A 2008 National Endowment for the Arts survey (http://www.nea.gov/research/2008-sppa.pdf) finds that 12.6% of Americans above the age of 18 play a musical instrument.  We think that is a very low percentage, but the difficult thing to accept about that number is that it is dropping.  Can you imagine a future with no music? Of course not!  But maybe you are feeling that music has started to stagnate to a point where innovation is scarce and songs start to sound like things you’ve heard before.  Audiences have lost appreciation for instrumental virtuosos and gone wild for American Idols and YouTube phenomena.  Whether you are a musician or just a music fan your world is changing, and not for the better. 

All is not lost.  There is much we can all do, and here are some easy ideas:

According to a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts survey (http://nea.gov/research/2008-SPPA-ArtsLearning.pdf), “Overall, those who took any lessons in a single art form during childhood and adulthood were twice as likely to attend a benchmark arts event as those who had no art education.  Those who took any lessons in two art forms were almost three times as likely as those who had no arts education to attend a benchmark event.”

You can support music programs in many ways locally and nationally.  I have personally started to support littlekidsrock.com through a 30 day Yoga challenge.  I hope to raise $3000 to support music in U.S. public schools and maybe improve my drumming through better posture.  Here are some other programs you can explore:

http://www.nammfoundation.org/support-music
http://www.vh1savethemusic.com/

If you want to be a little proactive in supporting new artists and their musicianship, you can volunteer to teach or simply guide budding musicians in the right direction.  Every little bit helps.  Take a look at these examples:

http://www.schoolofrock.com/
https://www.mikeslessons.com/

The point here is that the world needs more musicians, and that will in turn lead to greater musicians.  Encouraging someone to take up music will help us do this, but don’t forget, studies show that you will be increasing your audience as well!

- Luke

Synesthesia Corporation: 12-18-12

Past

2012 has been a year of foundation building.  Mandala mk2.9 represents the fourth iteration of the Mandala Drum and we couldn’t be more pleased with it.  Our feeling here is that we have a marketable product that, as a piece of hardware, competes very well with and even surpasses other electronic drums.  The technology is state-of-the-art, reliable, durable and affordable.  Our software is also a competitive product and we are even more proud of it.  Just recently we released our software as a free download and have been able to reach a wider audience as those who have downloaded it now realize the increased sonic range a series of MIDI signals can produce.

Present

We are presenting a complementary product in the form of the SYNAPSE, an eDrum and controller pedal to USB MIDI converter and hub.  Currently, the demand for such a device is being tested by our decision to “crowd fund” through Kickstarter.com.  Software is creating and affecting sounds live and in studios all over the world and we want to help you get as many instrument and pedal signals into those audio programs as possible so you can express yourself to the fullest.  We think Kickstarter is a great way to connect with a broad audience capable of appreciating what we believe are not only cool music technologies but also smart music technologies.  Please check it out and get involved if you haven’t already:  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1097022379/mandala-synapse-e-drum-pedals-to-usb-midi-converte?ref=live

Future

2013 promises to be a year of tremendous growth for the Mandala brand.  This is great and welcome news for all Mandala fans and owners as the growth is planned for the Mandala software and online ecosystem.  This means that new content will be compatible and available with all mk2.9 Mandalas.  As mentioned earlier, the hardware is set, and in the form of mk2.9, is more capable than our software and sounds have yet revealed.  New sounds, software upgrades, games and lessons will be made available as we build out our digital and online offerings.  A lot will be free and some will be worth paying for.  We have no doubt you’ll let us know what you value, and we look forward to hearing from you, good, bad, or indifferent.

As 2013 unfolds we hope to keep true to our mission of delivering technologies, instruments and devices that inspire more musicians to play drums and more drummers to create great music.  Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and cheers to becoming just a lot smarter and a little cooler in the new year.

Best Wishes,

Vince and Luke

Synesthesia Corporation, maker of the Mandala Drum, operates out of facilities in and around Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, CA.  The nucleus of the operation, just outside of Vince’s brain, is a place we like to call the ‘Mandala Den.’  

The Den sits high up in the mountains with a wall of windows overlooking Los Angeles and the Pacific.  It used to be a big garage but the garage door has not been opened in more than 10 years.  The opening mechanism has been ‘repurposed’ and along the closed door are rows of shelves actively organized with electrical components, tools, equipment and materials catalogued in Vince’s brain.  He has the uncanny ability of knowing the exact location of every little component or mechanical scrap when the need for it arises.

In his early days as a UCLA engineering grad student Vince was lucky enough to strike a true friendship with a famous American psychologist and writer named Tim.  Tim was famous for more than psychology and writing, but Vince’s friendship with him was based on the pursuit of knowledge regarding subjects from science to theology.  In this pursuit Vince would often find himself privy to conversations in Tim’s house involving professors and nobel laureates, philosophers and physicists, writers and musicians.  These people were a well of enlightened energy.

Tim is gone many years.  However, while he is missed, his gatherings live on in some form.  Most of those same enlightened minds have joined Vince in the Den to refine their ideas and make them reality.  The Den is our nucleus because it’s where every project begins and finds the energy that will sustain it to a full production offering like the Mandala.

Kudos to Craig Anderton of Electronic Musician magazine for his spot-on review of the Mandala mk2.9. On newsstands now!

Your kid’s begging and pleading for a musical instrument might not be just another fleeting whim like an XBox or an iPhone. Many kids start to show an inclination toward music in their formative years, and with music programs all but gone from public schools, plus the cost and convenience barriers to owning an instrument at home (not to mention lessons), there’s a good chance parents might miss the golden window of opportunity to foster their child’s natural musical talents.

But things have changed. Renowned music inventor and creator of the Mandala Drum, Vince De Franco, cites the proliferation of affordable, electronic instruments that allow kids to learn how to play music just as effectively as their traditional counterparts (and in some cases, more easily!)

Vince shares some ideas for electronic musical instruments that score high with Moms based on ‘affordability’ and value, ‘learnability’ and ease of use, and ‘stickability’ (meaning your kid will ‘stick’ to playing it, rather than stuffing it under their bed in a few weeks).

1.)    Fretlight Guitar by Optek

(http://www.fretlight.com/)

At around $400, this guitar will run you about the same as the standard starter guitar, but with one huge difference – Fretlight guitars actually teach your kid how to play without an instructor. Chords, scales, songs, and riffs light up on the neck of the guitar, guiding your child’s fingers to where they need to be, just as a music teacher might. Fretlight comes with free software which interfaces directly with the guitar and offers additional software and lessons on their website.

2.)    You Rock Guitar by Inspired Instruments

(http://www.yourockguitar.com/)

The You Rock is a versatile and well designed digital guitar. It has a pressure sensitive neck (rather than strings) that can detect where your child’s fingers are. Complete with settings for live performances and built-in sound and rhythm tracks, as well as a built-in recorder and an input jack so your child can play along with their favorite audio device. An added bonus – kids can plug in their headphones while practicing and not disturb the whole house.

At $219, it’s an affordable, versatile, inspiring instrument that your kid will find a use for even if they later decide they don’t want to grow up and be a famous guitar player.

3.)    Mandala Drum by Synesthesia Corp.

(http://www.MandalaDrum.com)

For $349, the Mandala Drum costs much less than the usual $2,000+ drum kit your kid might ask for, and is the only electronic drum smart enough to sense exactly where and how hard you hit it (making it remarkably close to an acoustic drum surface.) Included with the drum is Mandala’s Virtual Brain Software that has thousands of drum samples, so your kid can effectively play thousands of different kinds of drums, and even load their own sound samples into the library. The drum is compact enough to fit into a backpack and connects to your kid’s computer, so s/he can plug in their headphones.

But what kids will really like are the bragging rights that come along with it. Played by music icons like Danny Carey and educators like California Institute of the Arts instructor Amy Knoles, the Mandala is a true professional’s tool that happens to be easy enough, rewarding enough, and cheap enough for your kid to learn on.

4.)    Rock Band by Harmonix Music Systems

(http://www.rockband.com/)

Most parents have heard of this gaming phenomenon, but they might not realize the real-life musical applications of Rock Band. The fact is kids can actually learn how to drum through a video game as sophisticated as this one. A good deal of the skill kids develop playing this game actually translates into real-life drumming ability. Perhaps not a true substitute for the real thing, Rock Band is still a good entry into drumming.

The game costs about $230 including instruments for XBox and Playstation 3, plus the added cost of the console if you don’t already have one at home.

5.)    EZ-200 Lighted Keyboard by Yamaha 

(http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical-instruments/keyboards/digitalkeyboards/lighted_key_lighted_fret_instruments/ez-200/)

Sometimes kids need a little extra gratification from the moment they start a sport, hobby, or in this case, instrument, in order to whet their appetites for continued learning. Yamaha’s EZ-200 lights up the keys to over 100 built-in songs so kids can actually play a song right out of the box. The song will also stop and wait for your child to hit the right key, so the pace of learning is always right. Songs are separated into left- and right-hand segments and a built-in lesson grader monitors your child’s performance.

But like the others on this list – the Yamaha EZ-200 isn’t a toy. An expressive touch feature and true stereo sound make this instrument worth the roughly $240 you’ll spend on it.

 About Vince De Franco

Vince De Franco’s career straddles 20 years of engineering advanced sensor technologies, as well as collaborating with some of the world’s most renowned musical artists, to test and develop the inventions that are shaping the modern musical frontier. De Franco is the inventor behind the Dimension Beam (later licensed to Roland Corp. as the D-Beam) which was first popularized by artists such as U2, Peter Gabriel, Yes, Stevie Wonder, and TOOL. It was while working with TOOL’s drummer Danny Carey that De Franco conceived of and created the Mandala, the only electronic instrument of its kind that senses both strike position and the intensity with which it is struck.

Here is a recent editorial we ran across that begins to describe the philosophy we share at Synesthesia. 

As we marry groundbreaking technology with musicianship, we see the dance between science and art.  Computers and the internet have ushered in the binary age.  Everything in our world, from politics to physics, is polarized; positive or negative, good or bad, right or wrong, 1 or 0, it is or it is not.  However, in between that polarity is a beauty we all crave.  It is something intangible that transcends explanation.  It is art and we are all artists.

Luke

How to Avoid a Bonfire of the Humanities

‘English majors are exactly the people I’m looking for,’ one successful Silicon-Valley entrepreneur recently told me.

By Michael S. Malone

A half-century ago in his famous “Two Cultures” speech, C.P. Snow defined the growing rift between the world of scientists (including, increasingly, the commercial world) and that of literary intellectuals (including, increasingly, the humanities). It’s hard to imagine the sciences and the humanities ever having been united in common cause. But that day may come again soon.

Today, the “two cultures” not only rarely speak to one another, but also increasingly, as their languages and world views diverge, are unable to do so. They seem to interact only when science churns up in its wake some new technological phenomenon—personal computing, the Internet, bioengineering—that revolutionizes society and human interaction and forces the humanities to respond with a whole new set of theories and explanations.

Not surprisingly, as science has grown to dominate modern society, the humanities have withered into increasing irrelevancy. For them to imagine that they have anything approaching the significance or influence of the sciences smacks of a kind of sad, last-ditch desperation. Science merely nods and says, “I see your Jane Austen monographs and deconstructions of ‘The Tempest’ and raise you stem-cell research and the iPhone”—and then pockets all of the chips on the table.

All of this may seem like a sideshow—in our digital age the humanities will limp along as science consolidates its triumph. There is, after all, a distinct trajectory to industries and disciplines that are about to be annihilated by technology. Typically, those insular worlds operate along with misplaced confidence. They expect an industry evolution; they fail to recognize that they are facing a revolution—and if they don’t utterly transform themselves, right now, it will destroy them. But of course, they never do.

I watched this happen in almost every tech industry, and now it is spreading to almost every other industry and profession. Medicine, education, governance, the military and my own profession of journalism. And so I found myself earlier this year talking with the head of the English department where I teach. The department’s tenured faculty had been reduced to just a handful of professors, many nearing retirement; the rest of the staff was mostly part-time adjunct lecturers. And the students? Little more than half the number of majors of just a decade earlier. I had seen this before.

I asked him: How bad is it? “It’s pretty bad,” he said. “And this economy is only making it worse. There are parents now who tell their kids they will only pay tuition for a business, engineering or science degree.”

Aversion to risk, lack of research money, dwindling market share, a declining talent pool. That is how mature industries die; perhaps it is the same story with aging fields of thought. But hope for the humanities may be on the horizon, coming from an unlikely source: Silicon Valley.

A few months back I invited a friend to speak in front of my professional writing class. Santosh Jayaram is the quintessential Silicon Valley high-tech entrepreneur: tech-savvy, empirical, ferociously competitive, and a veteran of Google, Twitter and a new start-up, Dabble. Afraid that he would simply run over my writing students, telling them to switch majors before it was too late, I asked him not to crush the kids’ hopes any more than they already were.

Santosh said, “Are you kidding? English majors are exactly the people I’m looking for.” He explained: Twenty years ago, if you wanted to start a company, you spent a month or so figuring out the product you wanted to build, then devoted the next 10 or 12 months to developing the prototype, tooling up and getting into full production.

These days, he said, everything has been turned upside down. Most products now are virtual, such as iPhone apps. You don’t build them so much as construct them from chunks of existing software code—and that work can be contracted out to hungry teams of programmers anywhere in the world, who can do it in a couple of weeks.

But to get to that point, he said, you must spend a year searching for that one undeveloped niche that you can capture. And you must also use that time to find angel or venture investment, establish strategic partners, convince talented people to take the risk and join your firm, explain your product to code writers and designers, and most of all, begin to market to prospective major customers. And you have to do all of that without an actual product.

“And how do you do that?” Santosh said. “You tell stories.” Stories, he said, about your product and how it will be used that are so vivid that your potential stakeholders imagine it already exists and is already part of their daily lives. Almost anything you can imagine you can now build, said Santosh, so the battleground in business has shifted from engineering, which everybody can do, to storytelling, for which many fewer people have real talent. “That’s why I want to meet your English majors,” he said.

Asked once what made his company special, Steve Jobs replied: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.”

Could the humanities rebuild the shattered bridge between C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” and find a place at the heart of the modern world’s virtual institutions? We assume that this will be a century of technology. But if the competition in tech moves to this new battlefield, the edge will go to those institutions that can effectively employ imagination, metaphor, and most of all, storytelling. And not just creative writing, but every discipline in the humanities, from the classics to rhetoric to philosophy. Twenty-first-century storytelling: multimedia, mass customizable, portable and scalable, drawing upon the myths and archetypes of the ancient world, on ethics, and upon a deep understanding of human nature and even religious faith.

The demand is there, but the question is whether the traditional humanities can furnish the supply. If they can’t or won’t, they will continue to wither away. But surely there are risk-takers out there in those English and classics departments, ready to leap on this opportunity. They’d better hurry, because the other culture won’t wait.

Mr. Malone is the author of the recently published “The Guardian of All Things: The Epic Story of Human Memory” (St. Martin’s Press). This op-ed is based on his speech at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University on Oct. 18.

Mandala wants to welcome you as a Endorsee and to spell out what that means to you and to us:

We are open to your ideas on how best to promote you and the Mandala.  We may provide a discount, but we do not provide free equipment.  When you use the Mandala in your public and recorded performances we would like to promote it and in doing so we promote your work with the full force of our PR, marketing and social network apparatus.

There are many reasons why we don’t provide free product, but for the sake of brevity we will stress two reasons.  First, we are a small company and it is neither feasible nor practical for us to give product away.  Secondly, and most importantly, the reason for providing product would be for the expressed purpose of the artist using the product.  We believe that when you purchase the product you really use it and you are not forced to use something because you got it for free.

In the end we have had no shortage of artists playing Mandalas, because they believe in the quality and reliability of our hardware and software.  However, we wanted to explain the mutual benefit of endorsements and encourage artists of all levels to inquire.  An endorsement is a relationship and it is never too early to start one.  If you own a Mandala and you are pursuing your art then we welcome you to grow with us.

For more detailed information on how endorsement deals work industrywide, please refer to the article ‘Big Names Go With Big Names’ on page 30 of the August issue of Digital Drummer Mag. (It’s free to register for this informative online magazine!):   http://www.emag.digitaldrummermag.com/Login.aspx

Included with every Mandala purchase is proprietary Mandala Virtual Brain software.  This software and its sound library are designed to maximize the utility of the Mandala’s patented position sensor.  No program better illustrates all the capabilities of Mandala Drum technology than the Virtual Brain.  Our program was, however, inspired by early versions of Native Instruments Battery.  Because the Mandala is essentially a standard USB MIDI controller it can control any MIDI software; and if you’d like to explore, Battery 3 is a natural path to take.  Here is why…

Battery is the most versatile 3rd party drum sampler program for taking advantage of Mandala Drum position sensitive technology because it allows the highest level of sound configuration detail based on the Mandala’s 128 strike positions.  Battery actually supports the Mandala just as much as the Mandala supports Battery because Battery offers full mapping of all 128 Mandala controller zones as well as a user definable cell matrix which can represent multiple Mandalas and their six main strike zones: Center, Mid-In, Mid-Out, Edge, Rim and Xstick (as shown by Danny Carey).  For example, playing a Battery kit with other electronic drums will give you one sound per surface, but playing a Battery kit with Mandalas can give you different sounds every millimeter from center to edge of every surface.  Those different sounds from center to edge can range from realistic (slight filter changes/pitch-bending/etc.) to radical (massive distortion increase/delay feedback changes/etc.).  In other words, with a few tweaks to standard Battery kit presets (or by building your own Mandala kits within Battery) the resolution of the nuance of your playing increases by a factor of 128!  That and much more is possible by way of Battery’s Cell Activation and Modulation Router options, which were designed to be controlled by keyboards, until the Mandala’s zone and controller output bridged that gap for drummers. 

Danny Carey calls it a ‘forever instrument’ and we are living up to that.  What he is saying is that, like that vintage electric guitar you admire, the simple genius of the piece endures.  You don’t need to make changes.  It ain’t broke.  Don’t fix it.

We have no plans to change the way the Mandala Drum works.  Its compatibility carries into the future.  We do, however, have plans to continue building up the ecosystem around the Mandala.  That includes an iOS app version of the Virtual Brain and an online sound store.  While it will be limited at first we will build it up quickly based on customer feedback and demand.

We appreciate all our customers.  You have all sung our praises, steered us in the direction we need to go, and most of all, you have demonstrated the reliability of the Mandala.  

As more people catch on to what the Mandala is and what it can do for their music and their creativity, we will be hard at work adding to the Mandala ecosystem that will add value to the mk2.9 for as long as you own it.

The smartest thing you will ever hit with a stick is only getting smarter. 

Lead People Into the New Space: Interview with Danny Carey of Tool

Yes, we saved the best for last.  Danny Carey has some awesome thoughts on what makes real music and what a true musician is tasked with when creating and performing.

Like Amy, Danny talks about how a sense of familiarity and expectation needs to be played out (and manipulated) when creating music.  “Anticipate the chord changes, anticipate the arrangements and set things up.  Set up the nuances and changes as the music progresses, and lead people into the new space.”

For Danny, it’s the very action of ‘leading’ the audience through a song that marks a great artist.  Artfully carrying people through the pathways of a piece to that ‘new space’ that they’re expecting to reach is, in fact, the core of the art form.  You can take that thought even further – it’s not about being different for the sake of being different, or creating sounds for the sake of creating sounds.  It’s about exploring music with an open ear, but still listening for those specific sounds, beats, and rhythms that ring true and stir something universal in everyone. 

On the surface it sounds simple.  But when you think about it, it’s tremendous.  Anyone can discover sounds, but only a musician can uncover the right sounds and make sense of them.  Not to get too lofty here, but it reminds us of Michelangelo who said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”

The frontier of music is right there for the taking, you just have to search for it.  And lucky you – you’re a musician who has a talent for finding it, unlike the rest of the masses.

Play the Electronics, Don’t Just Use Them

Last week Ryeland Allison boiled everything down to rhythm.  This week we’re exploring a philosophy that revolves around electronic music.  In the second part of our 3-part interview series, Amy Knoles (who runs the Electronic Percussion Department at the California Institute of the Arts) describes how in her classrooms, students can basically do whatever they want, and “it doesn’t have to be a sound you’ve heard before, but it needs to have the same characteristics as an acoustic instrument.”

For Amy, there’s an acoustic phenomenon that every electronic sound needs to relate back to.  It’s an interesting thought that has sparked some discussion back here at the Mandala Den.  Whether you are using an acoustic or an electronic instrument to create your sound, inherent in the final product is a part of you.  You are the catalyst that gives the sound depth and soul.  We have referred to it before regarding our namesake, the Mandala; Locating yourself within your world. 

Watch the video and listen to the music her class makes with the Mandala.  We know you’ll have thoughts one way or another, and we want to hear them. 

Everything Starts With Rhythm

A great percussionist once told our close friend Ryeland Allison “Everything is rhythm…keep speeding up the beats and you get into the zone of audible pitch.”.  Ryeland is an amazing drummer himself, and over the years he has worked with Mandala both as a partner and a fan.  We have tremendous respect for him, and many of our own Mandala followers have written us about Ryeland’s work and musical philosophy.  We’ve had plenty of discussions about one’s personal evolution as a musician, and that specific point where you jump from just playing the instruments to actually contributing to a larger musical dialogue (i.e. you start talking like Ryeland does in this video). 

We’ve produced this three-part interview series starting with Ryeland as a way of extending that conversation.  Watch it.  Enjoy it.  Digest it.  Tell us what your thoughts are.  You’ll see that among our three subjects (Ryeland Allison, Amy Knoles, and Danny Carey) the core values of music take on different forms.  Those differences and unique points of view are what drive us.

If it hasn’t happened to you already, one day you’ll find yourself suddenly talking about music in a totally different and profound way.  You’ll have an opinion that goes beyond modern songs, or how the industry stifles creativity, or how so-and-so is the best drummer of all time.  You’ll say something really insightful that stems from years of experience and exposure to the medium.  That is a really exciting turning point for any musician.

Call us when it happens…maybe we’ll interview YOU!

Mandala Featured Artist Series

We’re giving people a Mandala and a video camera for two weeks to document how they learn to play the drum and how they discover new creative possibilities.

Drummers and non-drummers, teens and granddads, professionals and the totally inexperienced – anyone can be a Mandala Featured Artist.

Our first Featured Artist is 15 year old Logan N. from Florida, whose passion for drumming was sparked by his father.  Here is Logan’s introductory experience: