drumFunny – percussive comedy & music humor

By deconstructing a perfectly normal marimba, rigging a circular 3 octave marimba, and hooking up a labyrinth of MD24 MIDI decoders, Larry Cotton has managed to create the first MIDI programmed instrument that actually sounds like, well, an instrument.

Thanks, Keith

Stanford’s Mobile Phone Orchestra, or MoPho, is an experimental musical ensemble that uses mobile phones (primarily iPhones) as their musical instrument. MoPho takes advantage of the “unique technological capabilities of today’s hardware and software, transforming multi-touch screens, built-in accelerometers, built-in microphones, GPS, data networks, and computation into powerful and yet mobile chamber meta-instruments.”

MoPho began back in 2007 by Stanford University faculty member Ge Wang and held its first public performance in January of 2008.

With screen size being a major limiting factor, the market for apps like this should explode once tablets really take off (Mac tablet, prease).

p.s. Anyone else ever own the original yellow rhythm sticks? I got them for Christmas around 1989/90 but can’t find a single thing about them anywhere on the internet. If you have any pictures or can help us track it down, shoot me an email

Conceived and developed by the Magnetic Musical Training project, FieldDrum is the unholy union of mild-mannered percussion instruments and super-powered electromagnets. The electromagnets, mounted under the top head, are programmed to repel and attract the student’s sticks toward or away from the head. For those of you who haven’t guessed, the goal is here is to circumvent the boring, conventional tools of rhythm and motor skills and allow the drum to play itself. Whether the FielDrum can produce more than uneven legatos at this stage is still unclear. Whether it can produce a reliable alternative to actual drummers (who must constantly be fed, groomed, etc.) is equally uncertain.

(via Make)