instruments
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This MIDI Controller Swaps Piano Keys for 39 Swivelling Joysticks
More often than not, MIDI controllers take the form of tiny keyboards with a limited number of plastic piano keys. If you know how to play the piano, they’re useful, but if you’re looking for a more creative way to express yourself musically, the Joyst JV-1 replaces piano keys with 39 joysticks from a video…
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This Guy Turned A 90-Year-Old Typewriter Into A Drum Machine, And It Sounds Fantastic
Aside from nostalgia, or maybe loaning it out to filmmakers as a prop for period pieces, there are not many practical uses for a 90-year-old Remington portable typewriter anymore. Against all odds, William Sun Petrus did manage to find one novel use for the hardware; he turned it into a makeshift drum machine that rewards his…
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Once A Musical Oddity, The Stylophone Is Now A Fully-Capable, $350 Analogue Synthesiser
The Stylophone started life as a kitschy electronic toy instrument—the digital version of the kazoo, if you will—but over the years has slowly developed new sounds and features making it more than just a novelty. The new Stylophone Gen R-8 is an evolutionary leap compared to previous versions of the instrument, and one that might…
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MIT’s New AI-Powered Software Can Extract Individual Instruments From Videos With A Single Click
An instructor of mine once compared mixing a song to baking a cake. The various tracks are the ingredients, and once everything is mixed and baked, as with a cake, those ingredients can’t be deconstructed. Or can they? AI researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have created an app that can isolate…