Tech Reviews: New products (September 2022)

Rassel – Pocket Shaker (iOS)

Price: Free

Using your device's gyroscope, Rassel turns your phone into a fun, and surprisingly realistic shaker. It's quite uncanny how the shaker feels and sounds in the hand, and the app is very intuitive and easy to use. Rassel comes with four different instruments: egg, shaker, tambourine and bells (ready for Christmas!). There is also a loudness dial to increase the volume of each of the sounds alongside the ability to include background sounds. This allows you to shake along to songs playing in another app on your device – great for individual practice.

klevgrand.com/products/rassel

Roland E-X50

Price: £337

Roland has brought out a fantastic feature-rich keyboard that would be well suited to classroom demonstrations, accompanying and beyond. It has brilliant Roland sounds, integrated speakers, and mic input with changeable effects, signaling that this can be an all-in-one solution. The E-X50's sophisticated auto-accompaniment features let you command a full band with your left hand as you play along with the right, and a Bluetooth input affords you the flexibility of playing along to tracks and lessons too.

www.roland.com/uk/products/e-x50

Blindfold EQ (Mac, PC)

Price: Free

Blindfold EQ is a free EQ plugin with an aim of getting people to EQ using their ears, not their eyes. It has four bands (LowShelf, LowMid, HighMid, HighShelf), and each knob is blind! There are no indicators or numbers to show frequency values, gain values or Q values. This could provide many fantastic activities for students. Pair it with a stock graphic EQ to showcase the effects of their blind decisions on the frequency spectrum, or give them challenging tracks to try and tidy up just using their ears. The plugin itself is laid out very clearly with just the right number of parameters that makes it accessible and usable for professionals and students alike. A nobrainer addition to the music technology classroom.

www.audiothing.net/effects/blindfold-eq

EarBeater Web

Price: Free

With over 200 exercises, EarBeater is a great free-to-use website to help learn fundamental aural skills. Compare and identify intervals, chords, inversions, and scales, and even create your own custom exercises to save and use with different groups. Some websites like this can feel quite cluttered and are not easy to navigate; fortunately, EarBeater doesn't share these issues. Its interface is well laid out, and the exercises are readily available within a couple of clicks. It also features a large playable piano graphic during the exercises to help visually and aurally spell out what is happening, enabling you to demonstrate methods for hearing the different chords, scales, notes and so on.

www.earbeater.com/online-ear-training