10 Strange Gifts for the Musician in Your Life

It’s almost Christmastime, and you’ve put off your holiday shopping until the last minute, you big fuckin’ idiot. Not to worry; with our help – and some outrageously expensive overnight shipping costs – you can still secure the perfect gift for that string-plucking/drum-thumping/didgeridoo-tooting weirdo in your family.

AERODRUMS AIR DRUMMING PERCUSSION INSTRUMENT
What It does: Enables you to play air drums, just like you do in your car on the way to work, only now you won’t have to make the drum sounds with your mouth. You probably still will, though.

The Downside: It requires a couple thousand dollars’ worth of accompanying hardware and peripherals, but that’s drumming for you.

FRETLOCKS
What They Do: Little tiny doodads that snap onto your guitar strings and act as capos for each individual string. Allow you to play in tunings you’d otherwise never be able to.

The Downside: You might accidentally play The Forbidden Chord, which summons Zebnar the Unraveler from his hell dimension to unmake all of creation. Also, you’ll probably lose at least three of these things behind the couch.

ACPAD MIDI CONTROLLER
What It Does: Attaches to your acoustic guitar so that you can accompany yourself on drum machine and synthesizer while you play.

The Downside: It takes special songwriting talent to successfully mix acoustic guitar with digital instrumentation. If you suck now, you’re gonna suck way worse.

JAMBÉ
What it Does: A multi-surface, multi-instrument drum pad that works with your iOS device to download new instrument kits and make adjustments.

The Downside: As with any electronic drum machine, you cannot look cool playing it because it looks like a toy.

ROCK CLOTHES
What They Do: A T-shirt with an electric guitar you can play, and a T-shirt with a drum machine you can play. Wear them with a friend and jam out on the bus!

The Downside: You will be the two biggest assholes on the bus.

FRETLIGHT
What It Does: Uses LED lights across your guitar neck to illustrate where to place your fingers while you are learning to play chords.

The Downside: Guitar snobs mock you for not learning guitar the old-fashioned way, by apprenticing yourself to a blind bluesman and going on adventures together. Start calling you “Laser Light Show,” which hurts.

ARTIPHON INSTRUMENT 1
What It Does: An electronic guitar neck that lets you play a shitload of different sounds directly into your iOS device, for amplification or recording.

The Downside: People might confuse it with a keytar and think you’re in an insufferable electro revivalist band. Your rep doesn’t need that, man.

THE DRUM WALLET
What It Does: Allows you to quickly muffle and un-muffle your snare drum, creating a wider range of sound within a single beat.

The Downside: Looks extremely easy to make something very similar by yourself, even if you’re terrible at making things.

POCKET STRINGS
What It Does: Nothing! It makes nary a sound! It’s simply a chunk of a guitar neck with strings so that a guitarist can squish his fingers onto it and keep his callouses strong when he doesn’t have a guitar handy.

The Downside: Fiddle around with it too much and develop super callouses that cause you to heartlessly crush everything you touch. You soared too close to the sun, Icarus Malmsteen.

GUITAR TRILLER
What It Does: Little rubber mallet that can be held in several different ways and bounced, strummed or generally flip-flopped around on your guitar strings to produce interesting new sounds.?

The Downside: Of whacking the bejeezus out of your guitar strings with a rubber hammer? Sure can’t think of any.