Music Thing: Fourteen Foot Long MIDI Keyboard (with lights!)
Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear that's coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment:
It's a quiet week for new music gear so what better way to end it than with a fourteen foot long MIDI keyboard. It's just appeared on the 'bay, with a rather disappointing starting price of £2,000. It was custom built for a local theatre production (of 'Big - The Musical', obviously) in Barnstaple, Devon. There's a fantastic video on the company's home page of it being played by two workmen.
Apart from staff at FAO Schwartz in New York, the hero of the gigantic light up MIDI keyboard is Jean Michel Jarre. At his Houston concert in 1986, he played a big semi-circular thing, with 88 working keys, built for him by French instrument company LAG. Disappointingly, they don't really seem to have taken off.
