The Hutchins Consort performed at the NAMM Breakfast Session on Sunday. The Consort comprises eight scaled violins. Each instrument is designed so that it produces the same harmonics in its range.
The size of each violin in the Consort runs the gamut. The smallest one is half the size of a standard violin, while the largest is a 7-foot-tall beast.
I've been working with the Hutchins Consort for a number of years and have been hoping that they'd get an opportunity to play at NAMM.
I don't think that these creepy cartoon characters are really going to encourage kids to play. I'm thinking that the Penguin metronome would make a perfect companion piece to the turtle piano.
This is the second time that Roland has surprised me with an Oddities-worthy product.
In 2005 it was the V-Accordion and this year it's the Roland C-30 Digital Harpsichord.
Thanks go out to Peter Kirn for providing a shot of the C-30 since mine was blurry.
Nechville delivered a one-two Oddities punch at NAMM this year with the Meteor electric banjo and the small-scale Banjovie.
The Banjovie would make a good starter 5-string, because as a small-scale instrument, you don't have to worry about catching your thumb on that pesky fifth tuning peg halfway down the neck.
For no-frills travel instruments, there are three things this company offers on its instruments that many don’t: a full-scale size, decent tone, and a reasonable price.
Codel were showing a guitar, 4-string and 5-string basses, and a fretless bass. I thought that the bass played pretty well.
The Eleuke is billed as a silent ukulele. Given that it's a solid-body uke with big holes cut in it, I would guess that it's not too loud until you plug it in.
You can buy one of these with headphones for that damn neighbor kid who keeps you up with his late night acoustic uke jams.
These guys take the player piano idea a step further by professionally recording all the backing tracks and providing the data for your piano to play along with it.
They support multiple digital player piano formats.
This is similar to Web Only Piano except that they add a 19" screen and a Mac Mini to your piano.
You can play videos that contain the backing track and a video of the player's hands on the keys.
If the display on the piano looks familiar, that's because it's Apple's FrontRow interface.
