Monday, April 07, 2008
beamz Music Performance System
YouTube via SharperImageProducts. Remember beamz. More Cowbell.
"The beamz™ unleashes the musical creativity that's harbored in every soul.
* Extraordinary invention fuses the interaction of your hands with laser beams to create the sounds of hundreds of different instruments.
* Breaking the laser beams with your hands automatically generates pre-authored pulses, streams, riffs or loops of musical notes or sounds from a variety of instruments — all kinds of strings, keyboards, winds, percussion. Sophisticated high-fidelity sounds seem to pour off your fingertips like magic!
* Choose a complementary rhythm track from 30 original songs in 19 music genres, including jazz, bluegrass, classical, hip-hop, reggae, heavy metal and more.
* The beamz system has a "W" shape, with six laser beams spanning the two sections; connect via USB to your PC or laptop, then hook up some speakers and you're ready to perform great-sounding music.
* Includes software CDs and USB cable for connecting directly to USB port of your PC or laptop.
http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/cat..."
7 comments:
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Quick. Someone download the video and overdub some other audio over it.
ReplyDeleteMy vote is for general MIDI files behind various fart noises triggered every time a beam is broken, but I have an infantile sense of humor. Surely someone could come up with something better.
Or, maybe some hardcore serious atonal shit. 12-tone Arnold Schoenberg, György Ligeti, something really inappropriate and intense.
I had higher hopes for this, but I've read too many issues of Computer Music Journal and played with the Buchla Lighting.
ReplyDeleteIn the silly video, it's difficult to see when the users (HA!) are triggering what. If breaking a laser beam just triggers a fixed event, I'm far better off with a cheapo set of trigger pads than this, AND any DIY geek could build a "beamz" device.
I meant the Buchla Lightning.
ReplyDeletedogpaddle your way through crappy music? who in the hell are they marketing this to? it's like some prop from star trek deep space nine walked into reality. i'm scared.
ReplyDeleteI checked the beamz user's manual, and ...
ReplyDelete1) The beams are only triggers. There is some trigger/gate processing, and there are different kinds of events, but there is nothing positional or special about using the lasers versus other controllers. You can advance your way through a sequence one trigger at a time.
2) I speculate that each piece is organized as a construction kit, and all the bits are chosen to fit with each other in different ways. The user gets to trigger and rearrange things, but there is no auto-accompaniment, uploading of your own MIDI files, etc.
3) A closed system would protect the (appearance of) intellectual property.
4) I would be concerned about laser safety. You don't want mad-scientist kids or sozzled persons doing wacko things with the lasers for fun.
Well, it might make a nice cat toy. Dave and stretta, are you listening?
That video is so awesomely bad, it's rather entertaining. The 'jam session' has got to be the cheesiest damn thing ever. And did they actually put 'more cowbell'?? It's even double-stupid that there isn't actually cowbell...
ReplyDeleteI played with something very similar at Epcot Center, and thought it was the most amazing, futuristic, unbelievable thing in the universe. Of course, it was 1983, and I was nine. Also amazing: a pile of magnets that you can make a 'sculpture' out of.
A guy at Gizmodo had a pretty amusing exchange with the Beamz people:
http://tinyurl.com/58ccde
Love the guitar "solo!"
ReplyDeleteBe a wanker.