Friday, March 6, 2015

The New Music Instrument That Could Completely Change Music?

Stumbled on this from a FB post and was very intrigued on the potential for this new Instrument called the Artiphon.  It's really nearly every instrument we have been playing for thousands of years all wrapped up into one compact package.
It can be any kind of stringed, keyboard or percussion instrument.  A Violin, Chello, Bass Guitar, Slide Guitar, Uke, banjo and plays with the same fret board and strumming actions we all use.  The keyboard of course opens up all of sounds from synth worlds, and allows for brass/woodwinds along with all the piano and organ sounds.

It links with phones and tablets to control the instrument set ups and with apps like Garage Band so you can lay down songs and mix sounds with ease.   It's also very compact and has it's own speaker built in.  Of course you can hook it up to a big Marshall Stack and wake up any neighbors.

Right now it's a Kickstarter campaign and it's pretty hot with investors.  Currently with a $349 contribution to their Kickstarter campaign you can get one and it looks like they will be priced under $400 when they hit retail - probably later this year.

Have to believe that within a year we will see artists sporting the Artiphon on stage and in the studios.  Could this be the end of the Tour Bus and new artists hauling a U-Haul behind their van around the country?  Now they could just fly Southwest and take all their instruments as a carry on.

We also have to wonder what new sounds this will bring to music of all types.  Think of all that musicians go through to work with their instruments.  Here it's all reduced to a single device.  More creative barriers will no doubt be broken.

You can see the kickstarter campaign and hear their demo here:


Here is a link to their Kickstarter campaign:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/artiphon/introducing-the-artiphon-instrument-1/description