Collaborate Disseminate
If you’ve always wanted a grand piano in your living room but thought you simply wouldn’t have the room, think again. Lego Ideas has just launched the 21323 Grand Piano set, an 8.5-inch high show piece that works with a smartphone app to play tunes.Con… Continue reading Lego launches fan-designed, playable Grand Piano set
Like a lot of people, [Jacques] doesn’t think a big hunk of plastic light enough to carry under your arm is a piano, even if it does have 88 keys. A piano is supposed to be a hefty piece of furniture that you have to buy people pizza to help …read more
Learning to play the piano is tough, and can be a bit boring. Many people hire a tutor, but technology can help maintain your interest and keep you motivated too. MeloQuest has launched a mobile adventure game called Keys & Kingdoms that’s designed to … Continue reading MeloQuest turns learning to play piano into a gaming adventure
A keen-eyed commenter pointed us to a homemade bottle organ that plays like a piano. The complexity gets turned up with foot-powered bellows and custom keys, but the magic of [Mike] and [Simon Haisell]’s garage-built instrument is not lost in the slightest. We also have the video below the break …read more
Grand pianos are huge and heavy, and not everyone has the space in the living room to host one. Upright pianos can help, but the sound just isn’t the same. But what if you can have a grand piano that has about the same footprint as an upright… Continue reading Standing Grand gives concert sound while saving space
The Seaboard Grand offered a pretty impressive take on expressive keyboard playing when it was revealed back in 2013. Instead of separate black and white keys, the Grand’s whole spongy surface was available as the playing area. Now Roli has c… Continue reading Roli swaps soft keys for solid with Lumi learning platform
If you’ve been kind enough to accompany me on these regular hardware explorations, you’ve likely recognized a trend with regards to the gadgets that go under the knife. Generally speaking, the devices I take apart for your viewing pleasure come to us from the clearance rack of a big box …read more
Continue reading Repairdown: Disklavier DKC500RW Control Unit
In the history of weird musical instrument interfaces, isomorphic keyboards are a favorite. These keyboards look like a grid of buttons, but when you play them, the relative shapes of chords are always the same. The benefit? Just say no to five hundred years of clavier tradition. It looks cool, …read more
[Michael Sobolak] has a penchant for pianos, concern for capacitive touch, and special sentiment for solid state. This alliterate recipe results in a DIY PCB piano that leaves out the levers and is barren of buttons unless you count the stock RESET button on the Teensy. A real stickler might …read more
We’re partial to musical instrument hacks around here, mainly because we find instruments to be fascinating machines. Few are more complex than the piano, and, as it turns out, few are quite so hackable. Still, we have to admit that this ragtime piano hack took us by surprise.
We always …read more
Continue reading Simple Hack Completely Changes The Sound Of This Piano