The musical installation art / alternative instrument madness continues! Toke Oliver Barters of the UK has created a color scanner that, when linked to a computer, produces sequences of sound from colored objects placed on it. The glass disc rotates, so melodies can be formed simply by adjusting placement of the colored objects; the PowerBook […]

In what is likely to be the first and last glimpse of an exclusive Sharper Image product, I have to give a quick nod to the Yamaha Electric Guitar (via gizmos for geeks). No tuning, no frets, and little lights that tell you where to finger chords. It's like air guitar, only easier. Download songs […]

Want holiday cheer? (It is Hannukah, after all.) How about a holiday mash-up/mix that has both a song from the infamous Star Wars Christmas special (C-3PO sings 'Christmas in the stars') AND a 19th-Century music box? (Governor Arnold is just a bonus at that point.) Listen here. Don't miss seven minutes of straight whistling song […]

DVForge today is shipping its $49.95 JamPlug, a tiny guitar amp you can plug into your guitar to listen through headphones. The JamPlug isn't the first amp designed for use with headphones, but as near as I can tell it's the smallest — by a lot. This thing fits in your pocket and runs on […]

It's part drum, part guitar, and it definitely wins this week's odd instrument award. It's none other than the Drumitar. Futureman of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones originally had a classic SynthAxe, but with some serious mods has turned it into a guitar drum kit with piezo sensors that triggers drum sounds via MIDI. (SynthAxe […]

Exclusive: Corky Berger of the UK-based ONE 40 FIVE Store has been busy cooking up MP3 Moog ringtones (for use as ringtones, startup sounds, whatever you like) via the fabulous Moog Voyager.  Unsolicited, they've been kind enough to make a special ring tone just for us! Corky Burger's Minimoog Voyager MP3 ringtones invade the createdigitalmusic […]

Wondering what to do with all that useless audio gear? Try building a big igloo out of it in a church, "a new home: a habitat for listeners of avant-garde music." There's everything from old speakers to turntables in there. Neat. But creator Benoît Maubrey's description of the sounds from these retired pieces of gear […]

Our friends at Samplepoolz today have the scoop on a new version of the mobile music studio Syntrax for Symbian series 60 phones like the Nokia 66xx series and Qd phones. That adds to a number of existing mobile platforms. It's incredible what you can do with this thing: Syntrax is a fully-graphical real-time sequencer […]

Could fifty bucks buy your band some serious exposure? Siren Systems tells the LA crowd at Music 2.0 it thinks the answer is yes, via new technologies that predict whether a listener will dig your new tune. Digital music distribution is clearly the wave of the future, but now the question is, will our music […]

Siren Systems fills us in on more details of today's announcement in a CDM interview. Check the press release, but the news boils down to this: US$50 buys you physical and online distribution plus promotion (just hope listeners dig your songs!), via CD Baby and its new flavors page and Soundflavor [see full CDM story] […]