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Music Smartwatches/Bands

AirJamz turns air guitar wizards into rockers with a flick of the wrist

editors-choiceTom Cruise may have brought the risky business of air guitar playing in tightey-whiteys into the limelight back in the early ’80s. But today, the usually frivolous activity has a governing body and an annual championship in the U.S.

Now, the one activity that didn’t need a device to go with it finally has one: the AirJamz wearable. The strap works by combining a gyroscope to help translate pantomime shredding from movement to sound using its companion app. Two modes offer differing experiences: Music mode is a four player sandbox that allows the entire family to join in on the fun, while Guitar mode offers a more robust range of motion and tighter controls for a somewhat (and that’s used loosely) more realistic strumming experience.

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Music

Guitar Now helps aspiring guitarists strum without getting fingers numb

The road to learning any musical instrument is littered with pain, heartache, frustration, and the nagging urge to quit. The last one is so great that most people do so, despite the myriad of benefits that come from playing a musical instrument.

While the guitar is one of the more accessible instruments, it also makes it the one most give up trying to learn. Guitar Now is designed to make it a lot easier to grasp the foundations of the easy-to-learn but hard-to-master instrument. It’s comprised of three parts: a collar that wraps around the guitar’s neck, a top plate that fastens to its front side, and a range of sliding inserts. Each of these inserts is key to the Guitar Now concept because each employs a design that guides a new learner’s fingers directly to the strings that need to be played, at once teaching finger, form, and chord placement.

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Connected Objects Music

Learn real guitar by playing air guitar using Kurv digital instruments

Learning a musical instrument is rarely an easy road. That difficulty forces many to give up prematurely, robbing them of the opportunity of every really learning a skill that can provide much future enjoyment. As analterantive, the company behind Kurv hopes that people starting of with its stringless digital instrument versus a real one will immediately enjoy making music and stick around long enough to start really playing.

It’s designed in two pieces. The Kurv itself fits around the hand like a glove and offers eight comfortable points that each finger can easily touch. Eight points for the eight notes in an octave, eight notes in a scale and eight chords in a key make it so that there’s variety when the user strums with the second part of the instrument, the pick. Kurv responds to how hard the pick is being strummed. But it also responds to gestures, like shaking and flicking, that shift octaves or creates a vibratto effects in either electric, acoustic or bass guitar modes. Together with the iOS app’s intelligent tutorials on hit songs that provide instant feedback, Kurv is a guitar and tutor all in one.