Category: Music

Categories
Fashion Luggage and Bags Music

The LiLu Smart Bag makes you the light of the party

The fashion of EDM culture is as unique as the music it produces, with festivals packed to the gills with attendees flaunting some of the most vibrant, colorful, and standout outfits you’ll ever see. It makes sense: the point of most of these festivals is to be happy and friendly — and make an impact while doing so.

While there are plenty of ways to do so, there aren’t many stronger than the LiLu Smart Bag. This slim purse sports a flexible LED panel that reacts in real time to music that’s playing, making it a perfect companion for any EDM festival. An internal pocket in the purse itself is great for keys and other small accessories, while beside sits a micro-USB slot to charge the LiLu’s 10-hour battery.

Continue reading “The LiLu Smart Bag makes you the light of the party”
Categories
Music Video Games

Mogees Play makes the world your musical instrument

editors-choiceOne reason why music programs around the country are cutting back is the cost associated with purchasing equipment. Instruments are expensive
and until now, were the only real way to truly engage a student’s musical faculties.

In creating the Mogees Play, UK-based music and technology company Mogees is aiming to bring musical instruction to everyday classrooms and life without needing instruments, controllers, joysticks, or keyboards. How? A small sensor serves as the connection between tablets or smartphones and any object at all — a wall, a book, a table, even another person. Depending on how a user interacts with that object — a bump, a tap, a scratch — Mogees Play reads those vibrations and transforms them into different musical effects.

Continue reading “Mogees Play makes the world your musical instrument”
Categories
Connected Objects Music

The GoDJ Plus is a lightweight DJ system that still drops tons of bass

Being a DJ is a glamorous job, filled with the people, parties, and music that would make anyone jealous of the lifestyle. But truly doing a great job means knowing music history and having the right equipment at the ready. The problem is that all of that equipment together usually ends up being heavy and awkward to effectively move around.

The advent of tablets have been great at lightening a DJ’s load but lack all the physicality of a true DJ deck. Enter the GoDJ Plus, a fully featured, portable DJ system that’s the size of A4 paper with a weight of just under two pounds to match. The sleekly designed, aluminum system sports two decks with two screens, two sets of LED-backlit pads, and a full set of tools from an EQ to a sampler to a sequencer. Interestingly, the GoDJ Plus doesn’t require a smartphone or a laptop to operate. Instead, 16GB of internal storage and an SD card slot lets DJs load in their own music or download songs from major streaming services using the device’s Wi-Fi connectivity, with dedicated CPUs within dedicated to each track, hardware, and software for optimal performance.

Continue reading “The GoDJ Plus is a lightweight DJ system that still drops tons of bass”
Categories
Music

ASome transform your ordinary headset into awesome Bluetooth headset

It would be nice to add Bluetooth functionality to the earphones one already owns and loves to use.

ASome is an audio adapter that attaches to earbuds or headphones and adds Bluetooth functionality that enables them to be used with smartphones and other portable music devices. It comes equipped with a Qualcomm aptX chipset and a 210mAh battery that provides 10 hours of playback on a full charge, its makers say. ASome also features a multi-pairing feature via Bluetooth 4.1, allowing users to connect two devices simultaneously.

Continue reading “ASome transform your ordinary headset into awesome Bluetooth headset”
Categories
Music

The cardboard DRUMKIT lets you carry the beat on your back

editors-choiceIt’s a universally agreed upon fact: Drums are awesome. What’s not is how cumbersome, expensive, and loud they are, not to mention hard to assemble and almost impossible to carry around. This doesn’t stop professional drummers from engaging in their craft but can serve as a huge barrier to entry for fresher drumming devotees.

OBILAB music’s DRUMKIT solves these five problems with a painstakingly researched, designed, and produced cardboard drum kit. It comes packaged in a five-pound box that can be worn as a backpack for easy transportation so that intrepid drummers can do their thing wherever they may be. When set-up, the DRUMKIT features fiberglass panels on each of the major drums not only for increased rigidity but also to help newbies drum correctly. 

Continue reading “The cardboard DRUMKIT lets you carry the beat on your back”
Categories
Music Wearables

The Basslet jams out on the wrist to make you feel the beat

Music is meant to be felt. At least, that’s what the team over at Lofelt believes. Ask pretty much anyone, and they’d most likely agree with them. There’s just no arguing the massive difference between music heard and felt through a powerful sound system versus the dinky white headphones most everyone has.

patent-claimedLofelt’s Basslet brings the bass out from the ritzy city clubs and dank basement dance parties to wherever someone goes. It just does so in a pretty petite, sleek package that immediately casts doubt as to how truly effective it is. But while it looks like any other smartwatch, you won’t find any heart rate monitors or pedometers in its slim frame: Basslet was designed with nothing but bass in mind. Inside is Lofelt’s proprietary Losound haptic engine that recreate bass frequencies as low as 10 Hz.

Continue reading “The Basslet jams out on the wrist to make you feel the beat”
Categories
Connected Objects Music

Point Motion motion-based MIDI controller gives your beats pyramid power

As technology advances, new and exciting ways to interact with the programs available continue to emerge. Music is no exception: at no other time in history has there been such a democratization of the art. Purists may deride the ease and apparent lack of skill needed to make music today, but the fact remains that anyone with a creative soul can express themselves without having to jump through hoops first.

A product further lowering and innovating the bar is the Point Motion, a camera-equipped device that tracks movements and gestures to allow for music control and creation. The open platform works with the built-in cameras in computers to recognize gestures and use those gestures to control or trigger over 1500 instrument and vocal effect. These gestures can be chosen from what’s pre-loaded or customized by a user, each of which can be used to trigger things like guitar pedals, piano chords, or DJ scratches.

Two applications are also available, too. PuppetMaster lets users create music freely and control acoustic effects, and Point Wellness integrates music into health and wellness practices. Any music created with Point Motion can be transferred via MIDI or OSC to major digital audio workstations like Logic or Ableton Live, and a companion iOS/Android app can offer remote control of Point Motion’s features. Point Motion is going for $175 and is expected to ship in August 2016 should its Indiegogo campaign raise $50,000 by July 2017.

Alternative forms of music interaction are becoming increasingly common, a promising trend for music aficionados everywhere who like to be experimental. Point Motion follows the trend and innovates with a Kinect-like interface, perfect for younger creatives, those who are health conscious and want to use it as an exercise aid, or for older people and their physical therapy needs. Music-wise, it’s similar to the Remidi T8 glove in that it’s a novel, but still practical, way to explore music creation — and more tools to do never hurt.

Categories
Fitness Music Wearables

Turn your Motion to Music and break a real sweat

The reasons why games like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Dance Dance Revolution were so popular was because of how they rewarded real-life movement and coordination in a satisfying way. Ultimately, it made for an incredibly addicting gameplay experience. Unfortunately, being talented in these games doesn’t mean anything in the real world, the most common criticism they receive. And while these games are incredibly fun, that criticism is kind of valid.

Judging by his product, it seems like Matteo Ercolano was once bitten and burned by his love for these type of rhythmic gaming experiences. Instead of moving on, though, he sought to combine that gameplay with a real benefit. Settling on exercise, he created Motion to Music. Its Bluetooth-equipped wrist/arm/ankle band works together with a mobile iOS/Android app to match body gestures to the on-screen prompts given. And like the aforementioned rhythm games, the better someone does, the higher their score and happier their fans; poor performances garner jeers and boos instead.

Continue reading “Turn your Motion to Music and break a real sweat”
Categories
Music Networking

TurnUp lets you turn up your with the flip of a switch

Wireless, multi-room speakers are becoming increasingly popular. But they don’t come cheap –- especially if customers want to install them on the wall instead of on a table or shelf.

patent-claimedTurnUp is a multi-room, wireless speaker that fits in a light switch or wall power outlet and can be used to control not only music, but a room’s lights. The speaker uses Bluetooth 4.0 and is easy to install. It can be controlled by voice from any computer, as well as from any smartphone or tablet.

Up to eight speakers can be connected. The device also answers phone calls. It works in conjunction with an Android and iOS app. TurnUp ships in December at future pricing of $129.99. But Kickstarter backers can get one for a pledge that starts at $89 for early birds. Its makers hope to raise $77,000 by June 10.

 

 

Categories
Music Networking

Nativ networked music system boasts high fidelity, large capacity

There are so many streaming music systems on the market that it’s hard to tell many of them apart outside of the industry-leading Sonos products.

Nativ, however, is a high-resolution music system with a distinctive design that adds video streaming to the mix. It’s made up of two separate devices with audiophile components: Nativ Vita, an 11.6-inch, touchscreen music player that provides a whopping 4 TB of music storage, access to a streaming service and whole home audio; and Nativ Wave, a digital-to-analog converter that connects Vita or any other digital device to an amplifier or AV receiver. Wave comes with a headphone amp for connection to a set of headphones (not included).

Vita resembles a tablet and can also be used without Wave to stream music directly to wireless speakers and headphones. It can also be attached to a TV via HDMI or wirelessly via Google Cast to view music videos. The built-in multi-directional microphone enables voice control to tell Vita what music to play, adjust the volume or skip to the next song.

Continue reading “Nativ networked music system boasts high fidelity, large capacity”