drum

Drum Kit Lite is the free version of Drum Kit, a touch-screen simulator of a six-piece drum kit using real 16-bit sound samples.

The app's interface is a miniature, photo-realistic drum kit, complete with cymbals and pedals, that you just tap to use. The sound has pretty impressive fidelity (best with headphones), and settings let you adjust your kit volume and system volume separately--which helps, for example, if you want to play along with songs from your iPod. Experienced drummers will appreciate nice touches like blending for repeated cymbal taps, while nondrummers can have fun experimenting and trying to … Read more

Along with Beeker and Fozzie Bear, Animal ranks among my favorite Muppets characters. So it's great not only to see him starring in his own iPhone game, but to report that the game's a blast.

At first blush, The Muppets Animal Drummer from Disney looks like something out of Rock Band: you've got five drums that light up and change colors (and occasionally catch fire); combo bonuses and power-ups that appear as you progress; and Animal himself (itself?) banging away center-stage.

However, the gameplay's a bit different: Animal bangs out a series of beats using different … Read more

For a friend's birthday the other night, we all went down to his rehearsal space (he's in a band) and played music, often switching instruments to see what we could come up with. Not everyone there was a musician, but with drums, guitars, basses, a keyboard, percussion instruments, and microphones, everyone found a way to get in on the jam. To add to the fun later in the night, my friend also had a cord to connect an iPod or iPhone to the PA system which meant I could try out some of my music apps. Among the … Read more

Few things are as universally awesome as a cheap keyboard or drum machine. As a child of the '80s, I can vividly remember the first time I got my hands on a toy Casio keyboard and spent the afternoon sampling obscenities into the built-in microphone and playing through all the different preset sounds (I can still hear the Casio demo song in my head).

The Stylophone Beatbox ($25) is a retro music toy of a slightly different breed than my Casio, fusing together the design of a 1967 Stylophone pocket synthesizer with the sampled percussion layout of a modern day Akai MPC or Roland HandSonic.

However you choose to categorize it, the Stylophone Beatbox is exactly the sort of weird, noisy, cheap piece of tech I go nuts for. It's surprisingly sophisticated, too, allowing you to record loops of sounds, route in an MP3 player, and even adjust pitch and tempo. Check out some clever demo videos after the break.… Read more

If you're trying to learn how to play an instrument, you might be thinking about hiring a local tutor. After all, it's the way it has always been done. But you might be surprised to learn that the Web is a great place to learn how to play that instrument.

All Guitar Chords It's a simple app, but All Guitar Chords provides you with a full listing of all the guitar chords you might want to learn. Simply pick the chord you want, click the "Get" button, and it will display where to put your fingers. It's not the best tutorial app in this roundup, but it works better than you might expect. It's a simple and efficient tutor.

Chordbook Chordbook is the place to go if you want to learn how to play guitar. The Flash-based site displays guitar strings. You can then choose which chord you want to play. Upon doing so, it automatically places circles on the guitar strings to help you learn proper placement of your fingers. When you're ready to learn a chord, you can click the "strum" button and it will play a chord to help you determine what your guitar should sound like when you play. If you're beginner, Chordbook is the place to be.… Read more

At last month's Logitech preview in New York, we got our hands on some serious musical instrument accessories coming to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 that are licensed by Activision to work with Guitar Hero games.

The Logitech Wireless Drum Controller has fully adjustable drum heads and cymbals. When we quickly demoed the kit we noticed the heads are also fitted with a unique padding--which we're told reduces noise when hit. The entire kit is collapsible, too, which is good when floor space is an issue. The company claims it'll get up to 50 hours of … Read more

Updated at 10:40 a.m. PDT, Wednesday, March 11, with more details on the instrument that took second place.

Imagine Keith Moon relentlessly pounding away with a set of drumsticks. Now imagine him making sounds simply by moving his hands around the head of the drum.

That's more or less what he'd be doing were he using inventor Jaime Oliver's Silent Drum Controller.

First place winner in the first Guthman Musical Instrument Competition sponsored by Georgia Tech's Center for Music Technology, it's a transparent drum shell, illuminated from the inside, with an elastic head. As one presses it, the head deforms and a variety of shapes with peaks are created reflecting the shape of the mallet or hand.

A video camera captures these shapes and sends the images to the computer, which analyzes them and outputs the tracked parameters.

Not a drum you'd find in the music shop at the mall, but that was exactly the idea behind the contest, which solicited new instruments--in physical or virtual manifestations, and played by humans, robots, or computers--that enhance music performance and creation.

Nearly 30 inventors from seven countries performed on Georgia Tech's campus to demonstrate their instrument's musicality, design, and engineering features and compete for prizes--$5,000 for first place, $3,000 for second, $2,000 for third, and free copies of the Rock Band for those nabbing fourth through sixth place. … Read more

iDrum lets you choose from several preset beats or you can make your own using an intuitive interface. While you could dive right in and make your own, it's very useful to play a preset beat and watch how drum sounds show up in the unique interface. Beats are broken down into measures and you can zoom in to insert sounds at your chosen intervals. You can then create several measures and use the touch screen to copy and move them around to your specs. You also have the ability to adjust the volume using sliders for each sound. … Read more

DigiDrummer Lite is a free, simple drum simulator that lets you play eight different drums in a reasonably spaced, four-by-two grid using your touch screen. As with most musical instrument-emulator apps, the sound (using actual drum samples) is considerably better while using headphones or external speakers with subtle, fairly high-quality audio--although iPhone headphones are probably up to this free app's most likely use: namely, killing time and/or entertaining kids. More serious musicians should also check out the paid version of DigiDrummer and other similar apps, to get access to different drum sets, the ability to record, and more. … Read more