Our understanding of technology, acoustics, ergonomics, etc. have all changed drastically over the past century or so. How come we’re still stuck with the same old pianos, guitars, clarinets, etc.? Are there any attempts to create, say, a piano with a QWERTY layout, nano-guitars that resonate your finger bones to create sound, etc.?
I know there are occasional “look what I made” videos, but are there professional, dedicated efforts by individuals or companies who actually try to market these products?
You’re overlooking such extremely common instruments as the Theremin (introduced in 1920), solid body electric guitar (1941-1951), electronic synthesizer (1957) and keytar (1970s).
There have been a few attempts, but the things that have gained some currency tend to be modifications of existing musical instruments -
5 and 6 string basses,
7 and 8 string guitars,
keyboards with after-touch and vibrato
midi wind instruments with simplified/alternative fingering
There have been some alternative midi controllers with grid layouts for chording, but they don’t seem to catch on - a piano keyboard allows you to play 10 notes at a time and provides pretty good mobility and range. If you need more notes, add in a pedal board for at least 2 more, possibly 4 (heel and toe).
As for sounds - computer based synthesis has opened up huge possibilities, and I can’t even keep track of the various ways people use elements to construct new sounds - additive synthesis, subtractive synthesis, granular synthesis, algorithmic synthesis - and all controlled by a variety of physical controllers, or none. I’m waiting for a Kinect-based theramin-style system that could be quite precise and controllable.
I’ve seen some references to some whole-body Theremin where you stand on a platform and use your whole self to play it. (Kinda like dancing the Hokey-Pokey, I would imagine.)
There’s the Soundbeam, now up to version 5. Watch the 2nd little video for a demo.
I saw an earlier version played back in 1996 and it’s come a long way since then…
Of course, there is always the Hardart, the left-handed sewer flute, the double-reed slide music stand, the tromboon, the windbreaker, the slide windbreaker, and the lasso d’amore.
A number of years ago I watched a documentary on a music festival that featured one group whose strangely-dressed, dreadlocked percussion member used something a lot like a Guitar Hero guitar thing, obviously hand-made and customized to run a drum machine. He was credited as “Future Man” on the “drumatar.” Not sure if anything in that setup caught on, but there you go.
A quick Google shows it was Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and “Future Man” is still out there with versions of the Synthaxe Drumatar (various spellings). So I guess it is a new instrument in its own right. Like Mr. Furious, his real name is… Roy.
What one might take away form the above is tht far from there being any form of stagnation in musical instrument invention, it is alive and well, and probably doing better than it ever has.
However the OP alludes to what might be thought of actual totally new modes of sound production - not just variations on strings, wind and percussion. Here the answer is basically electronics. The Theramin must take some sort of prize as being the most radical advance - a contactless, purely electric field interface, instrument. Other than that, electronic organs - notably the Hammond which is a curious hybrid of mechanical and electronic mechanisms that yields a now well established sound. Then electronic synthesis - analog and then digital - and electric stringed instruments, notably the guitar and bass. These are particularly interesting in that the sound is mostly determined by the electronics and speaker design, with the actual instrument itself being relegated to the role of excitation.
But even many classical instruments continue to advance. Like the Stuart pianos.
And also regress. There continues to be lots of interest in “historically accurate” performance, and things like forte-pianos, valveless horns, lots of gut strings, and so on. In many ways it is a bit of a golden age. Anything goes, and there is lots of stuff going on.
I’m not sure why you’d say that. There’s a long tradition of blind people learning to tune pianos (my family used a blind tuner), and the harpeggi must be much easier to tune than a piano. Of course, being rich and famous, Stevie probably has people to do lots of things we ordinary folk do for ourselves.
Following YouTube links in Fiendish Astronaut’s post, I found several cool new instruments I hadn’t known about before (their starting prices are in parens):
Just patented in the last quarter of 2012 and started getting popularlized in several genres (notably rock, metal, and jazz), there’s the Slaperoo Noodle, often affectionately called the “Djent Stick”. Sure, it’s similar in design to being a one-string bass/guitar, but it’s design gives it some interesting characteristics that a guitar doesn’t have, like a flexible neck and that it’s played only percussively, so I’d say it’s sufficiently different to qualify as a new instrument.
Another thing to keep in mind is that I’d also argue that with synthesizers, digital music, sampling, and programming, there’s going to be sounds that might have previously needed new physical instruments that can just be done that way. From that perspective, I think it could be reasonably argued that every time someone creates a new digital sound, it’s akin to creating a new a new instrument
