Piano

Roland has spent decades making professional-grade digital musical instruments, and put a call out to designers to envision an ambitious digital grand piano. Here it is – the GPX-F1 designed by Jong Chan Kim.

Musicians often make playing an instrument look deceptively easy. But learning can be tough. Technology can help take the edge off, such as the One Keyboard Pro Essential piano which guides students through the learning process using LEDs and an app.

Grand pianos are huge and heavy, and not everyone has space in the home to host one. Upright pianos can help, but the sound just isn't the same. But what if you can have a grand piano that has about the same footprint as an upright?. That's what Sarah Nicolls is offering with the Standing Grand.

Instead of separate black and white keys, the whole spongy surface of the Seaboard Grand was offered up as the playing area. Now Roli has come about face with the Lumi learning platform, with solid keys that light up to teach the next Jordan Rudess how to play.​

In 2015, Steinway launched a line of pianos that allowed owners to tap into an archive of performances by some of the world's top players, and have the piano play them back. Now the iconic maker has introduced the the Spirio | r – which can record a musician's own live performance and play it back.

​Amazon's Alexa voice assistant has made its way into many gadgets since it launched with the Echo smart speaker in 2014. Now music gear firm Roland has created its first Alexa Skill and loaded it into the Go:Piano so that players can chat as they play.​

​Mimicking the complex movement of a human hand is not an easy task for roboticists. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have looked at simplifying the design of a robotic hand, and developed a piano-playing soft skeleton bot that rocks the keyboard.​

Japan's Hakuhodo i-studio has teamed up with the Yamaha Corporation to allow professionals and beginners alike to take part in live piano duets with an AI-powered partner at South by Southwest (SXSW) this week at the Austin Convention Center in Texas.

​The One Piano learning system is claimed to teach tunes in minutes, but if students already had a piano at home, they'd have to stump up for another. That's now been solved with the launch of the Piano Hi-Lite, an LED light strip that can sit at the back of any 88-key piano keyboard.​

It may be best known for the iconic hand-wired amplifiers and shapely guitars, but Vox Amps started out as a keyboard manufacturer. In the early 1960s, an instantly-recognizable combo organ affectionately known as the Connie was released. Now, a new and improved Vox Continental has been unleashed.

​Following lights on a guitar or piano can help students learn to play at their own pace, at times that suit them and in the comfort of their own home. Yamaha has merged app-based learning with a game-like follow-me lighting system that allows users to quickly learn and play favorite songs.​

Many musicians are also dedicated gearheads and tinkerers. And a good number of garage hackers are musicians. When both creative passions merge, wondrous things happen. We've selected a few of our favorite one-off instrument creations to whet your appetite for homebrew sonic experimentation.