Benjamin gives music lessons on YouTube with real buttons and dials

Benjamin is a touch control surface and iPad stand that replaces complicated touch screen gestures with physical controls. Help musicians maintain their concentration on the instrument while learning with tutorial videos.

Music education technology has advanced rapidly. Recent examples include guitars with light-up fingerboards that guide your fingers and ROLI’s AI Music Coach, which tracks your hands on the piano and provides real-time feedback.

For a large number of players, however, the teacher is simply a YouTube video and the main obstacle is the interface. Everyone knows how many tries it can take to successfully grab the progress bar on a touchscreen and drag it back the right amount, but for musicians who need to repeat the same riff over and over, that little annoyance becomes a real barrier.

Toronto-based Benjamin Industries addresses that problem with a dedicated hardware controller that also doubles as a stand. Founder Robinson Kelly came up with the idea while teaching himself bass during the pandemic. He built on his previous career as a television video editor, where physical controls made jumping to an exact moment second nature.

Benjamin’s headline trick is to loop with two presses. You touch the IN button where a region begins and OUT where it ends, and the section immediately begins repeating. Dedicated buttons push the loop limits and, holding IN or OUT while turning the scroll wheel, adjusts them frame by frame.

The same wheel handles general navigation. You can jump by chapter, in steps of 10, 5, or 1 second, or one frame at a time. Playback speed moves in 5% increments in either direction, so you can gradually work on a solo until you reach the tempo or beat it for a challenge. A single button returns everything to normal speed.

Thirteen backlit switches cover play/pause, mute, full screen, subtitles, bookmarks, playlists, and voice search, while a physical slider handles volume. The companion app lets you name, save, and organize loops and markers into playlists. It plays YouTube within the app itself and also works with Apple Music and media files stored on the iPad.

The aluminum and ABS unit measures 280 x 190 x 25 mm (11 x 7.5 x 1 in) and weighs about 950 g (2 lb). It pairs via Bluetooth LE with iPads from mini to 13-inch Pro running iPadOS 16 or later, and can also be mounted on tripods and VESA arms. Its 3200 mAh battery lasts approximately nine days with three hours of daily practice.

Benjamin recently launched on Kickstarter and reached its goal of 10,000 CAD (around $7,025 US) in 15 minutes. Super Early Bird pledges start at around 499 Canadian dollars (about 350 US dollars), against a planned retail price of 699 Canadian dollars (about 490 US dollars).

All crowdfunding campaigns carry an element of risk and this appears to be Benjamin Industries’ first project. Acclaimed software engineer Erik von Harten has joined the husband and wife team to help ensure a seamless user experience on the application side. Patents have been obtained in Canada and the United States, and the new company aims to complete final testing and certification by December. Production is estimated to begin in June 2027 with shipping to follow a month later.

All-in-one learning devices, like mu6label, try to teach you themselves. Benjamin takes a different approach: He treats the vast library of free lessons already online as curriculum and focuses on making that content easier to delve into. This is a more limited speech, but possibly more intelligent. It’s not limited to music either, as dance, sports, and craft tutorials could benefit from the same precise control.

There are some limitations. Benjamin is iPad-only for now and can’t control the native YouTube app. Still, more platforms are planned to be supported and the app does not require a subscription. For anyone tired of fighting their screen mid-practice, it could be a welcome update.

Sources: Benjamin Industries, Kickstarter

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