Tag: music

Music: why not a finger-sensing keyboard?

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Electronic keyboards like the Yamaha Motif or Korg M50 often have a “Split” feature, allowing different patches to be assigned to different sections. For example, the bottom 18 or 20 keys can be assigned to a bass patch, leaving the rest of the keys assigned to an electric piano sound. These splits allow not just the patch to change, but the pitches as well. For example the bottom keys can sound an octave lower than they ordinarily would.

Small keyboards often have buttons that shift the octave to the left or right on the fly, effectively increasing the number of keys without the weight.

There is another split type that is possible nowadays but apparently no manufacturer has done it yet. What if the patch or pitch range were assigned to each key in real time by which finger or which hand touched the key?

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Clarke’s law # 3 in action – Shazam, an amazing iPhone app!

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Shazam
Shazam Listening to a tune

I just got my mind blown by “Shazam”, a new FREE application for the iPhone. Shazam uses the iPhones microphone to listen to songs or music happening anywhere in earshot. It will then tell you what song you are listening to.

Just click “Tag it” and point the mic end of the phone in the general direction of the sound. It twirls for a while, then reports back, usually extremely accurately what song you were listening to.

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Shazam sending song info to the web for processing.

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Review of the latest iPhone Update (1.1.3)

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A few days ago, Apple sent down version 1.1.3 of the IPhone software. This update is a huge leap in much-needed functionality.

Home Page
The home page interface now makes sense! It always looked as if it were customizable, and practically begged you to add items to it, but it wasn’t possible. Now it is.

Adding a new application is as simple as browsing to the application on iPhone Safari, clicking the “+” symbol and selecting “add to home page.” The various web-based iphone applications available all over the internet are now as easy to access from the iphone home page as the native apps.

And all the icons on the home page can be moved around, reorganized, and shifted to other pages (up to 7 of them.) Even the dock icons (Phone, Mail, Safari, iPod) can be moved.

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