DCI has known about Jim Plamondon and his new musical instrument, the Thummer, since we talked about bringing him to SXSW from his then-home in Australia in 2005. He couldn't make that trip, but since then he's moved to Austin, hoping to find interested musicians in the "live music capital of the world." The Thummer was featured in Friday's Wall Street Journal.

The idea for the Thummer began when his wife and daughter both quit piano lessons after only six months. His wife, Patti, complained that learning to play separate lines on each hand "was like reading Spanish with one eye and French with the other," she recalls.

The Thummer doesn't make any noise on its own. It must be plugged into a computer or synthesizer, which uses software to mimic other instruments. To adjust volume and pitch, players thumb a pair of joysticks mounted on the side -- hence the instrument's name. Like the Nintendo Wii controller, it has an internal motion sensor, so players can also adjust the sound by moving the instrument around as they play it.

Marc Rossi, a synthesizer specialist and professor of piano and jazz composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, says the Thummer sounds like a good-quality synthesizer. He says the internal motion sensor is what's truly innovative: "That could be a whole new world."