"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."