Tor Clausen makes these fantastic Musical Rumba Series tables in his Olympia, Washington studio, each one topped with interchangeable percussion instruments that lock into a flat grid. Prices start at $800 for a 2-by-2 configuration, but I say go for the gusto and get the 4-by-4 model for $2,900. If I were the sort of person who had friends over to play music and sing songs I’d order one in a heartbeat.
Product Page [MusicalFurnishings.com via Oh Gizmo via Cribcandy]
The photo…
Is like one of those ‘perfect 1959 family’ pics.
Life as it never really was!
Thad E Ginathom
I wanna see/hear a classroom full of similarly equipped desks, arranged gamelan style.
It’s like Ikea porn for percussionists.
Never. Had. So. Much. Technolust …
This is awesome!
Michael, have you ever bought any fine woodworking? This is not out of line – a custom table can easily run much more than this. There is a lot of labor that goes into it, and wood selection for musical instruments requires more careful thought than just picking out particle board and veneers.
(yes, Tor is a neighbor of mine. I’ve seen the amount of work that goes into one of these tables)
This is truly amazing. Why has no one thought of this until now? I can just imagine the family bonding this would encourage.
Oh, ye gods, I want one! I want one so bad!
Has anyone been to the Experience Music Project in Seattle? In the instruments room they have a giant table that’s touch sensitive, and each part of the table has a different percussion sound to it. It’s amazingly fun to play with. This reminds me of that.
I actually have a friend with one of Tor’s side tables – it is setup like a marimba. It actually sounds quite beautiful, especially when played as an accompaniment to her piano.
This thing is amazingly rad.
I think every dad needs one of these. That way at the end of every terribly lame ‘dad’ joke he can finish with a nice da-dom-dom-tsshhh to really give the whole experiance a bit of extra cheese.
It’s weird to wake up and see something by my neighbor on BoingBoing. Keep it up Tor, these are ridiculously awesome!
If just saw that video out of context, I’d think it was midi with contact mics. It being real instruments makes it even more appealing. If I had a few thousand to drop (and space for a big table in my apartment) I’d be all over that.
Question: is there a way to mute the panels, so you could, say, have dinner without setting off tambourines?
This looks so damn fun. I can guarantee you this markup is ridiculous though. It can’t cost them any more than a couple hundred dollars in supplies to make that $2,000 table.
Anybody working on a homebrew one yet?
I saw Beck in concert a few years ago in San Jose- at one point in the show the band put their instruments down and sat behind Beck at an odd, out-of-place dinner table and started to make as if they were conversing over a meal. Beck started in with an acoustic version of one of his tunes and the band eventually chimmed in by drumming on the table and hitting water glasses with spoons – all of it was mic’d of course. I wonder if they had one of these tables on stage?
Reminds me of that xkcd strip, where the guy’s tapping on a table and makes the Jurassic Park Theme.
http://xkcd.com/324/
I have those friends and if I had piles of money lying around, I too would order this table in a heart beat.
Thanks everyone for your comments! I posted a new video on my landing page that shows a bit more about the table and my shop. ( http://www.musicalfurnishings.com ) I make each one of these by hand, so I feel a bit of a compliment that my design looks like it is mass produced and marked up. I’d love to build a few of these for people ~ just let me know which instruments you’d like in them.
On jurassic 5′s tour 2 years ago, promoting their cd…they would take the covers off these old school desks with their names on them and start beating an akai mpc sampler making the beat just like they’re sitting in detention helping the time pass. This is almost as cool.