Nashville locals Jeremy Dickens (logickal) and Tony Youngblood were on-site this month for CDM to cover the Nashville’s NAMM show, the summer installment of the major music manufacturer trade show.

The Summer 2010 edition of the North American Music Merchants trade show (Summer NAMM to most of us) has come and gone. For three days in humid downtown Nashville, members of the gear manufacturing, distribution, and retailing businesses converged upon the convention center to see the latest new merchandise being brought to market. This year, however, they did so against the backdrop of a city whose economy faces an uncertain future in the wake of the devastating flooding that displaced thousands of people and did billions of dollars in property damage.

In the background, there were some interesting signs regarding the uneasy state of the industry as a whole. According to the official numbers, overall attendance was down by 4% from last year, although overall exhibitor numbers were “slightly up.” It wasn’t difficult to overhear the disappointment and frustration in the conversations of sales people on the show floor. Michael Fine, a representative for guitar brands such as G&L and ESP, was quoted by the local media as saying that “Everybody’s sales were down at least 25 percent last year, mine included.”

NAMM music gear trade show is ‘hurting’ this year [Tennessean.com]
See NAMM’s press release for numbers and a slightly different angle. -Ed.

Meanwhile, many of the attendees were disappointed by the lack of representation from some of the bigger names in the industry. Gone are the days of an Ableton, once distributed by M-Audio, announcing new versions of Live on Saturday Morning; that company, like many others, reserves the honor exclusively for events like Anaheim’s Winter NAMM show. Indeed, M-Audio and their new parents Avid were easy to miss in the crowd, having a small display of product and scheduled Pro Tools demos hidden among the racks of Hal Leonard Publishing’s music books. The show that once sprawled across two floors of the Nashville Convention Center and the adjacent arena now fit almost entirely within the confines of the Center’s main exhibit hall. Even with Summer NAMM’s well-deserved reputation as a “guitar show,” the larger guitar manufacturers were conspicuous in their absence.

That being said, Nashville’s participation in the yearly NAMM schedule is an important one for other reasons. The influx of travelling convention participants is something the local economy counts on for tax dollars — now more than ever. The city’s other main convention center, Gaylord Opryland Hotel, is closed until November after sustaining heavy flood damage, causing the cancellation or relocation of many events previously booked for this summer. That leaves events like NAMM with the burden of bringing badly-needed revenue to the city. More strikingly, the show and its exhibitors are working with ongoing efforts to assist local musicians and studios in recovering their lost possessions and livelihoods in the wake of the floods.

Nashville electronic musician Tony Gerber [artist site @ reverbnation] is a direct recipient of such aid. Gerber is a solo artist, member of space music ensemble Spacecraft, and active in the music performance scene in Second Life as Cypress Rosewood. He’s had his music life put on hold after the flood, losing approximately 80% of his and his family’s possessions. Despite those losses, he sees the ordeal as a “positive experience,” largely due to the assistance of friends, fellow area musicians organizing a benefit concert in his behalf, and the Recording Academy-associated relief organization MusiCares.

While MusiCares provides aid to individuals in the music industry during many types of crises, they acted quickly to establish an active presence in Nashville’s music community, offering expedited financial aid to cover losses. They also partnered with retailer Guitar Center to collect equipment donations at their stores nationwide and to offer discounted prices on replacement gear to flood victims. While details are kept confidential, MusiCares staff member Courtney Bailey said that they had given out approximately $250,000 to flood victims since their establishment.

It wasn’t only individual studios to suffer losses: local cartage and equipment storage facility Soundcheck was inundated as well, with the accumulated wealth of over 600 musicians from the broad spectrum of Nashville’s music scene suffering loss and damage. Even some of the smaller exhibitors on the show floor had been touched by the destruction: Mark Payung of Glasstones [Facebook link] had kept some of his company’s prototype guitars at a locker at Soundcheck. “It was really a depressing site. It was so bad they had signs that said ‘Beware of Snakes.’ Going in and seeing all my gear destroyed was heartbreaking.”

Despite the flood and despite the economy, retailers and buyers still came to Summer NAMM 2010 to do business. It’s unclear at this point whether we’re experiencing a few bad years or a downward trend that could change the way the music manufacturing industry operates. We may be able to tell more from Winter NAMM, where manufacturers customarily pull out the big guns. Until then, Nashville restocks, refinishes, repairs, and rebuilds.

Contributor Jeremy Dickens is a native Nashvillian musician, engineer, sound designer and and producer with works on dPulse Recordings, Sony Digital and his own Discrepancy Recordings imprint.

Tony Youngblood (photos, additional reporting) resides in Nashville, TN and hosts the experimental improv music podcast Theatre Intangible. [twitter]

Nashville Flood Relief:
http://www.unitedwaynashville.org/nashvilleflood/

What if you could have any musical technology you wanted – if you had only to imagine something, and it appeared? That was the somewhat insane notion behind the Dreams Competition CDM organized with Rui Penha of Casa Da Musica’s Digitópia research and education program in Porto, Portugal. Earlier this week, Rui and I sat down on the banks of Porto’s famed Douro River with Paulo Maria Rodrigues to pour through stacks of imaginary instruments. Some proposals read like wish lists composed to Santa Claus. Others included exquisite renderings, mock-ups, and even video that made them into serious, near-finished product designs. In the end, we attempted to choose the ideas that seemed the most surprising and original, including a winner that – with some limitation of its scope – would be feasible to actually build.

Far from just being idle fantasy, the winner will be realized by a team of developers as an open-source, free project. And I suspect some of the other entries may yield real tools, too. The line-up offers plenty of indications of what matters to people, and what’s possible. Here are some of our favorite entries out of an impressively high-quality bunch, plus, of course, our winners and the grand-prize selection that will inspire a real project.

Winner: Dream Synthesizer, Andreas Paleologos

The “Dream Synthesizer” lives up to its name: it embodies a laundry list of ideas about how to make a more interesting synth. Building the whole instrument would be wildly impractical for this project. But one central concept caught our eye as both practical and innovative. The idea is, touch interaction with an array of LEDs creates envelopes that provide a single metaphor for all sound design. Those envelopes aren’t just one paradigm among others: every sound parameter is accessed with gestures.

To realize this idea, we’re directing the Digitopia team we’re assembling for this project to focus on the LED array itself, and working with software to produce sounds. The very limitations of the LED display itself have some appeal, even in this age of multi-touch displays. Furthermore, the constructed physical object should produce a reusable part that other people interested in building their own hardware can reuse. Mapping different software synthesis methods, all built in free software, to touch gestures means the sound side should be reusable, too.

Making a project “free and open source” isn’t just about a license; it’s about choosing something that could be a building block for a wide range of ideas, and making that building block as usable and friendly – from engineering to documentation – as possible. Here’s how Andreas describes his concept, the spark that most inspired us:

My Dream Synthesizer has 3 sound modules that together generate the sound.
Digital Sound Module.
Physical Sound Module.
Vocal Sound Module.
They’re high-quality software modules with a lot of identity. The sound is constantly routed through all three
sound modules, whether generating sound or silent.
It has a big Low Resolution LED screen, covered with a transparent high resolution multi touch film for on
screen interaction with support for up to 3 fingers.
Draw the waveform on the screen and get instant control of the sound.
Use one finger to manipulate the Digital Sound Module.
Use two fingers to manipulate the Physical Sound Module.
Use three fingers to manipulate the Vocal Sound Module.
The envelope is basically ADSR, but with looping sustain. Draw your envelope curve.
You can record and automate all waveform and envelope changes making really complex sounding sounds
with just a finger stroke, recording your particular timing.
Select whether all automation should be triggered once or whether it should loop.

There are more details in the proposal we’ll share soon. And since the project is open, it’s one I hope that we’ll share with the CDM community on an ongoing basis, including getting reactions and ideas as the project is implemented.

By the way, check out Swedish-born, Norwegian-resident Andreas’ artist site, Cuckoo — cool stuff:
http://cuckoo.no/

First Runner-Up: Odu, Nicole Weber

Nicole Weber’s (Germany) Odu was probably the most stunning design work in the lot, including a full physical mock-up and UI design concepts. It’s an unusual combination of physical interface and Web-based sonic engine. On the Web side, users find sample content through a browser interface. On the physical side, a handheld interface turns those samples into tangible objects for manipulation and performance.

Nicole describes her “modular” project thusly:

programmer

• With the programmer the user is able to program the controller with samples
• Ships with a sample archive, e.g. created in collaboration with freesound.org or similar
• The user is able to archive and search own samples
• Optional community feature like competitions are provided via the software interface

base

• The base has all the basic features like USB connection, volume and connection ports for effects or other modules
• Integration of sensors in the controller body, e.g. tilt sensor or accelerometer

See her full proposal:
http://topotropic.de/odu

Honorable Mention: Fabric Ghost Controllers, Tycho

Tycho (Germany) sent what was perhaps the most evocative idea. It’s one I hope actually will be realized, but I think one that involves very specific skills. (Our friends the Grant Sisters of felted signal processing have been working on this very problem.) Tycho writes:

I have a dream.
I imagine when playing electronic music live I have sort of a display beside keyboard and computer where seven colored silk scarves are hanging. The cloths are maybe half a meter long, they are square and fixed with their center at a pole or something, their four corners loosely hanging down. It looks remotely like seven ghosts in a row. You get the picture?

These are the scarf ghosts controllers! Blowing against the scarves or touching them of fanning at them, maybe even squeezing them for extreme results shows that all seven of them control parameters of the actual sound(s) playing.

I do sleep concerts with very very low volume electronic music in Berlin, Germany. I believe such a “silk scarf ghost controller” would be perfect to accompany my music. During my nocturnal seven hour concert (plus some wake up music) I refer to (and sort of musically render) the seven chakras––so I would choose the number seven and the six rainbow colors plus white for the “ghost controller”.

But can a cloth be a controller? I learned of a Doepfer device that transforms a signal of 0 to 5 volts into the MIDI range. Unfortunately I have no idea how to make a scarf turn out volts when blown at or touched or squeezed. Could you work in a metal wire or something? Plug in little invisble batteries?

I had the idea just a few days ago when I heard of your competition. Maybe you would like such a beautiful and subtle “ghost controller” as well. I had even the vision of using it as sort of wind chimes: hang it in a breeze with my equipment rigged up in nature and let it produce generative sounds.

Its main purpose is being a live controller though that maybe look like decoration at first but turns out to affect the sounds and music. (As such it’s naturally highly lightweight and portable: Just fold the scarves.) They maybe even interact when one scarf touches another.

And imagine taking the pole into your hand and swinging it gently all seven the scarves flapping in the air! What a finale!

More Terrific Ideas

There are really too many interesting proposals to list here, but just to give you a taste:

The Wheel Array and the Ball Array, Stefan Blixt (Sweden): Blixt proposed a kinetic interface involving physical wheels. The idea is novel and a tangible contrast for the increasingly-minimal digital interfaces in our world.

Vitus, Michael Oneppo (USA): Vitus is a “controller” suite of connected, wireless objects.

each performer has a foot panel that controls expression, recording, looping, and effects for his or her performance. through the panel, the performer can enable or disable effects, modulate parameters of the effects, and mix up to four loopable performance clips on the fly.
a number of different wireless connections are provided that allow any microphone, guitar, keyboard controller, or other instrument to be wirelessly connected to the system. in addition, these interfaces provide a one button control for activating the instrument for recording and looping with the foot panel.
finally, a main controller panel is available for the controllerist/mixer of the group. this unit provides a master view of all performers’ clips and settings, and also allows the performer to manipulate these clips to make unique mixes. the interface is an array of hybrid button knobs, which present the performer with endless possibilities and configurations. the panel instantly slices any clip into eighth notes segments that can be triggered in monome-style phrasing across the button/knob grid.
all devices are truly wireless, eliminating any messy cords and freeing the performers. being battery powered, each unit recharges inductively through a storage case that can plug into any outlet.

Boulier, Yann Girard (France): Boulier has an ingenious take on how to maximize musical functionality in an array of encoders: use color to denote pitch. Someone may have thought of this before, but the execution is lovely.

LUM from Alfredo Duarte on Vimeo.

LUM, Alfredo A. Duarte Jorquera (Chile) is already, in this mock-up demonstration video, a compelling demonstration of the use of the Sony PS3 Move controller for music. Max Mathews, maker of the Radio Baton, would be proud. I hope Alfredo continues with this project, because I think he’s got a clear vision of how it can work. Updated: that’s an actual demo, so the work has already begun! Go forth!

And the rest…

Jacob Adler (USA) easily wins the honorary Luigi Russolo Award for craziest idea. I think you can agree from the first line:

I want to turn a mountain into a giant organ.
In the millennia-old tradition of organ building, I propose to develop a new kind of instrument – one constructed from powerful train horns and heard in an open desert space. The performer of such an instrument will actuate the valves of multiple air compressors remotely through a digital signal processing program and midi keyboard controller (when an E is pressed, the corresponding horn will sound). The harmonic richness of train horns are beautiful and I believe they can be used to create a new kind of music in
vast spaces. The instrument will be mobile and may be installed in any natural, open space for a series of concerts. One ideal location for this instrument is the south face of Papago mountain in Phoenix, AZ – the
mountain itself is visually beautiful and the park is acoustically ideal.
With a rank of 48 horns (corresponding to four musical octaves), free community concerts of new and old music will be performed. Every stage of the project should be documented through digital video, audio, and photos.
Throughout the organ-building process there will be many issues that will need to be resolved such as power/air-pressure requirements, acoustics in relation to topography, tuning, scaling, voicing, shape of the pipe/horn body, aesthetics of the organ case (if any), and design of the overall instrument. I have a background in working with pipe organs (performing and maintaining), and I would love to work in close collaboration with engineers and musicians. Visually, I would like to base the design of the instrument
after a famous antique organ case in Alkmaar (Netherlands) – the Schnitger Organ in St.
Laurenskerk<http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Alkmaar_organ.jpg>.
However, the design and materials used will harmonize organically with the desert landscape.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Steppophonic Looperformer, Per Boysen (Sweden) is a very practical-looking approach to step sequencing, and is labeled “please steal this!” It’s well within the range of things readers here could accomplish, so perhaps take the creator’s invitation — write back with the results!

Other ideas, like an OSC sequencer or modular musical/MIDI hardware seem like things that are destined to happen, even if this isn’t quite the forum for those problems.

A big thanks to everyone for compelling, creative contributions. If you have any more ideas or questions, if you missed this round and want to continue the conversation, the grand project of dreaming up the future of music tech is an unending one.

Want a flying car? Dream of the flying car. Build the flying car.

A competition I’m hosting with Digitópia, the musical-technological community of Porto, Portugal, extends to readers worldwide a challenge to dream up the digital musical instrument/interface/creation you want. Got something practical you wish could be built? Got something impractical and bizarre? Either way, articulate it in the best way you can — images, words, videos, mock-ups, stop motion animation, beat poetry, whatever you think is best — and send it in. We’ll share the most interesting entries, and pick one that the folks at Digitópia will actually build. (So, if it is unfeasible, we’ll have to find one that at least can be made feasible.)

I hope it’s just the beginning of this kind of big-picture thinking in digital music.

Here’s organizer Rui Penha on the concept behind the call for entries:

Digitópia = Digital Utopia. We strongly believe in the power of communities, of open source endeavors, of sharing and spreading inspiring ideas, either simple or utterly crazy ones. Our goal is to empower the individual with means to achieve a more fulfilling, rewarding and personal musical expression, regardless of his or her experience and motivation. New interfaces and instruments can overcome the steep technique obstacles of some old ones and create new musical languages and thus we want to make them available to everyone. We want to help you build your idea and, together, we’ll share it with the whole world!

We want your ideas, but you have to act fast. The deadline is this Saturday, midnight GMT, April 3.

Submit ideas via email to competitions@digitopia-cdm.net, using whatever medium of illustration you wish. Works will be judged on innovation, originality, feasibility and inclusive potential. If you win, you get your instrument, built for you.

http://digitopia-cdm.net/competitions/

Full rules after the break / bottom of this post.

By the way, if you’re near Porto, Portugal, there’s a Handmade Music event this Saturday 3/27! Go, take videos, photos, enjoy! Details:

In Portugal, Now

Por favor divulgue. Obrigado! / Please spread. Thank you! (english version below)

A quarta edição da Handmade Music Porto terá lugar já no próximo sábado, dia 27 de Março, na Digitópia: uma festa que junta um mostra&conta a uma jam session com instrumentos únicos. De hardware a software feito em casa até circuit bending, kits personalizados ou instrumentos acústicos originais, todos estão convidados a aparecer na Casa da Música pelas 21h30 para montagem de instrumentos. Estarão disponíveis algumas mesas e tomadas, contudo os canais de amplificação serão muito limitados, pelo que será melhor vir prevenido. Pelas 22h abrimos o evento ao público geral – a entrada é livre e recomenda-se -, ocupando a Digitópia e a zona do bar do Foyer Sul. Contamos convosco!

Teremos dois convidados muito especiais: Rolf Gehlhaar e Luís Girão, que trarão alguns dos instrumentos criados para o projecto “instruments 4 everyone”, no âmbito do Festival Ao Alcance de Todos, edições de 2009 e 2010, que agora começa.

Rolf Gehlhaar – http://www.gehlhaar.org/

Luís Girão – http://www.artshare.com.pt/

——

The fourth Handmade Music Porto, a party + show&tell + jam session with unique instruments, will take place at Digitópia next saturday, March 27th. From handmade hardware or software all the way to circuit bending, customized kits or original acoustic instruments, everyone is welcome at Casa da Música around 9:30pm for assembling the instruments. We’ll provide some tables and power sockets, but only a few channels for amplification, so it is advisable not to rely on them. At 10pm we’ll open the doors – admission is free and we’ll have a bar! See you there!

We’ll have two very special guests: Rolf Gehlhaar and Luís Girão, who will bring some of the instruments made for the “instruments 4 everyone” project, part of the Ao Alcance de Todos festival in 2009 and 2010, starting this week.

Rolf Gehlhaar – http://www.gehlhaar.org/

Luís Girão – http://www.artshare.com.pt/

——

You may view the latest post at
http://digitopia-cdm.net/2010/03/handmade-music-digitopia-2703/

Entering the Competition (worldwide)

Rules (PDF download):

RULES · Digitópia Dreams Competition · Digitópia 2010
1 ·
WORKS
1.1 · Entrants shall submit an idea for their dream instrument, interface or software.
1.2 · Only original and yet to be materialized ideas will be admissible.
1.2 · The winning entries shall be developed under a Creative Commons license – http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses .
2 · SUBMISSION
2.1 · Works shall be submitted by email to the address competitions@digitopia-cdm.net , with the contact information of the
applicant – full name, nationality, date of birth, email address – on the email body.
2.2 · Each applicant is free to choose the best way (text, schemes, videos, etc.) to present his or her idea.
2.2 · The closing date for entries is 03/04/2010, at 23:59 GMT.
2.3 · All successful submissions will receive an auto-reply by email.
2.4 · Each applicants may submit up to three ideas.
3 ·
JURY
3.1 · The jury will be comprised of Peter Kirn (president), Paulo Maria Rodrigues and Rui Penha.
3.2 · Judging will be based on each submission’s innovation, originality, feasibility and inclusive potential.
3.3 · The jury will announce its decision on 02/06/2010, through Digitópia’s website – http://digitopia-cdm.net .
3.4 · The jury may decide that none of the works submitted merit selection.
3.5 · The jury’s decision shall be final.
4 ·
PRIZE
4.1 · The winning applicant will be invited to collaborate with Casa da Música and Digitópia’s team on the development of his or her
project.
4.2 · At least two copies of the project will be built, one for the applicant and other for Casa da Música.
4.3 · The complete process will be documented and shared under a Creative Commons license – http://creativecommons.org/
about/licenses attributed to the applicant.

Good luck! I look forward to the results.

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.

The saga of the Beamz Laser Music System goes on: the spectacularly awful demo video has spread on the Internets, and after Gizmodo proclaimed it the most stupid promo video ever, they were challenged by the PR company to do a real review. (No such challenge yet for CDM, mercifully.)

This does reveal where the thing came from, though. The Beamz tool was “invented” by songwriter Jerry Riopelle, who had a fairly significant career penning tunes in the 60s (“The Thrill is Gone”) and went on to a solo career in the 70s. (I say “invented” because it’s certainly not the first laser harp in existence.) Apparently his dream more recently was to move to the Valley and make a gadget, so he went on to focus on Beamz — and landed an exclusive distribution deal with Sharper Image a few years ago, before the company’s finances fell apart. (Doh!) Jerry actually plays with his Beamz system onstage, and it … uh … kinda sounds like it does in the videos.

But the PR firm wants Gizmodo (and the world) to believe everyone will feel differently when they play it.. except we’d presumably have to hear it, too, which so far is a bit on the painful side. (They also say this obviously tech-savvy crowd loved it.) Yet, that’s not what bothers me — this does (from PR man Matt Silverman’s retort to Gizmodo):

It is not meant to be a traditional musical instrument because that takes so much training for people to master. The beamz was conceived and created by an accomplished Hollywood musician and songwriter whose goal was to allow the average music lover to experience the passion of making music.

This is something we hear all the time. Yet you never hear anything like this:

• Cup Noodles: Experience the real joy of cooking — finally, without needing years of apprenticeship under French master chefs.
• Hot Wheels: Why own a real car and bother with greenhouse gas emissions and drivers license exams when this fits in your pocket?
• Connect the Dots: Because deciding what to draw is just too much stress — and who wants hours and hours of training drawing nude models?
• Tetris – the non-competitive edition: Put the blocks wherever you want! You don’t want all that pressure. Heck … the blocks don’t even move.

Updated:

On a more serious note — and illustrating just what a big difference different users, different musical content, context, and purpose can make — check out what happens when the system’s creator visits a Children’s Hospital. Part of why it’s worth being thoughtful about this stuff, and not reducing it to black-and-white marketing terms, is that interface design really can be meaningful. Thanks to Koen for the link.

Despite that, if anyone suggests that maybe a certain amount of challenge or open-ended creativity is kind of the point of music, we’re “elitists” or “pretentious.” (Nothing against, say, Cup Noodles — I enjoy a little Picante Chicken now and then, in fact — but you’d never describe them as the “passion of making food.”)

Don’t get me wrong. Making music more accessible has actually long been part of musical instrument design and music history. Think frets, tablature, shapenote notation, keyboards and pianos, the autoharp — there are countless examples of making music more accessible. A lot of them worked. Lutes were really popular in their day for a reason. Almost every great composer you can name from the Classical period wrote piano music for beginning students, often lovingly so. And don’t start with the “kids today” speech. Have you listened to From the Top? There are some terrifyingly-skilled 12 year-olds around. Music education is threatened in schools, but music making survives. And those kids get interviewed — someone invariably asks, surely you don’t watch TV, or play video games, or play sports, or have friends, right? But, of course, they do all these things.

What the PR person says about traditional musical instruments is just plain wrong. Traditional instruments run the gamut from impossible to play, impossible to tune, and impossible to lift to ridiculously easy toys for kids.

Here’s the thing: the result has to be fun. It doesn’t have to be hard, or require massive skill. But simply saying something is better because it’s easier really does miss the point. The reason all those other categories from kazoos to pipe organs fall in the same basic category is that they’re fun to play over a long period of time, and they don’t impose one kind of musical expression on the user.

I don’t care if people claim I’m pretentious. I think it’s the job of people who do have more experience with more kinds of musical inventions and systems to introduce as broad a range of instruments as possible. I don’t think Beamz really stands up terribly well to a ukulele or a steel drum or even Guitar Hero — and I don’t have any training in any of those three. You can use computers. You can sing together off-key.

And, yeah, you really can build your own laser harp, save $400-500, and have a better time.

So how do I feel about buying expensive, pre-made gadgets that have limited forms of interaction, constrict the style, content, and expressive quality of what you play with them, and then claim to be new inventions even though they deliver watered-down forms of things we’ve already seen?

Sorry.

The thrill is gone.