Sky-High Equipment Costs May Lead Musicians to Cheaper Alternatives

Dakota Smith plays guitar for the Austin-based band Peel. He has owned a Thingamagoop since 2007 after he found out about them through a secret online society.

“With a normal keyboard you look at it and there’s a lot you can do and there’s a lot of potential, but you don’t know how to really craft the sounds,” said Smith. “With the Thingamagoop you have fewer methods of interface than people have fingers so you can actually play with it. It’s more organic.”

Peel often uses the Thingamagoop in some of its noisier parts of songs.

“It’s a cross between a spice or seasoning and a garnish,” said Smith. “It gets used live so much because it is something people haven’t seen before. They don’t quite know how it works. The correctly inspired person could use it to play music.”

Smith believes that when comparing the Thingamagoop to a comparably priced synthesizer, he gets more bang for his buck from the Bleep Labs creation.

“You walk into a Guitar Center and you can’t get anything for $120,” said Smith.

Some believe it better serves as a toy.

“It’s a one-trick pony in a good way,” said Evan Jacobs, an employee at Music Makers in Austin. “It does one thing and does it well, but it’s more of a toy. That’s not a derogatory term. You don’t have the amount of possibilities that you do with a keyboard. You don’t have specific control.”

Thingamagoops aren’t the only relatively inexpensive technology on the market. Other software and hardware exists for the thrifty musician.

One way that some musicians get around the cost barrier is by building their own instruments. Bleep Labs offers a Thingamakit that allows musicians to construct their own synthesizers for $70.

The Internet is full of free or inexpensive software that allows musicians to do their own programming. Today, software exists that can replicate the sound of any musical instrument.

Arduino is a processor that is used to make music on personal computers. Arduino software can also be used to program sounds into an Arduino board. The technology is far cheaper than comparable products. Digital music can be cheaper than music made with acoustic instruments, and with the improving quality of music technology, it may become a more accepted substitute to traditional music.

In 2005, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, PLOrk, was formed. It is an ensemble of “laptopists” and attempts to take the traditional orchestra and reinvent it for the 21st century. Each performer is equipped with a laptop and a speaker, and the musicians are arranged in a way that imitates the way traditional orchestral instruments cast their sound in space.

One band, Casper and the Cookies, replaced their quitting drummer with an iPod.

Whatever stance society may take on digital music, these technologies are worth noting. They may be the future of the music industry.