I bet you never imagined a fast food institution would be a hotbed of music production innovation, did you? But that’s what happened when McTrax appeared at McDonald’s in the Netherlands: paper tray placemats with built in touch circuitry that connects to your mobile device via bluetooth designed as a DAW controller. From a technology point of view, it’s very clever, and it also looks super fun. It’s all done with conductive ink, an ultra-thin micro-battery and a custom iOS app to run it all.
My thoughts
Whatever you might think of McDonald’s or their products, this concept (and execution) is damn cool. It might not push the boundaries of music production techniques, but it’s an ingenious way to bring the concepts of music making to the masses. I’d imagine the only thing stopping stopping this from rolling out everywhere is the [currently] relatively costly process to manufacture the placemats. Still, I hope they bring it to the UK.
Your thoughts
Would this brighten up your dinner? What would you add to the placemat to improve it?
Nothing I would rather do than write music on a greasy used placemat followed by a ghastly bout of diarrhea.
F’ing gross
Says a lot about what is being discussed in corporations and what they think we consumers are interested by.
Says a lot about the state if technology when devices can be made cheaply enough to literally be disposable.
Be interesting to see some devices printed on something as thin but more durable or rigid than paper.
The fact that something that can sell for $100 is being given away as a placemat says something. Is McDo’s really where the next musical breakthrough will come from?
A literally “wireless” dj rig where everything is bluetooth—ready set go
It all sits right beside each other anyway