This brightly colored modular recorder is made up of detachable cylinders that can each be separately loaded with a unique digital sound (either by using a PC to drag-and-drop it or by using it to manually record input) which can then be played with a push of a button. It’s aimed at kids. I love the idea and like to imagine that children will use this to play incredibly vivid and unique songs with notes of their own devising, but I know what I would have used this for as a kid: to play a John Cage like solo of my juiciest farts over and over again. Thus, I despair.
Alle Meine Klänge [Official Site via MAKE via Synthopia]
The absolute joy that reading this news brought me was immediately ruined by the very mention of Cage… Honestly, I don’t see how any of his work has served to create any meaningful discussion of music or even to “stretch our paradigm” of it. He simply indulges himself in whatever useless whim he decides could be faked as something significant.
Oops, I wrote about him in the present tense. Still doesn’t change anything.
The Casio SK-1.
Who needs kids as an excuse? I want one. Until I get it, I’ll just be performing 4’33″ in an endless loop (speaking of Cage).
Man, this looks awesome. I’d love to get this. For my kids. And not just for the fart thing.
It looks like this may just be a concept? Or is there somewhere we can buy this? I didn’t see anything on the site that looked like an order page.
This looks really amazing. The only thing better would be if it was somehow powered by your breath! I’d play this, it might make up for my lack of any musical talent whatsoever.
It’s great that the modules can be split apart and reordered physically. Kids can each take one, run off and find a sound, come back, and then figure out the best order to arrange them in – you never know which fart is going to come out soprano until after it’s recorded. There’s just something dead-simple about each module having its own record button. Grab it, take it out, hold it up to something, record.
Perhaps these Casio keyboards allowed you to reorder the sounds you’d recorded after the fact. But this flute strikes me as more of a UI innovation than a functionality innovation. I mean, how out-there is recording and playing back sounds, anyway? The point here is that it’s dead easy and all the UI is in hardware.
Digital sampler?
This is old hat. remember the late 80s casio $99 keyboard with the built in sampler. Plenty of kids did make fart songs,songs of their dog etc.
You can get software and hardware samplers and breath controlled samplers (though they are pricey).
Any decent Keyboard will have this ability.
John Cage is the musical equivalent of Jackson Pollack.
Melon Bread–
Perhaps you need to read my older blog entry “John Cage, a charlatan!?” which addresses your concern, more or less.
http://startlingmoniker.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/snfvsjc/
There is also a part two!
http://startlingmoniker.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/jcvssnf2/
You mean you misplaced your “John’s Greatest Farts” mix tape?