The secret: it uses x-rays. Music to roast your ass and shatter your DNA.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/13/16868970/enhancia-midi-ring-keyboard-music-effects-ces-2018

Wasn’t something like this made before? Strange to see a music gadget shown at CES, one that only musicians would probably be interested in. Not exactly “general consumer electronics”. Hope they also go to NAMM.

(Also wish The Verge would hire an actual editor to edit the awful posts their “correspondents” keep posting….)

A student project becomes an actual product for sale.
(As usual in this day and age, it’s USB only and works only with a computer.)

Bonus: Gizmodo’s coverage of it, with the usual smug, dismissive comments following.

You won’t find more simpler obscure gadgets than the ones sold by Sonodrome. They even have PC software to go with their little bits of hardware. PC boards come in four colors. (And MAKE magazine’s market is selling the amplifier kit, along with the Atari Punk Console.) Enclosures are up to the builder. YouTube videos here.

—if not the decade.

Lambdoma Keyboard

Is it still being made? I can’t tell, the order form was on an AOL homepage, which has since been pulled down.

It’s an analogue drone-box with a much vaster range of sound effects than single-box devices can usually do. Simple yet complex.

(It’s strange that this Italian company has no contact info on their site except email.)

(via Matrix)

There’s been a big stink about the British-made Eigenharp controller, with mention from Engadget, Synthtopia, the BBC, and bloggers like CDM and Matrix. It requires a Mac, however. Hope they sell some and are encouraged to port the software to Windows. Given its complexity, ~$7000 isn’t a terribly high price.

(Just remember that people nowadays routinely pay $50,000 or more for a grand piano.)

Almost forgotten in all this hype was a different controller, the Madrona Soundplane. Looks as though it’s not finished yet.

The Cool Chromaticover. You can’t really tell from these terrible product pages, but this is a standalone MIDI controller with velocity and several slightly different key arrangements available, that just happens to be made to fit over the keyboard on a Yamaha combo instrument. Unlike the Yamaha (or most other MIDI controllers) the Chromaticover appears to be really well-made, mostly metal with metal buttons.
The only dealer selling it (piens.be) is also the owner of the company making it (cool.be). Also strange is that very few people in the accordion world, or elsewhere, even know this product exists. I’ve found very few Google mentions of it.

(This was discovered by the diykeyboard group, who now have their own wiki.)