SoundGate, the computer for musicians

Computers are undoubtedly the most important invention of the 20th century and helped a lot of people, and this is true also for artists, but I’m not gonna write about this now. I just want to tell you about SoundGate, a computer specially designed for musicians.

What makes SoundGate special is its design, basically a tablet PC, and preloaded software tools that help individual learning, add tutor lessons and live playing. Also SoundGate facilitates creative artists by recording playing sessions, recognizing and transcribing music, prompting sheet music and lyrics.

Like musicians, SoundGate is cool

Sound Gate is also capable of generating electronic accompaniment sound and display timings and metronome. For the PC part we can tell you that SoundGate has a 10" touchscreen LCD screen, useful for daily use and writing lyrics also. Controlling SoundGate is dead easy, with playback/record buttons, volume knobs.

I/O ports include headphones jack, RCA, USB, XLR, 6.3 mm audio jack, LAN/Magic and integrated optical drive (not really a port, but fits perfectly in the communications capabilities). Music special functions include jog-dial with two used defined soft keys and two buttons for choosing an effect to apply to the songs and one for controlling the intensity of that effect. For regular text input you can use the full QWERTY flip keyboard. When the keyboard is open you can also access the EQ buttons.

SoundGate can be used at its maximum capabilities with help from Music stand

This design concept was created by Nicolas Gonzalez Garrido. He also designed a Music stand for SoundGate, that allows you to use the PC in a more real environment, so that you can get used to standing in front of a cheering crowd. The stand includes a flexible arm for adjusting the height and tilt of SoundGate and a foot pedal, for hands-free operation. But that’s not all, the most amazing feature is the music stand with integrated web cam and helium display that can be use to interact with other musicians, at remote locations, that own a similar SoundGate. All that you have to do now is be famous, but that comes with talent, not help from PC industry.

UPDATE
Nicolas just informed us that he wasn’t the only one involved in the development of SoundGate so here’s the list with all participants: Alejandro Sanguinetti, Gustavo Fontana, Nicolás González Garrido, Esteban Orlandi (Video Edition)