When we last left off with the Loog Guitar by Rafael Atijas it had blown past its funding goals on Kickstarter in early 2011 and shipped with much fanfare making it one of the first successful Kickstarter projects on our radar. In the interim it’s become a mini-phenomenon and, most important, people have started using the three-stringed instruments to record albums.

Case in point: Pip Blom is a 16-year-old singer-songwriter who wrote an an entire record using the Loog. You can listen to the whole thing on Bandcamp and she is selling the albums to pay for a trip to Teenage Kicks, a band camp in Vlieland in the Netherlands. In short, it’s a crowdfunded project that helped student complete another crowdfunded projects. To paraphrase an old lady: It’s crowdfunding all the way down.

The music itself is quite charming and well-recorded and Pip herself is ready to appear at the Glastonbury festival, if they’ll have her.

Short Stories by Pip Blom

This cool connection shows the power of crowdfunding. Rafael wanted to make a fun, inexpensive guitar for kids and he was able to depend on the kindness of the Internet to help him make it. In turn, Pip can use that same guitar to follow her dream just as any student with a Loog can learn a few chords and make some really nice music. When people talk about the value of crowdsourcing, this is what they mean: the little accidents that connect people to help push the state of the art forward. It’s not just a pre-order engine, it’s an engine of creativity.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I’ve seen plenty of guitar apps in my lifetime – enough for two lifetimes, in fact – but JamStar, an app by an Israeli programming house, has almost won my heart.

The premise is simple – you tune your guitar and then play notes or chords. The app (which runs on a phone or your browser) senses your strum and lets you move on or asks you to repeat the notes. You do this, ad infinitum, until you get good. The app gives you feedback as you play, offering pointers, and you can move from basic G-C-D strumming patterns to, say, more complex folks songs. As a self-taught guitarist, I could see how having an app to simply say if your Am chord sounds like a buzzing mess is valuable.

I tried the app yesterday with an acoustic and it immediately picked up my chording and plucks. It was easy enough for a beginner – the chord patterns are clearly denoted on the screen – and I could definitely see it as an alternative to light up guitars like Fretlight and Gtar.

Kobi Stok built the app using a number of “polyphonic algorithms” to identify chords and notes. He is a gigging musician in Tel Aviv and worked for SAP prior to this project. They’ve raised $800,000 from seed investors including Jeff Pulver and the Micro Angel Fund.

“We’ve recently partnered with leading educational music publishing company, Alfred, to secure the rights to leading music catalogs from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Green Day, Foo Fighters, Muse, R.E.M., Evanescence and others. With this amazing partnership we were recently able to launch real lessons for top hits,” said Assaf Bivas, JamStar’s marketing head. The company has also signed a partnership with Dean guitars to create Dean signature lessons.

The service makes money by selling various lessons including Rock/Pop and Jazz/Blues standards. “We have musicians on staff who tailor make the lessons to fit with progress and experience our user base brings to the table. Our sole purpose, is to teach you guitar in the best possible way,” said Bivas.

The app is available now for Android and iOS and you can play it for free in your browser.

The app came to be when Stok noticed his friends playing Guitar Hero and learning nothing from the experience. The app, in turn, acts as sort of a “real” guitar hero. By listening to how you play and responding with almost no latency, JamStar gives you a helpful look at how bad you sound.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Ebay CEO John Donahoe today described how the e-commerce giant is moving further into the world of offline commerce, using mobile technology to do it: the company is planning a partnership with a retailer that will create a “pop up” shop with a gigantic touchscreen store window. Donahoe says that this will take place this summer in New York and is part of a bigger push eBay is making to bring itself closer to where retailers are still doing the majority of their transactions, offline. “You will be seeing more of that,” he hinted on stage at TC Disrupt in New York this morning.

We are reaching out to find out the name of the retailer, but you might be able to come up with a shortlist by looking at existing relationships that eBay and its payment subsidiary PayPal already have with bricks-and-mortar businesses.

To recap some of that… Not only does the company compete against Square for mobile point-of-sale transactions among small businesses with its Here product, but it is also targeting big chains, this January announcing a new raft of deals with national companies for its in-store payments technologies. These include Famous Footwear, Dollar General, Mapco Express, RadioShack, Spartan Stores, Abercrombie & Fitch, Advance Auto Parts, Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Guitar Center, the Home Depot, Jamba Juice, JC Penney, Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Nine West, Office Depot, Rooms To Go, Tiger Direct and Toys “R” Us.

Other bricks-and-mortar initiatives have included using QR codes in shop windows and check-ins with Home Depot, McDonalds and others.

A lifesize touchscreen is just one of the ways that eBay is trying to build on the momentum the company is seeing in consumer interest in mobile, and eBay’s own investments in the space. This is to complement eBay’s bread and butter business as an online marketplace, and is the company’s way of ensuring that it will continue to remain relevant in a world where offline commerce, but also new technologies battle for consumers’ wallets.

Donahoe says that eBay is on track to see $20 billion in mobile commerce this year, based around people tapping on their devices to purchase goods through PayPal. “We bet hard on mobile,” he said. “Mobile is clearly changing how consumers shop and pay.”

This has extended into how eBay has been acquiring companies over the years (20 acquisitions since he became CEO). Most recently, eBay acqui-hired Duff Research which he says has brought on developers that will help improve its mobile and digital wallet services. These are key areas where eBay will potentially extend its position not just as a sellers’ portal but as a platform for sales everywhere.

Donahoe described eBay’s position in mobile today as the view that it has become a “mission control.”

“It’s not just to shop or make payments but the whole flow,” he noted. This will also be about multiscreen experiences across smartphones, tablets, and in-store devices. This is also where today’s news about PayPal Access, its new identity technology, will come into play. also include how people access the web, or go into stores — hence “This is just one screen but we see ppl using multiple screens. think of how many times you access the web or go to a store.

And here’s the full video of Donahoe’s interview with BusinessWeek’s Norm Pearlstine:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Helsinki, Finland-based Ovelin is in the business of teaching people music using fun, easy games. The company is at Disrupt NY’s Startup Alley this year, demoing their latest game, GuitarBots, which is getting its full official launch after a soft launch earlier this year and a period of public beta testing. The game is like Guitar Hero, but will actually impart real skill, and runs in your browser with no special equipment required besides a guitar and a computer with a microphone.

GuitarBots is a guitar-teaching app that lets you play along with an animated tutorial onscreen, with a range of difficulty that goes from extremely simple for people brand new to guitar, to lessons that should prepare you to go out and actually become a competent player on your own. The app provides step-by-step feedback, telling you if you’re going too slow or fast, or if you’ve missed the note. Right now, it’s on the desktop as a browser-based game (which is very impressive considering the quality of the game’s animation), but there’s also a mobile version in the works for release in the next few months.

The True Ventures-backed company is doing well according to co-founder Chris Thür, who said that overall their products are doing well, with around a quarter million users so far across their various offerings. GuitarBots is a more specialized product, he says, and as such is a bit slower to grow than its other applications, but the value of the offering is in attracting a highly motivated crowd that will result in a good number of conversions from free to paying customers.

So far, Thür says that they’ve already seen a 60 percent return rate for new users to GuitarBots, and around 10 percent of those become paying customers. The model for GuitarBots is a freemium one that resembles the Dropbox method, giving users limited access for free and rewarding them for referrals. Initially, you get access to 5 minutes of in-game play time per day, and then you get an additional 5 minutes for each new friend you sign up, to a maximum of 35 minutes per day. Then after that you can pay for additional time, starting at $9.99 per month for three hours a day of play time.. The mobile version will offer a similar payment scheme, but Thür says the exact way it’ll work isn’t written in stone.

GuitarBots is tackling the issue of high drop-off in people learning to play the guitar, by trying to motivate them with fun, easy-to-use games to keep them interested. It’s a good middle ground for people who aren’t willing to invest in expensive one-on-one instruction, and who don’t find just trying to teach themselves effective.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Hot damn, the Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon was great. Even with the hackathon over and the winner declared (Way to go, Rumbler!), we keep finding more projects we want to highlight.

Built in just 24 hours, Game Of Tones is a proof-of-concept game that, with a bit of work, could teach you to play the actual guitar (versus, say, Rock Band — which, while a great game, is about as effectiv

Game Of Tones works in unison with a real-life electric guitar, paired to the computer through a line-in converter. As you strum, notes are fired from the neck of your on-screen hero’s guitar. Different chords result in different attacks, currently represented as notes of different hues. Strum an A, and blue notes fire out; strum an E, and red notes are fired.

In its current, proof-of-concept state, Game Of Tones is a bit simple, but the team says they want to build it out into something bigger. Right now, your character (modeled after the game’s co-designer Jeff, which fellow co-designer Roman says was a change that came “while he was in the bathroom”) stands in place, firing notes to blast away at a pile of physics enabled boxes. The focus of the first 24 hours was to get the game’s engine (Unity) recognizing the guitar input and differentiating the different chords.

The team says they’d like to expand the concept into something more, mentioning the possibility of some sort of forever-runner platformer with enemies vulnerable to different chords, or a multiplayer shredding battle.

Check out the team’s on-stage demo below. While Murphy’s Law went into full effect when a wiggled cable lead to some technical woes, I made sure to pull ‘em backstage for a better look — be sure to check out that video, as well.

Game Of Tones On-Stage:

Game Of Tones Backstage Interview:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I was lucky enough to get Incident Tech’s new gTar, a MIDI/DSP-based guitar that is perfect for both teaching and composition. The guitar, with the current software and feature set, isn’t quite the shredder’s dream – yet – but as a teaching system it’s excellent and I found it quite playable both “live” and while recording MIDI music.

To be clear, this is not an electric guitar with built-in pickups. You can’t plug it into an amp and go all Valhallen on your basement without an iPhone or iPod. Instead, the guitar outputs MIDI signals for each string and fret and can either connect directly to an app like Garage Band or Logic or you can connect it to an amp via the headphone-out jack. The gTar also has a series of embedded LEDs in the neck and, using your iPhone or iPod, you can play along to a preset number of open source and licensed songs. A free play mode turns the iPod into a mini amp with multiple instruments and a custom light show maker.

I haven’t had the chance to really sit down with the gTar and the attendant iOS app to really understand it fully but from my brief interactions I’ve found it to be far cooler than I originally imagined. Given that it has a full set of real, tunable steel strings coupled with a unique fret and vibration sensor, it seems to me like the perfect way for a guitarist to branch out into electronic composition without much fuss or cost.

I did see a bit of lag in the iOS app, especially when in Free Play mode, and the audio quality wasn’t excellent coming out of the tinny speakers. However, once I connected the auxiliary output, I saw better performance. This, for example, is how it sounds plugged right into the microphone jack and recorded to Garage Band.

You’ll notice just a bit of lag and some bum notes when I strum but for the most part I’m able to play normally and the guitar and phone keep up. There are two ways to strum the strings. You can either use a standard plectrum that, for the most part, works well or you can use a more precise metal plectrum, called the SmartPick, which closes a circuit and ensures the MIDI output is a bit cleaner. Most guitarists would probably steer clear of a metal pick, but it’s your choice.

Plugging the guitar via USB directly into Garage Band, on the other hand, gives a direct MIDI signal that allows me to do stuff like this:

Because it outputs digital data, you can change the “voices” on the fly and add effects and delays. The iOS app has a number of built-in effects including distortion and chorus and you control the level with the lightpad that appears on the phone screen.

Given the limited time I’ve had with this thing I’m loath to make a final judgement but as it stands I’m quite impressed with this 1.0 release and look forward to seeing what Incident has in store both in terms of on-board firmware improvements and in improvements to the iOS app. As it stands, however, the gTar is very playable and very fun.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Austin-based Moniker Guitars is running a Kickstarter campaign to create a line of semi-hollow-body guitars for discerning git-fiddlists. The company will offer their first guitars for a $700 pledge, not bad for a hand-made guitar from rockabilly city.

The company is looking for $50,000 to start and they’ve just passed the $6,000 mark.

The company already customizes solid-body guitars and hopes that the fund will help them build a line of semi-hollow-body models.

“Through our online guitar configurator you can choose your guitar’s shape, paint colors and parts, as well as add custom text and graphics; all at the price of an off-the-shelf guitar,” write founders Kevin Tully and Dave Barry. Moniker began in Austin in 2012.

“The money we hope to raise will go towards the tools and equipment needed to efficiently manufacture these guitars at our shop in Austin,TX. An efficient manufacturing process means we’ll be able to create high quality, yet affordably priced, semi-hollow guitars. We also need help funding the materials needed to produce these guitars on a larger scale. These materials include wood, primer, sandpaper paint, clearcoat, guitar parts, etc.”

The luthiers do most of their work in Austin and for a pledge of $350 they’ll strip and repaint your current guitar with a new color. You can also get a White Stripes-esque red and white model for $900. $2,400 gets you a lesson in guitar-smithing with the guys at Moniker.

As it gets easier to make things overseas it’s refreshing to see these guys attempting to build a local company. Customization is a hard job and it makes sense to keep the gear, supplies, and workers close to the consumer.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

While education startups like Khan Academy and Coursera are democratizing access to primary and secondary-level instruction, there are plenty of other hobbies where face-to-face teaching could be disrupted (or enhanced) by software.

Music could be one of them — at least at the beginner level. Playground Sessions, a New York-based startup that spun out of a ventures division of creative advertising agency BBH, is launching a new way to teach piano today. It uses a MIDI keyboard, video demonstrations, and software that provides instant feedback on how well you’ve matched every note. This is desktop software that you have to download from Playground Sessions’ website, but a proper tablet app is on its way.

I’ve spent more than 20 years playing piano and competing, but I had to learn from a very hardcore Russian piano teacher (who I’m immensely grateful for).

While it would be hard to get to play Chopin’s Revolutionary etude all on your own, Playground Sessions could reach a more beginner-level player who isn’t quite ready to fork over more than $40 or 60 an hour to an individual teacher or who wants to play pop songs, not Bach partitas.

It works, as you might guess, through several ‘Bootcamp’ tutorials on basic musical concepts like chord progressions, notation and key signatures. These are designed by a New York University music instructor Alex Ness.

Then there’s interactive sheet music and complementary video lessons on how to play specific songs like Katy Perry’s “Firework,” or David Guetta’s “Without You.” The pieces are sold in an iTunes-like store for about $5.99 a pop.

“One of the reasons students drop out early is that they don’t really love the sound. They’re not motivated or engaged by the songs they’re playing,” said Chris Vance, who co-founded the company. “One of the things we wanted to address was giving people more choice and ownership over what they play.”

When a student picks up one of these songs, they can play into a MIDI keyboard and get feedback on how well they’ve picked up a song based on how many notes they’ve played correctly. Playground Sessions also shows them how much they’ve improved compared to the last time they played and where they’re seeing problem areas.

Playground Sessions’ membership will go for $9.99 a month with an annual plan or $14.99 per month with a quarterly plan.

Vance signed on Quincy Jones, the famed record producer who worked with Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra, along with David Sides, a YouTube star known for his renditions of pop songs, to advise on product direction.

Along with BBH’s invention division ZAG, Vance and other unannounced angels are owners of the company. ZAG put in at least $1 million, Vance said, and then other angels followed on in a September seed round.

Playground Sessions faces several competitors, but the market is quite young. There are tablet-based competitors like including JoyTunes, which doesn’t require a MIDI keyboard and seems to be more geared for children. Then for the guitar, there is TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Incident, which makes the iPhone powered electric gTar, and Ovelin, which makes the guitar teaching app WildChords.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

PayPal is announcing  today that seven new national retailers are using its in-store payments technology. Previously, PayPal had made a commitment to sign-up a total of 20 large national retailers by the end of 2012, and the company now has 23 retailers signed up to implement the eBay-owned company’s technology. And PayPal’s in-store payments offering is now being used in 18,000 brick and mortar stores nationwide.

With these in-store integrations, customers can either use a PIN code or a special PayPal credit card that can be swiped, in order to deduct the payment from their PayPal accounts. The solution is appealing to retailers, because it doesn’t require a significant investment in new technology, like replacing POS systems or installing some sort of NFC-based solution, for example.

Famous Footwear, Dollar General, Mapco Express, RadioShack, Spartan Stores and two additional partners are now using PayPal’s payments platform. These retailers join Abercrombie & Fitch, Advance Auto Parts, Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Guitar Center, the Home Depot, Jamba Juice, JC Penney, Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Nine West, Office Depot, Rooms To Go, Tiger Direct and Toys “R” Us.

PayPal’s Don Kingsborough says that PayPal’s in store offering has now expanded to grocery and gas stations, which are both important first steps in PayPal’s further growth in brick and mortar stores.

The payments company is also debuting a new ordering feature for Jamba Juice, which allows users to pre-pay via PayPal and order their smoothies or other food items ahead. After choosing the items you want to order, you can also choose your pick-up-time in store, and pay with PayPal right on your mobile device. When picking-up your beverage, you can bypass the line and cashier and get your smoothie right away.

PayPal has been testing a similar pilot with McDonald’s across 30 fast food stores in France allows purchasers to pre-order their Big Macs on the McDonald’s mobile app or online, pay with PayPal and then skip the line for pick-up. There’s a dedicated area where you can pick up your pre-ordered food. Similarly, with Jamba Juice, PayPal says that you’ll be able to skip the lines with this pick-up feature as well.

Emeryville is the first Jamba Juice location to include pre-order and pickup, with others to follow this year.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I spent a lot of time at CES 2013 searching for new audio goodness and one of the cool things I found was IK Multimedia’s latest product called the iRig HD. Not “officially” announced yet and missing a release date, there were still a few demo units at their booth in the South Hall.

The iRig HD is an upgrade to the company’s previous and very popular iRig guitar interface for iOS mobile devices. Essentially, it allows you to plug your guitar or bass directly into your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch and use software to make recordings or affect the sound of your instrument. This HD version sports some new characteristics though:

• High quality input
• Low-noise, transparent high-definition preamp
• 24 bit Analog/Digital conversion
• Preamp gain control

The iRig HD seems like the next logical step for working musicians who want to have a compact setup to record their ideas, but want to capture those ideas with the highest fidelity.

It works with all existing IK Multimedia apps (like AmpliTube) but will also work with other real-time processing apps like Garageband.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch