accordion
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This young man is very serious about the Mortal Kombat theme, as well as the accordion
The young gentleman seen here is clearly both a talented accordion player and a very serious Mortal Kombat fan. After seeing him featured on Reddit, however, we didn't expect to find so many contemporaries! Apparently accordion and MK go together like ninjas and ... MK. Who knew?!
Manufacture Royale debuts $1.2 million Opera accordion watch, Sir Steampunk scoffs
Well, pardon us. We balked at the $208 price tag affixed to Tokyoflash's RPM LED wristwatch, but the value proposition there now looks an awful lot brighter when compared to this. Manufacture Royale's looking to catch at least one or two elitists off guard with its new Opera Time-Piece, a $1.2 million device that's composed of 319 parts in the wilds of Switzerland. Purportedly, it was designed by Fabrique du Temps, and the minute repeater plays the hours in the key of A as the minutes chime in C sharp. It's also encased in 18k gold, sapphire crystal and a healthy dose of self-worth. Word on the street has it that only a dozen of these will be made available for sale, with the accordion casing being the standout feature in our eyes. In a manner of speaking, of course.
First Look: Accordéon for the iPad
Here, at TUAW, we are all about the cool, the awesome, and the amazing, as well as the surreal. Accordéon for the iPad, a new App Store application, falls solidly into the latter category. Alex Komarov was kind enough to send over this video, showing the $3.99 app in action, complete with a text-to-speech voice over monkey. As fellow TUAW blogger Steve Sande put it, this video is "a really weird dream that you keep hoping you'll wake up from." This application offers a virtual accordion playing experience, as its name implies. It has buttons, it has keys, and it leverages multitouch technology so you can press buttons and keys at the same time. No word on how you can "pump" the app, like you would a real accordion though. For everyone who has held off on deciding to buy, waiting until an accordion app finally debuted, well -- you can rest easy now. The squeezebox has landed. On the iPad. With Accordéon, you'll be able to Weird Al yourself to new levels, both in major and minor keys. I wonder if we can rent that monkey for some TUAW videos...
Wii Music weekend instrument roundup!
Over the weekend, Nintendo continued posting new videos of new Wii Music instruments. Above, the accordion, which is like Thor's hammer Mjolnir, but for Weird Al. Only the worthy can pick up the accordion, but those who can wield it are transformed instantly into Weird Al Yankovic. Due to technical and licensing constraints, only the sound-producing capabilities of the accordion are reproduced in Wii Music.After the break, videos featuring simulated taiko, clarinet, and conga drums. We think that of all the instruments, the ones involving drumming look silliest when there's no actual instruments. The model just kind of punches the air like one of those action figures whose arms swing out when you squeeze their legs. But we must admit that Wii Music's taiko sounds pretty cool.%Gallery-27713%
Roland's FR-2 accordion, now with extra polka
When you absolutely, positively must have the finest, most advanced accordion money can buy, look no further than the Roland FR-2. With an astounding eight (eight!) separate virtual accordion sounds, 128 note polyphony, pneumatic (high-resolution) detection of bellows pressure, 15 micro-tuning regional presets, MIDI functionality, AA battery power, chorus and reverb effects, and integrated pad triggers for sampled percussion (or shouts of "Get funky!"), this is the Rolls-Royce of digital accordions. Unless, of course, you count the Rolls-Royce Digital Accordion. Phantom or Silver Shadow models notwithstanding, for $3,000, you can't go wrong.[Via Crave]
Happy Tetris music day
How have we gone this long without doing a Tetris music, you might ask? Well, truth be told, the whole idea seemed a little uninteresting to us. While we can't deny the inherent catchiness of the classic puzzler theme, most of the hundreds of video covers of the tune on YouTube are simple transcriptions for the piano or guitar. Booooring.So for this week, we've dug up some traditional Tetris music played on some less-than-traditional musical instruments. Please enjoy these clips of the Tetris theme as performed on accordion, mandolin and the human head. That's right... the human head.
