What if blowing tunes on beer bottles was raised to the level of musical science?

Through even the mundane medium of packaging, design can transform the everyday. DJ and designer Matt Braun of Philadelphia, collaborating with Chris Mufalli, use labels to tune the level of beer remaining in the bottle for musical results. Pitches are printed on the labels, allowing you to exactly match the liquid inside to a pitch you want, and join along with your fellow imbibers for a performance.

It’s not just a label that’s different. Ridges on the sides of the bottles make them double as Guiro-style percussion. The neck was adjusted for ergonomics. Even the wooden box becomes a tongue drum.

It’s all decidedly non-digital, group fun – Create Beer Music? (Actually, technically, they’re printing with digital tech, the quantization of liquid to discrete equal-tempered pitches is a digital process by definition, and you hold it with your fingers. So there.)

So far, this has been used in a microbrew, but the duo are looking for a partner. I’d love to have this at our next Handmade Music, if any of you are in the bottling business.

Tuned Pale Ale [2d3d5d.com - project site]
Found via the wonderful, whimsical design blog etre, maintained by a usability and design consultancy
Thanks to Johan Strandell / 40hz for the tip.

The Tuned Pale Ale are just one of a number of unique designs from Matt Braun, all emphasizing making the ephemeral world of sound more physical.

Matt’s site is a smörgåsbord of design concepts, many involving creative uses of lasercutters and 3D forms. There are “tuned gig buckets” for busking similar to the beer bottles, useful tools for DJs using 45s, and wooden drums made from digital images of the sounds of other drums, producing “generations” of instruments in which the sound of one gives form to the shape of another.

Two of my favorites are pictured here. Custom-made shirts use user-modifiable CAD illustrations to produce wearable art made from analysis of any sound file – below, Michael Jackson’s P.Y.T. becomes a pink tee. Another project in early development explores making skeletal three-dimensional forms from the structure of musical harmonies.

I look forward to seeing how these projects evolve; Matt’s looking for collaborators.

http://2d3d5d.com/

What’s the cutest conceivable musical instrument? It’d be tough to top an anthromorphic musical note, complete with eight-note flag, whose smiling face opens when it “sings.”

Boing Boing Gadgets (by way of Tokyo Mango) gets the story on this latest creation of art group Maywa Denki and lead creative instigator Novmichi Tosa. The Otamatone is only barely practical as an instrument; it sports a nasal tone from its simple electronic oscillator and, at the end of the video, demonstrates an entirely new way to render the US National Anthem slightly out of tune. (Apologies to Jimi Hendrix.) But it also exhibits sheer genius, like shaking it to get vibrato and adjusting formants by squeezing the character’s mouth open and closed. And it easily trumps those horrible plastic Yamaha recorders we were all forced to play in school.

It’s almost a surprise to see Maywa Denki with something selling at retail, as their previous creations have been designed to be completely absurd. Take the Tsukuba Series of instrumental devices, which includes:

• An instrument built to punch bubble wrap (packing tape)
• A “voice vibrator” you strap to your throat
• A Brazilian percussion robot
• “Guitar-la,” an array of six guitars played by a pedal organ.

You can see those and other creations by clicking through the “Art” section of the project’s site; there are other wonderful (and kawaii) toys, too, called “nonsense toys”:

http://www.maywadenki.com/

I previously wrote about the strange aquatic-themed musical designs, evoking the shapes of fish bodies and skeletons:

Bizarre Fish-Themed Gadgets, Musical Instruments

It’s all pure design genius, and a reminder that designs need not be bereft of personality, whimsy, and the absurd.

Thanks to Tom Betts from whom I stole found this story.