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Tag Archives: Music

OhGizmo! Review – Peavey AmpKit LiNK

By Chris Scott Barr on 09/17/10 • Leave a comment!

By Chris Scott Barr

My life is generally pretty hectic between class, work and all the things in between and I sometimes like to take the stress volume down a notch or two with my trusty Les Paul Custom. The problem is it’s generally 3am or later by the time I have a chance to sit down and do such a thing, so cranking up a Marshall full-stack to 11 is not an option. That’s why when Peavey’s AmpKit LiNK, a portable electric guitar interface for the iPhone, came across our desks a few weeks ago I was immediately interested (and by interested I mean I went running around the office with a replica Highlander sword shouting “There can be only one… reviewer.”).

The AmpKit experience begins with the free AmpKit app (or it’s feature packed paid version AmpKit+) from the iTunes App Store. The application itself is very sleek, the primary interface is a virtual view of the amp head/cabinet, microphone and effects that you currently have set, giving you a good overview of all your settings. The interface also provides a number of preset configurations, a metronome and tuner, and an interface for recording clips and transferring them wirelessly to your PC or Mac.

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OhGizmo! Review – Carmen By Livio

By Chris Scott Barr on 09/09/10 • 1 Comment

By Chris Scott Barr

If you’re a tech-savvy consumer, it’s not hard to find ways to get your favorite music into your car without relying on FM radio stations. MP3 players are generally the most popular, but you’ve also got satellite radio, HD radio and other options as well. However, if you’re terrified of technology and have no desire to install new hardware into your vehicle, your selections are limited. That’s where the Carmen by Livio comes in.

The Carmen is designed to be a very simple way to get the music you want into your car, without all of the hassle. The idea is simple, you plug in the device to your computer, select a music genre and start capturing music from one of over 42,000 stations streaming online. Once you’ve captured your fill of audio, you take the device to your car and plug it in. Tune your radio to the proper frequency, and your music plays. The question is whether or not it lives up to those expectations.

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Peavey Releases AmpKit Apps For Your iPhone

By Chris Scott Barr on 08/25/10 • 1 Comment

By Chris Scott Barr

If you’ve ever played guitar in a band (or know someone who has) then you’ll understand that sometimes you need more than just your trusty six-string. Any number of mixer boards, effects pedals and amps are needed to get that exact sound you’re looking to achieve. Carrying around these things can be a hassle, not to mention buying them can be costly. Well Peavey Electronics has teamed up with Agile Partners to create an iPhone app that will bring all of those devices into one tiny gadget.

The AmpKit app features the Peavey ValveKing amp, two ValveKing cabinets (4×12 and 1×12), a pair of pedals, a pair of mics  and a built-in Noise & Feedback filter.  That will give you a free taste of what the app has to offer. If you upgrade to the $20 AmpKit+ they’ll throw in three more amps, four more cabinets and 8 extra pedals. You can even purchase additional amps, mics and pedals from within either of the apps to get the exact gear you’re looking for. Both apps also include the ability to record what you’re playing for later use.

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Mattel’s Loopz – Simon For The 21st Century

By Andrew Liszewski on 06/10/10 • 1 Comment

Mattel Loopz (Image courtesy Entertainment Earth)
By Andrew Liszewski

Rhythm and pattern games seem to still be all the rage, but before there was Guitar Hero and Rock Band, way back in the early 80′s there was Simon. And as far as I can tell, Mattel’s Loopz seems to be an attempt to rekindle the popularity of Simon by making it appeal to today’s kids who are used to all kinds of high-techery.

Simon’s colored light-up pads have been replaced by half-circles with motion sensors requiring you to simply stick your hand inside for one of them to be triggered, but it looks like it still uses the same basic gameplay mechanics, making you remember and recreate patterns. This modern version is also able to keep track of your performance and remember your best times and scores, and even seems a bit more musically capable when compared to Simon’s low-tech electronic beeps. It should be available sometime this month, and you can pre-order it from Entertainment Earth, if you’re so inclined, for $37.99.

(Video moved to after the jump.)

[ Entertainment Earth - Mattel Loopz ] VIA [ I4U News ]

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‘Color A Sound’ Art Installation Turns An Overhead Projector Into A Musicbox

By Andrew Liszewski on 05/17/10 • Leave a comment!

Color A Sound (Image courtesy Synthgear)
By Andrew Liszewski

Built and programmed by Blair Neal as an art installation, ‘Color A Sound’ uses an overhead projector and a long roll of transparency to create a sort of manual jukebox that requires a user to essentially doodle the sheet music. A set of colored markers are used to make lines, dots and even complex illustrations, and a camera pointed at the projected results converts the seemingly random drawings into music, playing back corresponding samples from an actual musicbox, or really any instrument including a Roland TR-808 drum machine. The manual scrolling works in both directions and at almost any speed, and until you clean the transparency, any and all musical creations are stored indefinitely.

[ Synthgear - Overhead projector as musical instrument ] VIA [ PSFK ]

GDC: Power Gig Music Game Features Real Guitar Controller

By Evan Ackerman on 03/11/10 • 5 Comments

guitar

By Evan Ackerman

Guitar Hero and Rock Band are fun games, but after you master them, you’re left with little more than a staggeringly useless talent for pushing little plastic buttons. Game developer Seven45 Studios is aiming to change all that by partnering up with instrument manufacturer First Act to create a music game for the Xbox 360 and PS3 that uses a real, playable six string guitar as a controller. Plug it into a console, and it’s a control. Plug it into an amp, and it’s a guitar.

The game is called Power Gig: Rise of the SixString. I got a brief demo at GDC yesterday, and while they wouldn’t discuss the game itself in a ton of detail, we did get a good look at the hardware. The big draw, of course, is that it’s a real guitar that you get to play with. The only difference between the controller and a normal guitar are the additional buttons on the body (to duplicate the full functionality of a game controller) and a special string dampener that pops up to keep the strings from vibrating too much when you’re playing the game, since it would confuse the sensors. Otherwise, all of the clever stuff is internal, and the guitar can sense both string movement and finger position.

Seven45 stresses that this is not an education game: it’s not designed to teach you how to play the guitar. That said, as you get comfortable with the game, you do slowly learn the fundamentals of playing the instrument, and as you crank up the difficulty, the game will demand more real world skill from you. And it’s not just about playing the guitar, either: the game is somehow adventure based, and part of the storyline includes teaching you how to tune yourself and change your own guitar strings (spare strings will be included).

There are a lot of things still to be finalized, including song content, but as far as pricing and availability goes, look for Power Gig sometime this fall at a price that will be “competitive with other game band packages.” If the gameplay stands up to similar titles as well, the choice is going to be an easy one: why get a game that includes a fake guitar and teaches you to push plastic buttons, when you could get a game that includes a real guitar and teaches you how to play it, instead.

[ Power Gig ]

SMASH – The Guitar Meant To Be Destroyed

By Chris Scott Barr on 02/26/10 • 2 Comments

smash_guitar-620x301

By Chris Scott Barr

Have you ever been to a concert where one of the guitarists gets really into a song, and decides to finish it off by smashing the crap out of a perfectly good instrument? It adds a lot to the raw energy on stage, but at the same time it’s a shame to see a guitar go to waste like that. Apparently now artists can buy guitars that were designed to be destroyed mid-performance.

SMASH guitars are cheap, recyclable guitars that cater to the rock stars that need a little something extra during their show. The company states that every piece of the guitar is recyclable, and they’ll even take your old smashed pieces and construct a new instrument which will be donated to charity. Currently they’re on sale in Japan for around $60.

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TC Electronic Unveils World’s First Polyphonic Guitar Tuner

By Chris Scott Barr on 01/15/10 • 6 Comments

By Chris Scott Barr

If you’ve ever tuned a guitar, you’re probably familiar with all of the similar tuners out on the market. Regardless of how different they appear, they still work on the same principal. Strum one string, it tells you if it’s out of tune, you adjust and repeat. It’s not an overly complicated process, but wouldn’t it be great if you could just strum all six strings and have the tuner tell you which was out of tune? With the new TC Electronics PolyTune, you can do just that.

The PolyTune is the first polyphonic tuner, which means it can detect the tuning of each individual string when all are played together. Another nice feature is that it works just like an effects pedal. Just tap it with your foot when you’re ready to tune, and it’ll cut off the signal to your amp so you can do your thing. When you’re done, tap it again and you’re ready to rock. You can also choose from a variety of tunings for your guitar. No word on pricing or availability.

[ TC Electronic ] VIA [ Dvice ]

[CES 2010] Abbee Radio Records Commercial-Free Music To An Included MP3 Player

By Chris Scott Barr on 01/11/10 • 2 Comments

Abbee

By Chris Scott Barr

These days buying music and putting it on your MP3 player of choice is a pretty simple task. Unfortunately for some of the older generation, even that can seem like a daunting task. Instead they’d perhaps just prefer to listen to the radio. Well if you’re looking to bring them into the age of MP3 players without scaring them too much, here is an interesting device that I saw while roaming the floor of CES.

Myine has created a rather curious radio called the Abbee, which is essentially used to record music. At its very basics, it  is your average FM radio that your parents and grandparents have used for years. The interesting thing is the small MP3 player docked on top of the unit. When you turn on the radio and hit the record button, that MP3 player will begin recording the music played (while automatically editing out the commercials and DJ talk).

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