Conductive Picks and Sticks for iPad Garage Band

Pix & Stix let you strum and drum in iPad Garage Band, just as nature intended

Garage Band is one of the stand-out apps on the iPad, whether v1 or v2. Not only is it easy to use, it?s fun. This is why I, a person who?s guitar?s main function is to hang on the wall collecting dust, have spent more time with Garage Band since I first downloaded it than I have with a real instrument in the past few years.

In some ways, Garage Band is more of an awesome game about music than a musical device itself.

And what makes any game better? Cool accessories. Enter Pix & Stix, accessory picks and sticks to help ?play? Garage Band. In the kit you get two sticks and one pick. All of these have electro conductive tips so the iPad?s touch-screen thinks that you are tapping and strumming with a finger.

Of these, I expect the sticks to be more useful. It feels a little awkward tapping away at the on-screen drums with my flesh fingertips, and it?s quite hard to keep to a rhythm. A pair of sticks would clearly be way better.

But given the way we play the guitars in Garage Band, the pick may work less well. I guess you could hoist the whole iPad up in front of your belly as if it were a real guitar, but that seems like a recipe for dropping the thing. I?m sure that the inevitable guitar-shaped iPad holder is already on a designers drawing board somewhere, but until it?s real, fingers are probably fine.

The kit will cost $15 if it makes it to market. I say ?if? as Pix & Stix is funding itself like a Kickstarter project, only without Kickstarter. Thus, if the goal is reached, you get the gear. If not, you get a refund. If you?re trusting enough to pay out on this kind of deal, go ahead.

Pix & Stix [Pix & Stix via Red Ferret]

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Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/05/conductive-picks-and-sticks-for-ipad-garage-band/

ncis la anderson cooper stevie nicks maria shriver google io