A beat—bop, bop, bop, bop, bop—is just a beat, right? But
most of those people have never tried playing flamenco
guitar or classical Indian music, in which there are some
rhythm cycles so complex that they don't repeat for 80
beats. At Danny's Bar and Grill, after a breakfast with
local blues musicians, Cohen knocks out a flamenco rhythm on
a table top. The rhythm is too complex for words, and,
although possible to score, it's simpler to program it into
the little black box Cohen invented with the help of some
technologically-inclined friends.
"I realized you could represent all of the world's music as
cycles of accented beats," he says, picking up his invention
and dialling a similar rhythm into it in a matter of
seconds. Called MundoBeat, Cohen's invention has two lights
to show how to accent beats, a numerical display to show
what beat it's on, a speaker that belts out clicking noises
and 53 preprogrammed rhythms. "I thought most of my customers would be students," he says.
After all, it was as a frustrated student of flamenco guitar
that Cohen decided he needed a new tool to help him learn
the music he loved. But that's not how it worked out.
Certainly, students buy it to learn but more experienced
musicians are also buying it, Cohen says. When he started
out, the music was complex enough. "It became easier for me
to invent this than to try to learn it on my own," he says.
After talking to some music stores and finding no drum
machines or synthesizers capable of doing what he wanted, he
turned to software engineer Mike Lester at QNX Software
Systems. Lester put together a prototype and then, with the help of
another friend, Mike LeGoff, CEO of Dynex Power, he got an
initial 1,200 units built. Now flamenco giants like Miguel
De La Bastide and Tomatito are endorsing his product. "I've
proven my market," he says, adding he doesn't have many of
the $99 MundoBeats left. But to really make a go of it and
bring the price down, he needs investors and marketing and
enough demand for mass assembly. So now he's looking for backers. He says he'd be happy with
licensing the patent to another company, but he'd also enjoy
running the manufacturing and marketing himself. Even more
important for Cohen, though, is that more musicians will be
able to learn music that he enjoys so much. "I know I've
made an actual contribution to something I love."
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