stagelight
Latest
Roland releases Zenbeats, a cross-platform music-making app
Roland has been making electronic musical instruments for nearly 50 years and has delivered products like the JU-06A tiny portable synth, keyboards with built-in Alexa controls and mini smartphone mixers. Now, it's entering the world of mobile music-making apps. Today, the company released Zenbeats.
Stagelight teaches you how to make music on your Android phone
If you like the idea of learning to compose music on your phone, your go-to app has typically been GarageBand on IOS. But what if you're rocking an Android phone and would rather not switch? Don't worry, you're covered. Open Labs has released a pocket-sized Android version of Stagelight, its music-making app. It's free to get started, and includes lessons that help you write your first tracks. You pay only as you expand your talents -- like with GarageBand, there's an in-app store that offers more samples and extra features. While you probably won't produce a hot track solely on your phone (you can sync with Stagelight across devices), this could be what you need to either understand the basics of music or make a rough cut that you can polish later.
3M Uniformity Tape improves lighting quality on LED edge-lit LCDs, lowers production costs
Ever seen a display like the one on the left? That's long been a pesky phenomenon -- known as "head-lighting" -- with many LED edge-lit LCD panels, and 3M's new Uniformity Tape wants to make sure it won't be around for much longer. Basically, the tape sticks onto an LCD's internal light guide, and its printed-on optical pattern disperses each LED's light path at wider angles. This allows for up to three times the distance between each LED, while still maintaining an even all-around brightness level across the panel. There are other benefits to this as well considering future LCD panels could use fewer LEDs -- cutting manufacturing costs, and raising eco-friendliness. Hopefully the tape actually ends up working as well as the photo illustrates, but for now, you can view the full press release by clicking past the break.
