New instrument scales musical heights • Hacker News Board

Re: New instrument scales musical heights

#41

Post by jerf » Sun, Oct 11, 2009, 2:47 AM UTC

zandorg wrote: post #15

Someone call Rob Hubbard! Sounds like a Commodore 64 tune. But seriously, it's really cool, and I hope it sells well.

"Sounds like a Commodore 64 tune."

It's hard to know whether it really sounds like that or not. The media was fairly heavily compressed to the point where the human voices were obviously heavily distorted, let alone the output of the instrument itself. An actual-factual violin would hardly have fared better.

If anyone knows where to get much higher fidelity recordings I'd be interested, though I'd expect it "just" sounds like a high-end synthesizer.

Re: New instrument scales musical heights

#42

Post by gfodor » Sun, Oct 11, 2009, 3:02 AM UTC

acangiano wrote: post #32

tfh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you mean with baader meinhof count += 1 ?

Have you ever said "That's odd, I just learned about this obscure fact/company/place/concept the other day and now it popped up again". That's the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. So I increased the counter of my Baader-Meinhof occurrences. By the way, you'll hear about this again in a few days. :)

That's odd, I just learned about the Baader-Meinhof pehnomenon the other day, and here it is coming up again. Bizarre.

Re: New instrument scales musical heights

#43

Post by Tichy » Sun, Oct 11, 2009, 9:55 AM UTC

acangiano wrote: post #32

tfh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you mean with baader meinhof count += 1 ?

Have you ever said "That's odd, I just learned about this obscure fact/company/place/concept the other day and now it popped up again". That's the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. So I increased the counter of my Baader-Meinhof occurrences. By the way, you'll hear about this again in a few days. :)

Where does the name come from? Baader-Meinhof is usually associated with terrorism in Germany...

Re: New instrument scales musical heights

#44

Post by bodhi » Sun, Oct 11, 2009, 11:10 AM UTC

DougWebb wrote: post #12

tobych wrote: post #5

I'd be hugely embarrassed to be seen playing one of those things. It's like some kids' movie-tied toy gone huge and gone wrong. Especially with all those flashing lights wizzing up and down the fretboard. Ridiculous.

My first thought was that they looked like the cantina band from Star Wars.

Someone else was thinking along the same lines:

http://tweetphoto.com/xgt7ahyp

Re: New instrument scales musical heights

#45

Post by acangiano » Sun, Oct 11, 2009, 1:55 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #43

acangiano wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever said "That's odd, I just learned about this obscure fact/company/place/concept the other day and now it popped up again". That's the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. So I increased the counter of my Baader-Meinhof occurrences. By the way, you'll hear about this again in a few days. :)

Where does the name come from? Baader-Meinhof is usually associated with terrorism in Germany...

It's uncertain, but it's likely that whoever came up with the name, had one such episode while learning about the terrorist group.

Re: New instrument scales musical heights

#46

Post by Hexstream » Sun, Oct 11, 2009, 2:20 PM UTC

acangiano wrote: post #32

tfh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you mean with baader meinhof count += 1 ?

Have you ever said "That's odd, I just learned about this obscure fact/company/place/concept the other day and now it popped up again". That's the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. So I increased the counter of my Baader-Meinhof occurrences. By the way, you'll hear about this again in a few days. :)

Oh please. It only looks odd because you can't notice the millions of times it didn't happen.

It's in the same class as confirmation bias, survivor bias, etc.

Re: New instrument scales musical heights

#47

Post by zck » Sun, Oct 11, 2009, 4:35 PM UTC

Because of the way it's held, and because the keys are tapped, it reminds me of the Chapman Stick: http://stick.com/ , which, beyond being an instrument in its own right, was used as the baliset in Dune.

Re: New instrument scales musical heights

#48

Post by acangiano » Sun, Oct 11, 2009, 10:34 PM UTC

Hexstream wrote: post #46

acangiano wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever said "That's odd, I just learned about this obscure fact/company/place/concept the other day and now it popped up again". That's the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. So I increased the counter of my Baader-Meinhof occurrences. By the way, you'll hear about this again in a few days. :)

Oh please. It only looks odd because you can't notice the millions of times it didn't happen. It's in the same class as confirmation bias, survivor bias, etc.

Of course it only looks odd. There is no magic to it.

Re: New instrument scales musical heights

#49

Post by zandorg » Sun, Oct 11, 2009, 11:26 PM UTC

elblanco wrote: post #40

zhyder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.eigenlabs.com/pico/ is their smaller and less intimidating version for £349.

I'd feel like I was missing out on something. My take is that it's simply a hair over engineered for the level of expressiveness most musicians will be able to play with. Build the same thing at a lower fidelity, sell it at 1/4 the price and maybe it'll take off. Right now, it's the price of really high end traditional instruments. And the next step down is a 10 penny whistle.

In the mass production industry, the first users traditionally pay off R&D at a high price, and then you reduce and sell to everyone else once costs are recovered.