New Musical Instruments Battle for $10K in Prizes
By Eliot Van Buskirk
03.20.09
It was like a low-stakes X Prize for music as musicians, inventors and hobbyists competed against each other in the first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech for cash prizes of $10,000.
More than 60 people applied, and 25 were chosen to show off a stunning variety of musical instruments of their own devising.
The judges — Harmonix co-founder Eran Egozy, Georgia Tech professor Parag Chordia and Wired.com's Eliot Van Buskirk — had to evaluate a diverse field of worthy competitors. Meet the contestants and judge the instruments for yourself.
Photo: Ben Keyserling
My favorite:
Berkeley University professor, electronic music veteran and third-place winner David Wessel performs on the Slabs.
Like many of the instruments at the Guthman Competition, Slabs is an interface for the Max/MSP audio program. Interlink VersaPad touch pads allow for a level of expression not found on most electronic instruments; each pad tracks X and Y coordinates and fingertip pressure levels.
A homegrown ethernet audio driver transmits this torrent of data to a Linux PowerPC Mac, which assembles it directly into sound. Wessel says the high-bandwidth approach is "the future" when it comes to ultra-expressive electronic instruments because it allows so much performance data to be captured.
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Good choice putting $4,000 rims on your 1990 Honda Civic. That's like Betty White going out and getting her tits done.
