Harmonix and Viacom’s “Rock Band” has made an impression at stores and stood guitar fret-to-fret with Activision’s rival franchise and latest entry “Guitar Hero III”. However we don’t know exactly how well the rhythm game is doing in sales. The only thing we have to go on are the enthusiastic reports on gaming message boards and what a representative of MTV Networks, owners of the game, said that the game has been “flying off the shelves” during the first week of sales.

“Downloads are going great, rockband.com is going great with people logging on and downloading stuff from there,” said Mika Salmi, a rep for MTV’s digital division. “It’s got a lot of legs, we’re in it for the long term.”

Music and robotics have had a strange relationship. I have seen bands with robot singers, robots playing instruments and more. Now Gibson is taking robotics and applying them to the guitar. Thanks to integrated electronics and motorized mechanics, this instrument can automatically tune itself in various configurations.

This is big news for performers. With something like this they only need to carry one guitar with them instead of several differently-tuned instruments. They plan a limited first run, only available in select stores.

If you could get your hands on this sweet guitar, you could really jam out a great version of “Pac-Man Fever”. It was designed by Specimen Custom Guitars and it not only looks retro-cool, but it also has some cool features. Like the blinking headstock and a variable-speed knob located on the eyeball that can synchronize the blinker to the beat.

Sadly you or I will never EVER get to touch it as it is one of a kind, but it does make our inner geeks very happy in a dot-munching sort of way. Come to think of it, it looks more like a Pac-Banjo then a guitar, but I still want it.

Think you have what it takes to spin the tunes at a party? Korg, a manufacturer of musical gear, wants to help you find out with its new portable music mixing device. The Korg Mini-KP KAOSS PAD is priced at around $250.

The Korg Mini-KP KAOSS PAD is a shirt pocket-sized music mixer. It’s battery operated, running for about five hours on AA batteries. You can plug a MP3 player or other audio source into it and “tap or drag your finger on its touch pad to rhythmically affect the music by morphing it with new sounds and effects.”

Player pianos aren’t the first things you think of when you consider Internet enabled devices. Yamaha is betting you’ll soon consider its Yamaha Disklavier line of pianos though as cutting edge music technology.

The Yamaha Disklavier pianos can now work with a Yamaha service called DisklavierRadio, which lets you stream music directly to the piano for it to play live. This MIDI music is accompanied by specially recorded ensemble parts and lets one choose from a variety of music stations including Broadway, jazz and piano solos. Music can also be downloaded to the piano’s built-in 80GB hard drive for later playback.