CES 2008: Synthesia Mandala Synthesizing Drum Pad

I almost completely missed this nifty little musical gadget, it was tucked away in a seemingly hidden corner at a show I went to, but luckily I stumbled upon it. It is a drum pad and synthesizer combined.

It requires a computer and a separate pair of speakers, but the drum pad has 127 concentric circles possible on it and it can not only detect where you hit the pad, but how hard and it plays the noise in respect to how hard and where you hit. So, lets say you set it up for a 7-piece drum set, the inner most circle will be the bass, then snare, then toms, cymbals, etc. as you work your way out.

Using the software that's required on the computer you can set the drum pad up to work with various percussion instruments or any other sound you program it for ranging from one sound for the whole pad all the way up to 127 sounds if you think you are good enough to be able to hit exactly where it is. It is played just like an electronic drum with real drum sticks, and if you want one, its $349 and I am pretty sure they said it comes with the software with has a fairly large library of sounds already built in, but you can add your own too.