Have you ever been to a concert where one of the performers is a live drummer? Maybe you’ve seen all the microphones attached to the different pieces of drum kit. Drummers need to use these microphones to amplify their sound, so that their volume can be loud enough to balance the volume of the other players in the group. But placing all of those microphones is very complicated and often takes a lot of time to set up. A company called B-Band has made a new device based on nanotechnology that would let drummers use a permanently installed piece of equipment called a pickup instead of using microphones. It’s not a pickup like a truck — it’s a pickup that takes the vibrations from hitting a drum and converts them to an electronic signal that can be amplified or even recorded. Drummers would install this pickup, made of a very special plastic made up of tiny elastic fibers, and could get a much louder sound from their drums without having to use any microphones. It already takes a lot of time just to set up the drum kit alone, so these pickups could save time and make a lot of drummers very happy!