Traditional instruments go high tech at U.S. music expo

Tiny Swedish company Lekholm introduced to the world their Digital Chromatic Harmonica, the DM48.

(Web Desk) – From digital harmonicas to app-enabled ‘smart’ ukeleles, traditional musical instruments got a high-tech makeover at the music industry’s annual trade event, the NAMM show.

Tiny Swedish company Lekholm introduced to the world their Digital Chromatic Harmonica, the DM48. Founder Erik Lekholm is a harmonica player who wanted to avoid noise complaints from his family and neighbors by inventing a harmonica he could play through headphones.

The instrument uses 12 pressure sensors similar to those in some medical devices to trigger sounds on a connected synthesizer or synthesiser app.

"It will sense air pressure. It can be both positive and negative; you know, blow and draw, with a harmonica. And then it will transmit a so-called MIDI messages, which are note-trig signals," Lekholm told Reuters.

"You connect it to a synthesizer, it doesn’t make any sounds on its own, you need some sound generator, and that could be a hardware synthesizer or a synthesizer app, an application running on a laptop or an iPhone or an iPad or something like that," Lekholm said.

The digital harmonica, which Lekholm’s father makes by hand in his Gothenburg basement, is already on the market at $670. So far, they’ve sold a "few hundred," Lekholm said.

Kepma USA, the U.S. branch of the popular Chinese guitar company Kepma, showed it’s ‘Populele,’ which it says is the world’s first ‘smart’ ukelele.

The brightly-colored fiberglass ukeleles connect to a mobile phone app to allow users to learn which strings to press and strum to produce chords. When a string is indicated on the app, it lights up on the ukelele.

For drummers who want to practice silently or perform without a full drumkit, Freedrum showed the latest version of their ‘Air Drum Kit,’ a set of bluetooth sensors that attach to players’ drumsticks and feet to allow them to play up to a 10-piece drumkit.

The sensors can tell where the drumsticks and feet are pointing and, depending on the position, trigger the appropriate drum sound, from bass drum to snare to hi-hat.

The kits start at $99 for two sensors.

Piano and keyboard players who long for more notes and flexibility than a traditional 88-key set-up allow will soon have the option of a 275-key MIDI keyboard. Lumatone is a microtonal keyboard, allowing players to perform music that is outside of the traditional 12 notes per octave.

They key configuration, represented by different illuminated colors on the keyboard, can be changed to suit the player.

"It’s a pretty crazy keyboard," said founder Dylan Horvath, who is not a keyboard player himself.

"It’s designed for playing any tuning on any key on any color. So you can use it to have mappings that are similar to what a piano plays, but you can also have all sorts of other mappings as well. So you can play many more notes per octave than what a piano can play," he said.

Thousands of musicians and music fans from around the world visit NAMM each year. The expo, which is put on by the National Association of Music Merchants, covers everything from guitars to drums and amplifiers, and is becoming more technology-driven as developers bring music and tech together in the hope of discovering the next big thing.

NAMM runs through Sunday (January 19) at the Anaheim Convention Center, just outside of Los Angeles.