Saturday, April 01, 2006

Native American Flute with built in digital recorder

Sloof Lirpa Spirit Flutes has just announced the development of the first Native American Flute with a built in digital recorder!!
According to Billy Coyote Raven, the flutemaker, new advancements in the miniturization of chip sets has enabled the creation of a Native American Flute with a built in microphone and digital recorder. Coyote recently retired from 40 years working for NASA where he help produce miniturized components for the Space Shuttle. His love of the flute and experience as a NASA engineer have come together in this unique creation. I met Billy at a conference last fall, where we got to talking about this idea.

The miniture microphone is embedded in the totem of the flute, virtually invisible. Also hidden under the totem is a battery compartment which powers the recorder.
I hear that initially it's only available in a 64MB version, which will provide about a half hour of recording time. But the 96Khz samples are near CD quality, making your flute recording as simple as possible. Good enough to capture a few songs when the spirit hits you. A USB 2 port on the totem provides the ability to connect to a computer to download the songs in WAV format. Billy is sending me a prototype to test next week, I hope to bring it to a flute circle and share this unique creation. Billy hopes to go into production in the early summer, initially producing just individual totems which will fit any existing flute.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This would be the best tech idea in history!I'll love to get this flute if the price right?Can't wait to get reviews on it...been thinking about the purchase of the portable digital recorder