Mike Bridgman and Sean Hennessey, both musicians and residents of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, have recently made waves with the introduction of Quaver, an analog looping piano.
According to the founders of MajorMega – a company that takes on projects from website design to novelty online games – the idea came to them on a summer day while walking around Lancaster. Considered the "street piano capital of the world," pianos created by locals can be found on every block of the city.
Both knowing their way around a piano, the musicians decided to pitch an idea to "Music for Everyone," which is the non-profit organization behind the city's community music campaign, "Keys for the City." What they came up with is a way to record pieces worth saving, not through an external device, such as mobile phones, but through the piano itself — which they've equipped with the ability to directly upload music to the Internet, as well as record multiple layers in order to form a song. And thus, the Quaver, an interactive "Multiplayer Piano," was born.
On their blog, Bridgman and Hennessey detailed their work from the design phase up to the assembly and painting of the device. And although the finished product looks quite neat and slick, the process did not come without hurdles. CPU frequency and slow boot time were the two critical issues that needed to be addressed. With some last-minute tweaks, they were fixed and Quaver was ready for the showroom.
Quaver, which was painted blue by hand, allows up to four people to play simultaneously and record their music by pressing the very obvious "record button" in the middle. The indicator lights will turn red when recording and green when finished. The device also comes equipped with a scrolling LED, which was entailed in the build.
The main features available to users are the "Reset" button for the machine to reboot and the "Save and Upload" button, which does as it suggests and uploads the music piece to the Internet. The front panel also shows a "Play Previous" button, which allows anyone to hear the last song that was recorded.
Below is a live demo video of the Quaver on which Sean Hennessey plays a piece, recording and saving it on the device.
