Already sick of playing the piano on your iPhone? Maybe it’s time to hit the drums.

Developer MooTheCow has created this homebrew drum machine application called “Drummer” that runs on the iPhone or iPod Touch. 

Drummer can play up to 15 unique audio samples (one on each finger touch pad), and takes advantage of multi-touch capabilities, so you can play up to five sounds at once. You can even let your MP3s play in the background and provide your own accompaniment. There are pre-installed Rock, Dance, Electro and two Jazz sound sets, but can be easily updated with your own sound samples.

The application is currently in private Beta, so you won’t be able to get your hands on a copy for your jailbroken iPhone quite yet. In the mean time, you can read more over on MooCowMusic.

Have some old computer gear lying around? Why not do what this guy did, and turn it into something useful once more.

By taking an old Apple 5-1/4″ floppy drive he found at a thrift store, then working some electronics wizardry on the interior, modder Jeff Kobi took this old piece of tech junk and gave it new life as a retro-styled amplifier.

At the heart of the revamped drive is the hacker’s favorite Sonic Impact 5066 T-amp, capable of cranking out amazing clarity and boldness with just 15-watts per channel.

Wanna make your own? Check out Jeff’s step-by-step tutorial over on Instructables.

Up until now, singers needed to either play an instrument or the help of a professional accompanist to help them realize their musical ideas. With this new technology coming out of Microsoft Research, vocalists need only sing their ideas into a microphone to automatically generate musical accompaniment.

MySong “listens” to any sampled vocal melody, then automatically selects the best chords to go along with the song. Non-musicians can create professional-sounding music by just singing into a microphone connected to a computer with the special software installed. The system is demonstrated in the video below (I know the video is super cheesy, but the technology is still cool). 

Microsoft researchers Ian Simon, Dan Morris and Sumit Basu created the MySong prototype using a Hidden Markov Model and a musical database to figure out what chords will sound best with the vocals. Once the chords are generated, singers can make adjustments to the musical style using a couple of simple sliders in the user interface.

At this point, there aren’t any specific commercial plans for the technology, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it turn up in either musical composition software or even in video games.

[MySong via istartedsomething]

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It’s been a while since I’ve seen speakers that looked quite this strange. Designed to be your “little dead desktop buddy”, they look like something that your neighborhood dominatrix might have sitting next to her computer.

The oddly-named Dutch Dead Bbudd speaker system looks like some sort of naugahyde-wrapped dude with his eyes X’d out. The speakers are embedded into his feet, pumping out the tunes as he sits on your desk.

As Bbudd is a dead guy, it only makes sense that he’s a passive (non-amplified) speaker system. So if you like your speakers a little on the kinky side, you can grab the little dead guy over at Kado-Fix for €24,95 (appx. $38 USD).

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This modern backpack is sure to draw attention as you walk down the street — especially if you’ve got the volume cranked up. You see those big black patches? They’re loudspeakers.

Created by industrial design student Joonas Saaranen, the Reppo II backpack features a built in pair of full-range speakers and an amplifier, so you can kick out the jams as you walk down the street. The only thing better would be if that big black patch were a subwoofer. Of course, that might shatter your vertebrae if you turned up the volume too much.

Saaranen’s concept design has gotten as far as a functional prototype at this point, but he hasn’t revealed if he’ll ever have them produced en masse. In the mean time, if you happen to be in Berlin, Germany (where Joonas currently resides) and hear someone coming down the street wearing this bad boy, offer up the mad props he deserves.

[via Square]

What die-hard Trekkie could possibly walk around without a communicator? Now you can own this nifty remake of the original 23rd-century Starfleet communicator from the 1960s TV classic.

The modern-day replica offers up blinking lights and sounds just like the original Starfleet-issue communications gizmo. It’s even got a cool moving moire effect, making it even more retro-fabulous. I also love the “Hailing” feature, which lets you press a button on the face, flip the metal grill closed, and receive a call back from the Enterprise a few seconds later.

It’s loaded with over 20 phrases and sound effects from the classic Trek universe, including original sound samples from the TV show. While it’s not actually functional for two-way communications, it would be cool to crack one open and stuff your cell phone inside of it. I’d love to walk down the street making a call with one of these in my hand. After all, who needs Bluetooth headsets when you’ve got one of these?

The Star Trek Classic Communicator is available now from ThinkGeek for $29.99.

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You and your significant other might have different tastes in music, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be close with your shmoopy. With this matching pair of MP3 players, you can listen to different tracks, but still be joined at the hip.

The interlocking Lovers MP3 players come together to form a single red heart, but can be played separately when you’re apart. And if you end up breaking things off with your partner, you still get to keep your tunes — a much better solution than cutting the iPod in half.

Just in time for Valentines’ Day to be over, you can grab the pair of 1GB media players from DealExtreme for about $39.

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