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?