Backed Or Whacked: One Keyboard And One Harmonica Strike Two Different Kickstarter Chords

Editor?s note:?Ross Rubin?is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at?Techspressive. Each column will look at crowdfunded products that have either met or missed their funding goals. Follow him on Twitter?@rossrubin. Given Kickstarter?s mission as a place to promote creative projects, gadgets that have roots in the arts seem to have a particular affinity with the service. For example, hardly a week goes by without a device to steady or roll a camera gracing the Design section. Music-making devices don?t appear as often, but a pair of portable instruments/MIDI controller projects recently met with different fates on the service. Backed: QuNexus. Keith McMillen Instruments has been responsible for many firsts, all of which its namesake CEO can adeptly catch and throw in midair in QuNexus? Kickstarter video. The company is a returning Kickstarter alum, having raised more than $165,000 for the now-shipping QuNeo, an iPad-sized MIDI controller that features multicolored, multitouch light-up surfaces for feedback. QuNeo brimmed with unmarked controls, such as 16 trigger pads, nine multitouch sliders, two rotary sensors, and a look inspired by the illuminated disco dance floor that John Travolta made famous in Saturday Night Fever. If the QuNeo had a novel take on the drum pad, its QuNexus follow-on does the same for a portable MIDI keyboard controller. Most of its rectangular pads are laid out in two chromatic octaves that light up white or blue; the pads are sensitive to velocity and tilt. Unlike a conventional musical keyboard, you can press different parts of the squishy pads to bend the sound. (There is also a separate but small pitch bend pad.) The lack of much key travel on a keyboard-style MIDI controller may be more of a disadvantage than it is on a drum-style one, but the device is much thinner than a comparable traditional controller and less susceptible to having keys stressed during travel. With about a week to go in the campaign and with already more than 50 percent above its modest $20,000 funding goal, the QuNexus is expected to arrive in the tapping hands of musicians next April. Whacked: Jamboxx. The Jamboxx has nothing to do with the well-regarded Yves Behar-designed portable Bluetooth speaker devices from Jawbone. (The extra ?x? is for x-halation). While indeed boxy (boxxy?), the Jamboxx looks a bit like and is played similarly to a large harmonica. It can not only be used as an instrument or

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