Musical Instrument Competition - 25 New Instruments Created

There has something new happened for music lovers. They will now be able to hear some more good music produced by 25 new innovative musical instruments that competed with each other at the first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition.

The 'Silent Drum' invented by Jaime Oliver won the first prize. The winning drum has a flexible drum head which forms black shapes in front of a white background when pressed by fingers. The shapes are recorded by a video camera and sent to a laptop where Max/M.S.P. software turns the shapes into sound in real time.

The Second prize was won by 'Guitar Bot' devised by Eric Singer. The instrument not only performs guitar parts for Lemur (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots), but can also perform complex solo compositions.

The third prize went to David Wessel, a Berkeley University professor and an electronic music veteran, who performed on the 'Slabs', which is an interface for the Max/M.S.P. audio program having touch pads that are sensitive to fingertip pressures.

There were many other innovative musical instruments. One of them makes drum and bass sounds by running fabric through lasers. Another instrument mounted a keyboard on a motorcycle engine. One of the contestants made an instrument inspired by Sudoku puzzle using wooden blocks.

The contest for discovering the best ideas for innovative musical instruments was organized by Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology and Harmonix, the company that gave the popular video games 'Guitar Hero' and 'Rock Band'. More than 60 musicians, inventors and hobbyists applied for the competition. 25 applicants were given an opportunity to show the musical instruments devised by them. The prizes included $5,000 for first place; $3,000 for second place; and $2,000 for third place. Apart from the three top prizes, a copy of Rock Band video game was awarded to the winners of fourth, fifth and sixth places.

The competing musical instruments were judged by an expert panel based on musicality, design and engineering. The Judges included Eran Egozy, who is the co-founder of Harmonix Music Systems; Parag Chordia, who is Georgia Tech Professor; and Digital music expert Eliot Van Buskirk, who is an author, columnist and blogger writing for technology magazine Wired that has presented a photo gallery of musical instruments along with description about how each instrument works as well as samples of the music each of them produces.

percussion plus percussion kit, shure m44 7 h turntablist record needle mounted on technics headshell white, singing machine sml 390 disco lights cdg karaoke system sml 390, bbe acoustimax acoustic instrument preamp pedal with full featured sonic maximizer, tc electronic toneprint hall of fame reverb signal path pedal, native instruments maschine mikro, selmer s 80 c mouthpiece for alto saxophone s402c1, mendini 44 mv400 ebony fitted solid wood violin with hard case shoulder rest bow rosin extra bridge and strings full size, m audio oxygen 61 61 key usb midi controller, hohner 3100gb panther accordion g c f, gtd audio g 733h 2x800 channel diversity uhf wireless microphone mic system, focusrite scarlett 2i2 2 in2 out usb recording audio interface, eliminator lighting led lighting electro swarm led lighting, rogue ra 090 dreadnought acoustic guitar natural, pro tools make music now recording studio, pearl sk900c ed kits 14 inch snare drum, alesis control pad usbmidi percussion pad controller, mendini mtt l lacquer brass bb trumpet gold, yamaha p95b digital piano black, cad gxl2200 cardioid condenser microphone, mxr m80 bass d i pedal, behringer xenyx x1204usb 12 channel mixer, chauvet colorstrip, pearl pl900c educational kits snare bell kit, yamaha p 85 contemporary digital piano, mendini 12 mv200 solid wood violin in natural finish with hard case shoulder rest bow rosin and extra strings, yamaha ypt 330 61 key touch sensitive personal keyboard, behringer europort epa900 ultra compact 900 watt 8 channel portable pa system, fender vibro champ xd electric guitar amplifier, hohner 3523gb 15 5 inch 43 key accordion, rode nt1a anniversary vocal condenser microphone package, drumdial drum tuner, m audio axiom pro 61 advanced 61 key usb midi controller with hypercontrol technology, yamaha arius ydp 161 digital piano with bench, squier by fender sp10 se special guitar with amplifier brown sunburst, hisonic hs120b portable pa system with wireless microphones black, tascam cd rw900sl slot loading cd recorder, rogue ra 090 dreadnought acoustic guitar black, digitech rp255 modeling guitar processor and usb recording interface, akai mpd26 usbmidi pad controller