Your brother plays air guitar and your best friend lip syncs. Now, it’s time to pull your own weight. Have yourself a merry band of fake musicians with the V-Beat Drumsticks, a rig that lets you play the drums by pounding on invisible skins.
More than a pair of wooden sticks, though, V-Beat actually lets you make percussion sounds, all without the bulky gear and expensive price of full-on musical instruments. Using a pair of sticks attached to a control box and two pedals, it lets you play a seven-piece instrument wherever you are.
The sticks are fitted with motion sensors that can recognize which part of the air you are hitting. Just follow the chart and you’ll be able to play a complete percussion set that includes a snare, crash, high and low tom, hi-hat, ride and bass. Of course, there’s probably some amount of learning curve here. Hitting the right thing when you’ve got real drums is tough enough; getting them right while imagining the drum kit should prove a different challenge altogether.
Apart from being able to play freely, it offers two other modes: Easy Go (which prompts you to jam with pre-programmed rhythms) and Pop Academy (a guided step-by-step learning). It requires four AA batteries to run and appears to have virtual sound modes (that changes the sound of the pieces).
By the way, you can also plug in an MP3 player into the box, in case you want to keep the beat to Barry Manilow’s hits (you love him, admit it). Seriously, though, the V-Beat Drumsticks offers a great way to learn the drums, without forking out cash on an actual drum set. Real drummers should find it useful for practice too. It’s available now for £29.95 (around $42).
Available at Firebox