Musical Patents in Memory of Davy Jones

It’s a sad day in music, as Davy Jones of The Monkees passed away due to a massive heart attack. While The Monkees may have been some lazy music exec’s project to create the American version of The Beatles, they still made some good music and their TV show provided plenty of entertainment. They also made a critically-panned movie, Head, which made no sense and included cameos from Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper–solely to agitate those same execs that created them. You have to respect that kind of musically integrity. Like Kurt Cobain, but with less whining. In honor of Davy Jones, we have some interesting musical patents on the blog today.

Read on and enjoy, you D.W. Washburns!

1) Split Channel Recording Technique and Apparatus Therefor

Magnets. How do they work?

The multi-track recorder was probably the invention that took music to a new level in the 60s. The Beatles originally used it to adds more and more instrument tracks to their recordings, which were later mixed down to a mono track. Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin took the concept to a new level by adding stereo effects that were hard-panned to the right and left, creating sounds that were perfect for the stereo FM radio stations that were becoming more commonplace at the time.

2) Design for an Electric Guitar

Now that's a groovy guitar.

One of the earlier designs for an electric guitar. Without it, music wouldn’t be the same. Although if it would have prevented such atrocities as Korn and Limp Bizkit, maybe we would have been better off.

3) Haptic Enabled Gaming Peripheral for a Musical Game

At least you can feel like a rock star.

Some of the most popular video games of the last ten years are from the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series. These games introduced kids to a number of bands that were finished before the kids playing them were even born, much like Steven Tyler of Aerosmith is doing today on American Idol. Who cares if the time spent getting good at these games could have been better spent learning to play an actual instrument.

4) Personalized karaoke recording studio

If you have done this, please regale us in the comments section below. It looks fun!

What could be better than singing karaoke? Recording yourself singing karaoke! Your rendition of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ never sounded so good.

Next time: Danny learns from TV and completely ignores his unexplained absence in February. Hint: It may have been to get surgery to look like a combination of Wayne and Andy Rooney.

Find previous writings and musings from the off-kilter Danny Rooney here.

This post was contributed by Registered Patent Agent Dan Wolka and edited by Chris Jagalla. The Intellogist blog is provided for free by Intellogist’s parent company, Landon IP, a major provider of patent search, technical translation, and information services.

About these ads