Musical instruments are invented now and then to allow artists to produce and sometimes control or distort sounds. Humans tend to pick things up and bang on them, pluck them, to make music. Once in awhile a great musician gets his hands on a particular pluckable or bangable object and makes memorable music with it. Other musicians replicate this memorable music on a similar object and eventually an actual musical instrument solidifies to a body of music.. These days machines help us remember our music. The record player is a very interesting musical instrument in this context. Here is a new musical object that some humans developed. Other humans are banging on it. Its quite a cool thing. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=reactable&search=Search or the sake of this post, a musical object differs from a musical instrument because an instrument includes a solid catchy body of work written by musicians and listened to by actual people. Will this object become a musical instrument? No. Will there ever be a new musical instrument? Maybe. What was the last musical instrument developed? ...i donno, James Brown?