the song data could include any tuning info for the guitar.

4) Won’t the user’s hand get in the way of the lasers at times?
SOLUTION: Develop some type of guitar neck that lights up under the player’s hand, rather than trying to project anything through the user’s hand. That might be cheaper, and infinitely easier to calibrate than a complex laser system too. You would definitely lose the versatility of being able to use the device on your favorite guitar though… I’m not sure that’s the point though.

So basically, the solution to the Maestro’s problems is to take the initial concept and purpose of the project, and completely redo the system in which it’s executed.

Plus, we need to save all the laser beams we can; otherwise, what are we going to attach to the heads of all those sharks I just bought? I don’t want to go back to ill-tempered, mutated sea bass.

Learn To Shred… With Laser Beams is a post from: wax&wires

This is a pretty awesome idea. The Bulb-Sound-Speaker, designed by Castiglione Morelli, is, as you might guess from the name, a light bulb that’s actually a speaker. It’s powered in the same way bulbs are, via the screw-in bit there, and then there’s a Bluetooth transceiver and Altec Lansing speaker. You plug the other part of the unit into your iPod and there you have it, sound coming from your light fixture.

“Music became portable thanks to mp3 players and especially thanks to iPod. Outdoor we can listen music with headphones; we can use a mp3 player at home too but we need to connect it with a speaker and with electric power. For these reason all mp3 speakers are quite static. The Bulb-Sound-Speaker allows you to transform every lamp into a speaker.

You are free to move because everywhere you can find a lamp (a floor lamp, a desk lamp, a wall lamp) to connect it: you have just to unscrew the bulb lamp and swich on your Ipod: it will send music to the speaker and it will work as a remote control thanks to the Bluetooth transmitter. The bulb is made of transparent plastic. Inside it there are a transformer, the Bluetooth receiver and obviously the speaker. The project, developed with Tommaso Ceschi, haswon the honorable mention.”

Now, I can see how some might think this is really dumb. But nuh-uh, you’re dumb. I think it’s great, although if you planned your house or apartment out right, there shouldn’t be any places where the sound can’t reach if you want it to. But for that study or reading chair where you’d prefer just to have a little tinny music of your own, and don’t want to wear headphones in your own house (right on!), this is a cool little gadget.

Bulb-Sound-Speaker Puts Music In Your… Lamp is a post from: wax&wires

Sleek Audio’s SA6 user-tunable headphones have been on the market for close to a year now, and were just listed on Popular Science’s list of the Top 100 Inventions of 2008… though the SA6 couldn’t quite beat out a particle accellerator, or Boeing’s new plane-mounted laser-gun. Not bad for a pair of headphones.

They have now released their long anticipated wireless adaptor, KLEER, for $120 too.

[From SleekAudio.com]

Acoustic performance is not something that can be simply measured in decibels with earphones; it is also a perceived sensation.

Insertion loss, or the amount of natural gain lost by inserting a device into the ear, has to be recreated with an in-ear earphone. How your earphone does this affects the performance. The resonant peak (the ear’s natural ability to amplify a certain frequency over all others) of one person’s ear canal may peak at 2k and another person at 3.5k. When you remove this natural peak by inserting something into the ear canal the sound changes differently depending on the person. The bottom line is that one device will not work perfectly for everyone. Enter the Variable Equalization (VQ) System.

We started by applying our knowledge of the acoustics of the ear.

The shape of the ear canal varies from person to person. The length and diameter of the ear canal changes the acoustics of the sound environment. For the same reason a bell rings at a certain tone based on its size and shape, the ear canal can increase or resonate certain tones (Resonant Frequency) more than others. This is why some people hear a tone as light and shimmery while others hear it as tinny and harsh.

So now you can hear your songs without all the hyped highs, muddy lows, and scooped mids that so many headphone makers roll in to try and create that “wow-factor” on first listening. The problem is, that sound gets fatiguing after a long listening session, and can actually end up causing hearing loss by pushing certain frequencies. The SA6 effectively lets you listen to your music a lot quieter (protecting your ears) since you can hear all the frequency content you want, without the need to dime the volume. Sleek audio ought to know a thing or two about protecting hearing, as the family run business actually started as a hearing aid maker.

CD quality, lossless sound…..Wireless

Sleek Audio is constantly developing innovative technology to make sure the product you purchase today isn’t obsolete in six months.We have recently completed our groundbreaking wireless system thatworks with our existing products. Due to our interchangeable cable design, with the release of our wireless technology, your currentor future Sleek Audio earphoneswill become just that: wireless. You won’t lose quality or your investment, just the cable.

If you want to pick up a pair for Sleek Audio’s SA6 Earphones, save some money and support wax&wires by buying here.

Sleek Audio SA6 Tunable Earphones is a post from: wax&wires

My senior project in college was to develop a binaural audio plug-in that would simulate surround sound through standard ear-bud stereo headphones (see: wavearts panorama to get the idea). The plug-in would use HRTFs to trick the brain into thinking that it was hearing sounds from all around the user’s head, even though they were all coming through two simple headphone speakers in the user’s ears. I thought the applications for such technology would be endless, from mobile gaming and movie watching to new frontiers is pop music (remember Pearl Jam’s Binaural). It turned out to be quite an endeavor, and we have yet to see binaural technology hit the main stream in the way that a lot of us anticipated.

At CES 2009, Psyko Audio Labs offered their contribution to mobile surround sound with a 5.1 channel surround sound gaming headset. Their’s does not use binaural tech, from what I understand, but actually places a 5.1 system into a pair of semi-open headphones. Rather than using HRTF processing to create delays between the two ears, Psyko actually places the speakers on top of the listener’s head, and then funnels the sound through small air tubes to create the correct pinna effect with tiny delays between the ears, small volume differences between the two ears, and frequency modifications generated by the outer ear. That’s the same thing done with binaural headphones, only Psyko is modeling it with a physical system rather than digitally with software. I might be reading into it, but I think the Psyko Audio Labs sales guy takes a dig at the binaural surround method when he talks about how “There’s no filtration, there’s no lag, there’s no latency.” with the Psyko Set. You can read more about the way they do it here.

I’d be very interested in checking a set of these out once they come out later this year.

Surround Sound Headset Rattles The Brain is a post from: wax&wires

Daito Manabe’s Electric Stimulus to Face Test 3 is a bizarre (but awesome) innovation where he attaches electric stimulators to his face, and syncs them up with music to force his facial muscles to contract on beat. Here are some photos of the device used to translate the signal into voltage, the Den-Kuri Master, which was originally intended to help musicians feel the beat as a metronome sending out electrical impulses. Don’t try this at home.

Tired Of Your iTunes Visualizer? Electrocute Your Face! is a post from: wax&wires

When puppy love was in full force, you had two ways of conveying your emotions: you either stuffed a letter into her locker, or you made her a mix tape. The mix tape was a big step in the relationship. It was where you put your personality and character on the line, where you hoped to find some common ground with the future mother of your children, where you left Bryan Adams to do the dirty work of words, and then swept in to hijack the romance he had created.

Well the mix tape has become an endangered pastime. Digital music took over. I remember having to call into the radio station and request Seal’s Kiss From A Rose, and then wait by the radio with a cassette cued up to capture that one song that would complete my mix. There would always be that ever-frustrating station identification or DJ talking right over the intro, and they would always cut the ending before the song completely faded out, but that was all part of the aesthetic of a solid mix tape. Nowadays, we just go online and hear whatever we want, whenever we want it. The closest thing we have to a mix tape in this new era is uploading a playlist to our MySpace account or shooting somebody a link to our last.fm page. It’s all too clean and polished. All of the heart, work, and grit, all of the personal touch of the mix tape, has disappeared. Why should I feel special for catching your Project Playlist if everybody else on the whole planet has equal access to it? Why should your playlist feel as unique if you could add, delete, and reorder songs with two clicks of your mouse? My love requires at least some level of sacrifice to earn, so you’ve got to show me something more.

Acknowledging that CD-Rs never paid due homage to the cassette tape, MIXA has released a USB flash drive that has the cosmetic appearance of an old school cassette. They hold up to 1 GB of music via a retractable USB jack, and are completely customizable. MIXA lets you decorate the cassette itself with your own images, or you can use many of the hip preloaded ones that they have availalbe. You can also design a jacket and case for it. All of that comes included with a USB cable in a neatly packaged box, ready to gift. You can then upload MP3s, pictures, videos, or files of any type to your MIXA and give it away to bring a little personal touch back to your presents. Show you care by putting some time into your gift.

They do come in a bit pricey at 20 pounds. If you’re looking to roll on the cheap, or just not quite sure if she’s really worth spending $40 on yet, Urban Outfitters has a similar product for $15. Theirs only holds 512 MB, isn’t customizable, and doesn’t come with all the nice branding and schwag of a real MIXA. I got one of these for Christmas from my sister, and it’s pretty sweet. She loaded a bunch of songs on it, and it really makes it feel like one of the best gifts you ever got. A little personal touch like that goes a lot farther than shelling out a bunch of cash for a gift with less thought.

So next time you’re trying to flirt by sending somebody a digital poke on Facebook, remind yourself that digital pokes are Playskool. Step up to the big leagues. Write a letter, with a pen and paper. Give a MixTape. Thank me later.

You can check out the MIXA website at www.MAKEaMIXA.com.

MixTapes Mean “I Love You” is a post from: wax&wires