Technology
Young entrepreneurs bring a new dimension to music creation, making the world your sound machine.
SAN FRANCISCO — Good news for those uncontrollable fidgeters out there: Your tapping quirk can be turned into your own style of music, thanks to collegiate entrepreneur Steven Dourmashkin and his Specdrums, a wearable app-connected ring that turns your surroundings into your instrument. The device — which won this year’s Red Bull Launchpad — is able to read colors and translate them into sound, turning clothes, desks and even skin into potential melodies.
RedBull.com caught up with Dourmashkin at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. Though he is currently pursuing a graduate degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder, as the Launchpad winner, he spent three days in the Bay Area presenting his product to industry insiders at the coveted Startup Battlefield.
“I grew up playing the drums,” he explained, “but wanted to a be able to do it without lugging around a giant drum set.” Using various apps that allow you to play on a smartphone felt too limiting, and so he set out to make the most truly portable tool.
“I thought using colors could make any object a drum," Dourmashkin told RedBull.com. With Specdrums, the user simply wears a silicon ring and taps on any surface. The device then reads each color and translates it into a unique sound. There’s a catalog of sounds and a 12-color “keyboard,” but users are able and encouraged to program their Specdrums to anything that happens to be around them. According to Dourmashkin, having a virtual music studio literally at your fingertips should be as feasible out in the middle of nowhere as it would be sitting at your desk or at home.
Perhaps it’s this idea of accessibility that’s made Specdrums so massively successful in such a short period of time. Created earlier this year, the original idea was to raise a cool $15,000 on Kickstarter. That amount would cover the costs of a small production of the product, and was reached in just a few days thanks in part to its spot at the featured tech product on the popular crowdsourcing site. Currently, Specdrums has 1,900-plus backers, and $188,944 of its $15,000 goal pledged.
For Dourmashkin, that sort of pressure is as motivating as it is flattering. “Now I really have to deliver.”
The Cornell University alumnus will be delivering, according to the Kickstarter campaign, to a wide demographic. Specdrums is for "drummers who tap all the time, musicians seeking a MIDI device that fits in their pocket, children who love to play with smart toys, teachers interested in new technology for STEAM education, developers looking for an open-source Bluetooth LE sensor suite and anyone who fidgets and taps at their desk.”
And while it’s not currently the focus, Dourmashkin has been exploring the option of the world of assistive technology. As many parents have pointed out, the sensory colors and music make the device appealing to children and adults with special needs. A mother of an autistic child wrote to Dourmashkin about her excitement for the prospect of her daughter more easily being able to express herself.
It’s important, he explained, to create a product anyone can enjoy.
“We want to inspire the next generation of musicians,” Dourmashkin said. Because Specdrums has a low barrier to entry, you don’t have to be a serious musician to create beautiful compositions. “It just makes it easier to get an interest in music.”
And maybe that’s the secret to Specdrums' swift success: It’s just about getting more beauty out into the world. It’s simply about creating music for anyone, anywhere.