Playback, Air Guitar, Air Drums

Playback scandals were some of the most interesting and laughable (as well) issues in the music industry. Remember the cult duo Milli Vanilli and all the crap they (in fact, their producer) caused because of "air vocaling". These days air guitarists are to be seen on various TV shows and media almost make them real artists. F*** that, if I may say so! Waving your hands and contorting your fingers mocking the real effort and skill of an actual guitarist is just crap and I guess that serious players would never look at such "performance" but as a foolish proof of others' disdain capabilities.

Now it looks that "air guitarring" is to be completed with some air drumming. Until some majestic drum-mockers invade TVs and the Internet, some preparative tool is available already: the iPod (again iPods) Digital Drumsticks, courtesy of Hammacher Schlemmer.

"Ages 8 and up" usually means they're built rather for children and should children be the only ones to sue them well. That would be one hell of a good thing as for a kid, learning the first steps in drumming and what drumming actually is could easily be the start of a very nice career. Unfortunately I strongly believe that soon we are about to see air drummers on YouTube...

Until then, a couple of words on the sticks. Following a shamefully bad-developed brilliant idea from the 80's, the Digital Drumsticks can connect to amplifiers, iPods or headphones, for a starting point: you can do some loud drumming while plugged into a PA (please don't!), or rehearse jamming along with some tracks on your portable music player or (best) drum for yourselves while wearing headphones.

The sticks plug into a digital drumming module somehow like a V-drum MIDI module (but smaller in scale and even smaller in possibilities) which will sense your sticks' motion and reproduce actual drum sounds.
Each stick has two additional buttons for you to use in combination with arm movement and which will actually allow you to produce more complex beats including elements such as snare drum, bass drum, tom, floor tom, hi-hat and crash cymbal.Volume controls complete the not so wide options-array on these rather cool sticks you can technically carry away with you everywhere due to their small size and weight; these Wii-esque drumsticks are most likely to become a hit in the children's world due to their bargain price as well: $29.95!

As for the air-guitarists and other air rockstars... please do not touch them! Please!