Digging in the Crates is a cool-looking project to explore sampling. Hard to get a good grip on exactly what’s going on from the video, but the projected interface on top of the vinyl record is an awesome idea.

(via Yamaha Research)

Scratching with cassette tapes. I’ve seen things like this before, but never with such interestingly modified decks/tapes. Linear scratching using the whole cassette and a hacked-in toggle button is pretty neat. See another vid at the via link, or learn more at Alexis “Tapetronic” Malbert’s site.

(via today and tomorrow)

The Jankó, or “uniform,” keyboard is a weird-looking alternative layout for keyed instruments. It supposedly makes playing different scales easier by bringing notes closer together. Each row is made up of a series of whole steps, and adjacent rows are offset by a half step each. Like this:

This is the layout the Chromatone keyboard is based on, and for other examples, check out the via link below.

(via Squeezehead)

This digital guitar runs on Linux and has a touch screen interface. How cool is that? What is it exactly? The Misa Digital Guitar is a pressure-sensitive touchscreen MIDI controller that’s been built into a guitar body.

Very interesting. Guitar Hero made real? I like that the neck fights the “obvious” idea that a guitar with buttons can’t be anything like an actual guitar, when really what people who say that mean is “a guitar with only five buttons can’t be like an actual guitar.”

I’m curious how the mapping works from the touch screen to MIDI.

(via technabob)

This has interesting ramifications for my developing thesis ideas: How would you make a “piano” from scratch, if you could draw it? What decisions are effectively already made by the software that supports this?

(via a fantastic round-up over at CDM)

Now this one is an even better skin resistance-based sound maker.

(via ted, commenteer par excellence)

Ask and you shall receive, sort of. It doesn’t look like the footage (hurr) and sound are actually linked here, but the idea of using the human body’s conductive powers for radio reception is pretty neat!

(via Craft)

Another novel interface relying on variable resistance. What I want now (if you novel interface developers are listening) is a variable resistance-based instrument that doesn’t sound just like the others.

(via Random Magazine)