Japanese arcade machine lets anyone become PVD for a few yen

Beatmania is a DJing arcade machine that follows the “Guitar Hero” format.  The ‘DJ’ spins to Konami-produced tracks, using a turntable and seven buttons.  If you spin and tap in sync, it will sound decent.  If not, the resulting track will end up being pretty dodgy.  All this is judged by the ‘groove gauge’, so even if you think you sounded hot, your grade, from AAA to F, could prove you wrong.

Though an impressive-looking machine, the machine doesn’t quite replicate the thrills and spills of DJing for real.  For a start there are no inedbriates hanging around requestng garage tracks, there’s no fear of a stray Jack Daneils and Coke landing in your mixer, and from what I hear, there are no random girls kneeling under the console either!!

There are, unfortunately no plans for Beatmania to come to Europe or the US; worse still, if you want to buy your own, that’ll be a cool £12,000 please!!

Looking like something you’d expect to find in a lab, the nano series is Korg’s latest stab at the controller market.  Aimed at laptop users, producers on the go and msuic-makers lcked into minimal spaces, the range consists of compact kets, trigger pads and even a channel mixer.

All three are the same size and shape, measuring the same width as a MacBook laptop by a couple of inches deep, and have a low profile.  The nonKEY spans two octaves with its 25 keys; the nanoPAD sports 12 trigger pads and an XY pad; while nanoKONTROL offers nine faders and knobs, plus 18 switches and a transport section.

All units feature a consistent white and blue plastic design, and connection is via USB, which also supplies the unit’s power.

Pricing and availability have not been specified yet, but we expect it won’t be long now.

The touch-screen turntable has been a dream for many DJs, but it has now become reality thanks to the pioneer efforts of Scott Hobbs.  The Attigo TT is the result of his final year design project and is a touch-screen interface designed for DJing with mp3 tracks.

Attigo (pronounced a-tee-go) is the Latin word for ‘touch’ and TT is an abbreviation for touch-screen turnable.  It allows DJs to see, hear, touch and manipulate a track as it is being played.  It uses a visual waveform of the music travelling vertically upwards on a conveyor belt, in a similar way to Serato Scratch.

Boasting all the same functions of a turntable, including transport buttons, as well as the cueing and looping functions of a CD deck, Scott claimed: “There is nothing that the TT will no be able to do.”

The Attigo TT is not available to buy yet but keep up with the latest developments through Scott’s website at www.scotthobbs.co.uk and www.attigo.co.uk

A Minneapolis-based design company can transform your dull, black or silver DJ gadgets into high quality, colourful pieces of art. Their website, www.styleflip.com allows users to customise their gear by creating their own unique skins from a CDJ to an MP3 player

One of the worst things about festivals is when your phone dies. Those clever bods at Orange have solved this problem, kind of, with this arm band that actually charges your phone by converting the kinetic energy you produce when dancing.

For now it’s still at the prototype stage but it will be on show at Glasto this weekend.