As a follow-up to my controversial defense of the keytar attempt to get people to stop complaining in comments that they can’t buy a keytar and excuse to needle Roland again.

This is CDM reader Billy Hunt. The bright spot in the upper right hand of the screen is fire — a fireball launched from his keytar. Billy modded his Roland AX-7 for wireless MIDI control (okay, logical, practical choice there) and added a “gun that shoots flash paper” (not so typical).

Billy writes:

It is the best instrument ever. Shooting flames out of your keytar while you use the infared beam to make it squeal like a pig makes the girls want you, and the men want to be you.

Billy is in the band Straight Punch to the Crotch with Buddy — the dummy you see on the right, which itself is MIDI-enabled. Billy describes Buddy as “a midi dummy with drum triggers in his head, shoulders, and (of course) crotch.” I’m hoping Billy will someday present an academic paper at the NIME conference on “Musical Applications of Tactile Sensitive Anatomy Sensing: Dummy Crotch Punching.”

CDM doesn’t very often print retractions, but I think it’s time for one. As a number of you pointed out in hilariously frank fashion, keytars are indeed not cool. So, here’s my Official Correction: flame-shooting keytars are cool — provided they’re in the right hands.

We’ve learned many things through this week’s Keytar Controversy:

1. Keytar aficionados don’t like the term “keytar,” preferring the more-dignified term “strap-on.” This is analogous to the Star Trek fan deciding neither “Trekkie” nor “Trekker” accurately describes their devotion, suggesting instead “penis.”

2. Normal, non-strappable keyboards and pianos actually are cool. Really. You can play keyboards just like that. (Who knew? I thought my piano teachers were trying to tell me something.)

3. In the Chinese and Japanese markets, keytars are preferred by girls. I will extrapolate from this that while I would look really dorky playing a keytar (I don’t own one, despite allegations from readers and bloggers), many girls look super cute with them.

4. Readers here are split between loving and hating the keyta– uh, strap-on. No one has neutral feelings about them. I think that tells you the real reason why they can’t be made any more.

The best part of the debate comes in the blog post Keytars Are Still Lame, with this visual aid:

There’s just one problem. Ray Charles is a great reason to learn the piano. But hand Ray Charles a keytar, and suddenly the keytar is cool. And that’s the point, isn’t it?

Instruments, isolated from any player, are often beautiful and very cool. Take the bandoneon. A well-made bandoneon is a beautiful, if archaic-looking object. (The same can be said about almost any instrument: beautiful, if archaic-looking.) Then you pick it up and try to operate it, and it looks like you’re trying to inflate some kind of personal Zeppelin, unsuccessfully. If you can’t really play, the instrument will do its best to make an absolute idiot of you. That’s what instruments are for.

But give that object to Astor Piazzolla, and it seems as though God Himself has popped in for a quick jam session.

Digital instruments are supposed to be some sort of automatic music makers that free us from these problems, but we know that’s not so. In fact, we know the real challenge is to imbue digital instruments with the same dork-producing — or genius-amplifying — qualities of their analog and acoustic predecessors.

So, we’ll leave it at this:

• Keytars can help you play keyboards onstage mounted from your shoulder instead of a stand. The rest is up to you.
• Roland doesn’t want you to have one for reasons we can’t fully explain.
• If you bought a keytar and want to profit on it, you can now sell it for 2-3 times its purchase price. If you also bought Google stock in the 90s, you can sell that a buy a whole lot of keytars.

Imogen Heap can get away with keytars (and sometimes even she just attaches a strap to a conventional MIDI keyboard). I can’t, so you’ll still see me using stands and tables and such. And I’m okay with that.

Sorry, used the “k” word again. Gitboards rock.

Anyone want to suggest what slightly-anachronistic electronic instrument we should cover next? Nominations now open.

I love you, Roland. I really do. But it has to be said:

You’re completely clueless when it comes to the coolest things you’ve ever made.

And if an ordinary keyboard with a silly guitar-style body and shoulder strap can be cool, I’m not sure I can even blame you. You just have to listen to the people.

People love their 303, their 808, even their 909. Yet when these a whole generation of kids desperately wanted you to just re-release these things — or your Jupiter, or Juno, any of your other fantastic keyboards and sound toys of yesteryear — you’ve responded with souped-up, “modernized” versions that mainly share only the name.

But most importantly, you killed the keytar (the awesome, infrared-equipped AX-7) just before everyone decided they really had to have one. So, every week, I hear from people wanting them, just because of I mentioned the keytar in a random post back in April 2005.

Ironically, then, I said, the Keytar Lives. And it does, more than ever — just not in your catalog.

In comments, people sound desperate, hungry — sometimes even poetic. (They sing to the keytar, in Spanish, “ESTOS INSTRUMRNTOS SON GENIALES…..YO TENGO UNO Y LO RECOMIENDO, EL NIVEL DE EXPRESIVIDAD EN VIVO CON ESTA JOYITA ES INCREIBLE….”) Pure poetry.

It’s driven the AX-7 prices sky-high on eBay, though some cheaper items remain of lesser-known and older models. The really lucky people get theirs for fifteen bucks at a yard sale from people who don’t know better.

But why not new units, if they’re this popular? Yamaha — I hope you’re listening, too. Korg? How about a nice, cheap CME version with motorized faders and some band dumping paint on it?

But Don’t Take My Word For It

Take the Times. No, not the New York Times or LA Times – the Times, as in London. The one that gave us Times New Roman.

Commenter Kent Sandvik, at least, notes the irony and sends this link in:

Why the keytar’s the star again [Times Online]
Long dismissed as hopelessly naff, the keytar is enjoying a comeback. Our correspondent tunes in

YouTube trawlers are almost as keen on You be my Wife, a recent duet between the Croatian keytarist Belinda Bedekovic and, er, the comedy Kazakhstani Borat. That Sacha Baron Cohen chose the keytar for his leotard-clad, culturally wayward creation pretty much sums up the instrument’s irredeemably naff reputation.

It’s something of a surprise, then, to be attending the 1234 Festival in thoroughly hip Shoreditch, East London, and to discover a keytar in the hands of one of the headlining bands. Pete Cafarella, front-man of the New York dance duo Shychild, agrees to talk me through the instrument that is now being used by acts including Chromeo, Mutemath, Goldfrapp, Imogen Heap and Peaches . It also features in the video for the recent Beyoncé single Green Light.

I don’t even know what “naff” means (I’m using context clues to work it out), and I’m impressed at that comeback. They quote my editor at Keyboard, Ernie Rideout, as someone with his finger on the pulse on what’s hot in keyboards. (Okay, granted, the last conversation I had with Ernie was about slick new ways of miking pianos and what tuning options were on Roland’s digital harpsichord, but at least  pretend all of us are uberhipsters.)

Yes, it’s true. The keytar hasn’t been this hot since Jem featured The Misfits’ keytarist, Stormer.

Actually, you know, don’t listen to me. It’s probably discontinuing the keytar that gave it underground cred. Maybe those digital harpsichords will become really hot after they’re discontinued.

In the meantime, I say to my fellow keyboards, we’ll just have to find another solution. Keyboardists can be awesome without using any kind of strap on their shoulder. I swear. They’re easier to play just on a stand or whatever.

Erm, and … uh … Beyonce’s gotten one, so keytars have officially jumped the shark. So you can get out of the bidding war we’re stuck in at the moment on eBay, friends.

Don’t … touch … any eBay items.

PS — Yes, I realize a keytar is nothing but a keyboard with guitar envy. And since I love keyboards too much to envy guitars (or french horns, or lots of other instruments), that seems silly to me, too.

I still mean what I said to Roland. ;)

The HPD-10 hand percussion controller by Roland could be a terrific controller for synths and clips, from its traditional purpose (drums) to lots of other applications:

My main interest in getting the unit, though, is as a midi control over softsynths. Its 10 pads can be freely assigned to any note numbers on a per kit basis (64 kits can be saved in the unit). So far, I’ve set up different kits for Live’s Impulse, Reason’s Redrum and an Alesis Micron Setup that I have dedicated for drum sounds.

Check out velocipede’s full review:
Handsonic 10 (HPD-10) [Create Digital Noise]

The news from Tokyo’s Music Instrument Festival is mostly what’s going away as what’s new: Alesis selling off the last stock of Ions in Japan, and Roland discontinuing their cult favorite AX-7 strap-on keyboard controller. Fortunately, velocipede dug up two gems. Vestax’s Guber line has some far-out hardware like this crazy-looking turntable:

And from the non-electronic end of the spectrum, the Xaphoon is an original hybrid instrument that packs sax-like sounds in a recorder body; velocipede assures us that it sounds far better than its toy-like looks suggest:

Music Instrument Festival in Tokyo [Create Digital Noise]
Vestax Guber players [Japanese only]
Xaphoon instruments product page

Many people now are rightfully interested more in new instruments that eschew keyboards completely for new interfaces, but there’s something beautiful in all these failed ideas.

Tiny Tot Synth Lovers: More from the start ‘em young department: Synth recommendations at 18 months [Music thing], and circuit bending at age 6 [Get LoFi] . . . previously on CDM: 3 year-old DJs, child keyboard prodigy

I Want My Synth TV: Theremin videos [Theremin World], BBC Alchemists of Sound documentary [Get LoFi], and in my favorite Web cartoon, Strongbad gets a Key-Sword-Tar [Matrixsynth]

A Very Thereminy Christmas: Like CDM, Theremin World is in a holiday mood with a Christmas tree ornament, and John Waters performing holiday songs with Theremin

But Wait, There’s More! GetLoFi spots synths with tires, and Retro Thing honors the Alesis A6 Andromeda Analog Synth and suggests cheap bookshelf speakers.

Go forth, my children, and make sure that all of us become blocked domain names on your company’s network.

If you thought the “keytar” went out with other 80s fads like legwarmers, think again. Roland not only still makes keytars, they’ve actually upgraded the tech. It seems some keyboardists still don’t want to be exiled behind a wall of keyboards while the guitarists get all the babes. “Just strap it on and you’re front-of-stage with the band,” says Roland. (At least, I HOPE they’re talking about the keytar.)

The modern Roland AX-7 has a General MIDI/GS soundbank (I love the 90s, too!), 45-note keyboard, touch controller, expression bar, and — here’s the nifty part — infrared “D Beam” sensors so you can wave your hands in the air in front of it. Just in case you needed your keytar to be MORE geeky. Because it’s not the 80s anymore, though, the keytar now scores a kitsch factor, and that’s priceless.