Sequencing Beats with Bubble Gum

Squarely in the “not seen at NAMM” category, the Bubblegum Sequencer uses differently-colored bubble gum balls, arranged in a grid of holes, to create rhythmic patterns. It’s not exactly a leap forward for music — you wind up with a pretty simple drum step sequencer — but it does look like fun. Or it would be, except I’d wind up eating the tangible sequencer. Note to self: make interfaces out of something I won’t devour.
What’s rather interesting here is that the whole system uses computer vision analysis — a camera spots the gum balls by color. One thing that means is that you could skip the grid altogether and apply this to something very different.
The hyper-rational voiceover I find really amusing. Now, just add hard-disk recording next year, and the Bumblegum 5000 could in fact be at NAMM.
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/01/23/sequencing-beats-with-bubble-gum/