Magic Instruments co-founder and CEO Brian Fan knows the pain of learning new instruments all too well. A Juilliard-trained pianist before starting his own company, he spent a stretch of his life trying to learn the guitar, only to put it down after...
In medicine, design gives a massive amount of consideration to function. After all, someone’s life is at stake. Designing a tool that can do two things at once can sometimes buy doctors a few extra seconds and that can be enough to save a life. The DTool is a revolutionary surgical instrument that enables laparoscopic surgeons to perform surgeries with ease.
Laparoscopy (or minimally invasive surgery) is a type of surgery that poses a lesser risk to the health of the patient. However, it’s a great strain for the surgeon since they need to perform everything within a tiny incision in the body. This requires nerves of steel, and a very specific set of tools. However, changing instruments mid-surgery can be complicated. So, the DTool combines instruments together to create a Swiss Knife of M.I. Surgery. Designed to grip and to cut, these tools are operated by triggers at the gripping end of the shaft. The other end contains the gripping pincers and a cutting tool. Any doctors here? I’m sure we’d love to listen to your thoughts!
Designers: Horacio M. Pace Bedetti, Andrés Conejero Rodilla and Carlos Paulino Montero.
Look, you don’t need a whole guitar to play guitar. We live in an age where electronics can recreate any sound you want, and the Jamstik Wireless Smart Guitar gives you the essentials, which is some strings and some frets. Everything else is done digitally.
Apply vibrato, bend a string, fingerpick—Jamstik feels and performs like a normal guitar, but also conveniently connects with all the Apple music apps and software you could ever need. Jamstik is perfect for all-level guitarists, and is ultra-portable to seamlessly fit your lifestyle.
“The Jamstik is cool-as-hell… Turn your iPad into a real instrument,” John Brownlee, Cultofmac.com
– Easy to set up
– No tuning required
– Extremely portable
– Includes quality teaching software
– Contains full MIDI controller functionality
– Allows you to see your hands in action w/ infrared light technology
– Includes D-pad control for changing octaves or swapping sounds
– Play without disturbing others, ultra quiet with headphones
It’s a fun device to have when you just can’t stop yourself from jamming whoever you go, but have come to realize that maybe, just maybe there are occasions where it’s not appropriate. Instead of the usual $250 asking price, today’s deal sees this lowered to $125.
Finding yourself always tapping away on surfaces, creating a beat from stuff that wasn’t meant to be musical? Well then, Mogees is just for you. It’s a special vibration sensor that attaches to anything, and allows you to map different vibration patterns to different instruments. This way you can turn your living space into a whole percussion set. You first have to program the app and tell it which vibrations correspond to which instrument (eg. tapping with open palms on a door could be the snare drum, using the knuckles could be the high hat, and hitting it with a key could be the kick drum), it’ll then recognize the vibrations and communicate the signal to your phone, which in turn emits the corresponding sound. Imagine sitting at your desk at work and kicking out a whole drum set by tapping on your drawers, your stapler or anything else that comes to mind. It sounds ridiculous, but you really have to watch the video to see the potential.
It’s not limited to drum sounds, incidentally. Mogee outputs MIDI signals, so you can map just about any instrument to your vibrations and get creative. It’s a fully-funded Kickstarter, and a £96 ($147) pledge will get you one with delivery in November!
Roland may have already teased its upcoming 'Boutique' line of synthesizers, but thanks to a leak, we now have a lot more info. The trio of instruments offers modern takes on the classic Jupiter 8, Juno 106 and JX-3P synths with the JP-08, JU-06 an...
If you’ve ever heard a Theremin, you might’ve become intrigued by this otherworldly instrument. Used for decades as the eerie instrument in countless movies, as well as being popular with psychedelic rock bands of the 70’s, the Theremin is intriguing but also hard to play. The Moog Theremini Professional Theremin on the other hand tries to simplify the experience so that even amateurs can have a hope to, well, not suck.
First, it’s got a powerful sound engine derived from Moogs award winning synthesizer: Animoog. Second, and this is a first for Theremins, the Theremini has assistive pitch quantization, which allows you to adjust the instrument’s level of playing difficulty. At the maximum position, the Theremini will play every note in a selected scale perfectly, making it impossible to play a wrong note. As this control is decreased, more expressive control of pitch and vibrato becomes possible. The Theremini is a dream to play, a marvel to compose with, and a work of art to look upon.
This particular instrument is far from being a toy, since it is produced by the groundbreaking Moog Music company and costs $300. If you’ve got an experimental music inclination, this could be your chance to experiment with what many consider to be the very first electric instrument ever created.
You’re looking at a set of flexible, velcro-attached strips with three touch sensitive zones. Each one of these zones can be assigned one of 100+ sounds so that you end up with a 6-instrument percussion set right on your thighs (or any other body part you feel like using). The strips are connected to a control box, which in turn connects either to an external speaker with wires, or (with the upgraded version of the kit) through Bluetooth 4.0 to your smartphone for added functionality. DrumPants are slim and unobtrusive and will allow you to jam pretty much anywhere, without having to lug real instruments around. Anyone that’s ever tapped a rhythm out on a steering wheel, or a table or any other surface will likely have thought about how cool it would be if those taps made “real” sounds. Well, yeah… now you can. $99 will buy you the basic kit, and $129 the upgraded kit with Bluetooth. It’s on Kickstarter so don’t expect immediate delivery, but the project is fully funded.
Unless you've traded your guitar strings for an axe-shaped MIDI controller, tuning your guitar is probably one of those chores you've just learned to deal with. It's hardly the bane of any guitarist's existence, but sometimes it seems like there could just be a faster, more brainless way to get your instrument ready to jam. Turns out, there is.
Roadie positions itself as the next generation of guitar tuners. Think of it like a modern String Master, a device that fits snugly over your instrument's tuning pegs and does the hard part for you. Paired with a companion smartphone app, Roadie listens your guitar's strings and turns its gears until the instrument is on key. We dropped by the team's table at Haxlr8r, and the process was dead easy, quickly tuning a demo guitar without breaking a string. In fact, it's designed not to -- by comparing a string's elasticity with its frequency, the device can actually warn you when your guitar's wires are about to break. Not a bad trick, particularly for guitarists (like this editor) that aren't completely sure when their instrument was last restrung. The device's Kickstarter page has already more than half of its $60,000 goal, and has a little over a month left to get the rest. Looking for a way to chip in (and to avoid guitar maintenance)? Check out the source link below; Roadie tuners start at $79. %Gallery-slideshow122871%
If you thought that Google Glass was the only wearable backed by one of tech's mega corporations, think again. Intel's investment arm has now ponied up a "significant" investment into Recon Instruments, makers of the Jet heads-up display for extreme sports. While neither party has disclosed how much cash Intel has thrown Recon's way, the release does reveal that the Intel Capital will be sharing its expertise in "manufacturing, operations and technology" in addition to its checkbook. While it's far, far too early to presume that we'll see Santa Clara dive head-first into the wearables market, we're going to be watching this partnership with extreme interest.
The violin just got an upgrade, but in all the wrong places. Alex Sobolev’s Triolin is basically three violins in one, and while it might seem like a novel albeit unusual idea to modify the classical string instrument, I don’t think violinists will agree.
The trio of violins are joined together at the place where the violinist’s chin should rest, so that means they’ll have to play this thing backwards–and without a chin rest! Another catch is that the three violinists will have to play in sync with one another to make sweet music on the Triolin.
It’s a very impressive build, but attempting to actually play it is probably even more challenging.
Magic Instruments co-founder and CEO Brian Fan knows the pain of learning new instruments all too well. A Juilliard-trained pianist before starting his own company, he spent a stretch of his life trying to learn the guitar, only to put it down after...
Roland may have already teased its upcoming 'Boutique' line of synthesizers, but thanks to a leak, we now have a lot more info. The trio of instruments offers modern takes on the classic Jupiter 8, Juno 106 and JX-3P synths with the JP-08, JU-06 an...
The trio of violins are joined together at the place where the violinist’s chin should rest, so that means they’ll have to play this thing backwards–and without a chin rest! Another catch is that the three violinists will have to play in sync with one another to make sweet music on the Triolin.