Piano Roll For Swinging Cisterns

If you feel your home needs a fresh infusion of music technology, here are some suggestions for the musical gadgetisation of two common household items. The first is itself an example of breakthrough music technology, which now may be in need of some modernisation – the piano. The second is more ubiquitous, although not commonly associated with music until now – the toilet.

An article in Smarthouse details how PianoDisc technology can be used to convert your acoustic piano into a modern-day player piano. Installing the system allows the piano to play itself as an accompaniment to your portable mp3 player, with solenoids moving the keys in a ghostly fashion. The system can communicate with computers, MIDI controllers or music players via an embedded Linux-based web server and 802.11n wireless.

In Japan, however, they are really getting down to basics. A company called Inax has developed a toilet which they fetchingly dubbed the Satis Asteo Washlet. This device comes with a memory card slot and an inbuilt collection of Bach and Chopin works which play automatically when the toilet is in use. It is also equipped with a nightlight to help guide any nocturnal excursions.

As a further aside, this reminds me of a device I once conceived of which (I would imagine) could well be in existence in Japan already. This device could be built in to a toilet, but would need to be within reach of one. Essentially, in times of excessively flatulent depositage, a sort of jukebox device (perhaps on the wall) could be activated by button, producing loud noise to cover the sound of other proceedings. It might be amusing for such noise to be of an even louder flatulent depositage, but i suppose any sort of white noise or heavy metal crescendo would do the trick. If anyone reading this decides to proceed with constructing such a system, please remember to cut me in on the deal…!