piano

Even though your smartphone can turn just about any song into a ringtone, downloadable ringtones aren't going away. This batch, collectively called The Magic Piano, is a group of piano-based ringtones you'll probably enjoy. The ringtones are all of decent quality, but the add-ons that come with the package ruin the appeal.

The app forces you to accept its terms and conditions before you can use any of the ringtones. This includes throwing ads at your phone and changing your default browser's settings to support more ads. If you accept those, the app's browsing menu proves … Read more

The iPad is a perfect device for piano training. It is compact, easy to mount near or at the piano, and contains countless apps for practicing and training with scales or chords. So does Piano Scales & Jam Free provide enough features and an intuitive enough design to be useful for someone learning the piano, or is it yet another simple scale trainer like so many others in the App Store? It falls somewhere in between.

Piano Scales & Jam Free is simple at first glance. When you open the app you can choose to either practice scales as outlined … Read more

The Seaboard Grand by London-based company Roli is an intriguing electronic musical instrument that looks almost organic. Modeled after a standard 88-key piano keyboard, the Seaboard lets keyboardists achieve various digital effects, such as pitch-bends, modulation, and timber changes, without the need for levers or foot pedals.

The main highlight of the Seaboard is its dark gray "keys" that are sensitive to finger pressure. All you see are a series of ridges of alternating sizes, much like the white and black keys on a regular keyboard. While the video below makes it look easy, we'd imagine that … Read more

Every piano player or student knows how frustrating it can be to need a reference and not have it. Any one scale, chord, or a reference chart such as a circle of fifths is immensely useful, both when practicing and when composing. That's why an app like Piano Companion LITE is such a welcome surprise. Offering a comprehensive directory of chords and scales, along with a reverse lookup tool, it is easier and faster than ever to find the perfect note. While installation is relatively painless and the interface is bare-bones (12 large icons in a grid), the layout … Read more

We'll cut right to the chase: Cat Piano Free, as its name implies, lets you press piano keys on your iPhone that each have a different kitten meow. We're not really sure what the point of the app is, other than to freak out your cat if you have one.

Cat Piano Free starts off with a pop-up ad for other games, but tapping the X in the right-hand corner gets rid of it. Beyond that, it's just a section of piano keys. We have to admit that the cat sounds are pretty realistic; we pressed a … Read more

In 2009 I wrote about a new kind of piano, Yamaha's $20,000 AvantGrand. It's a hybrid (digital/acoustic) piano. Yamaha now offers a full line of hybrids, with prices starting at $5,499 for the recently released upright NU1 piano.

Hybrids feature the same mechanical piano "action" and natural wood keys used in Yamaha's acoustic pianos, but the sound is generated from digital samples. The NU1 is no toy, it weighs 240 pounds and has a full standard piano keyboard. The NU1's sound is derived from samples taken from Yamaha's CFX concert … Read more

A wireless musical glove developed at Georgia Tech not only teaches users to play songs on the piano, but may also improve the sensation and mobility of the hands of people who have suffered spinal cord injuries, researchers report.

The Mobile Music Touch (MMT) device, which works alongside a computer and a keyboard, improved rehabilitation even in patients who had sustained the injury more than a year earlier -- a point at which improvements tend to be minimal at best.… Read more

For the most part, keyboards just aren't very exciting. They sit there and go clickety-clack. What if you want a keyboard that goes squish-squash or splish-splash? Then you turn to the MaKey MaKey Invention Kit.

MaKey MaKey is a kit that turns just about any object into a touchpad. It consists of a circuit board and a set of alligator clips.

Clip those clips onto fruit, people, or pieces of bread. Even pencil markings can work. Open up a Web site or a program, plug the board into your computer's USB port, and you're good to go.… Read more

ButtonBeats Virtual Piano Black is a cool Flash app that simulates a piano keyboard on your desktop. You can play it with your mouse or with optional keyboard controls. By tapping out notes in a numbered sequence, even total beginners can play simple tunes like "Happy Birthday" and "Jingle Bells" to more complex melodies such as those by Mozart, Bach, and the Beatles.

Virtual Piano's interface does indeed look like a real piano keyboard, albeit a reduced one, with attractive highlights on the black keys, which are functional. That was a good sign since we'… Read more