Three master’s students in Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics program have devised a novel musical instrument that makes composing as easy as stacking blocks. Creators Steinunn Arnardottir, Nicholas Bryan, and Hayden Bursk, call the gizmo Cubeats. Here’s how it works: by placing a clear plastic cube on a vertical rod you get a kick-bass beat. Add another cube, and it switches to a snare. With three cubes, you get a high hat. And that’s just one peg in a 4-by-16 grid. The beat, kept from left to right across the board, gets more complex as you add cubes to more rods. Placing and removing cubes creates new patterns and sequences on the fly.
Ultimately, Bursk says, other instruments such as guitar, keyboard and voice could be controlled by the additional rows. A whole band in a 20-by-16-by-6-inch box. But the idea isn’t to put the professional out of business, Arnardottir explains; it’s to make composing music accessible to anyone. At one point, Bryan says, a young boy came by to play with the prototype. “It was awesome to see how much fun he was having, creating musical patterns without any previous experience.”
