On The Scene: School 14-08-2013

So stopped by School last week for some hip hop – alas it wasn’t meant to be but I did have a close encounter with this nifty piece of alien technology which blew my mind.

How? What? Half of the fun of this Oujia synthesizer, known as Reactable, is trying to put the pieces together –which symbol does what, how twisting the piece increases the pitch, or how one pieces sound can ‘connect’ with another. Pretty much anything can be tweaked. The furthest I got was that the big blocks are the drums – the rest – heck if I have any idea. Here’s more footage of the Reactable at work last Wednesday night courtesy of Kelvin_Cl0ne, the man also playing on the gizmo like someone who just discovered Dungeons and Dragons.

There\’s a nice piece of HowStuffWorks here that\’s a good jumping off point for those curious. I wonder what a seven year could accomplish with this – just imagine – pre adolescent electronic music makers. I know what I’m getting my kids for Christmas come 2025.