It is: A VST plugin which sounds like the legendary Eventide Harmonizer H910, which 'fucks with the fabric of time'. It's a pitch-shifter and delay, which does subtle double-tracking or massive stereo warping bwoyoyoing effects
Just in time for Christmas, Red Ferrett points us in the direction of the Discovery Channel's awesome range of music toys. The Laser Light Guitar(right) looks best, with frets, a keyboard, drum sounds and a laser light display, all for $24.95. (Possibly inspired by Vinson Williams' amazing Keytar?) More Discovery toys: A standard-looking Drum Machine, a genius Double Jam Keyboard - it folds in two so you can play with a mate, and the baffling Motion Music Maker.
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Daniel Lanois. Clever chap, made lots of good records for U2 with Brian Eno. Good at slide guitar. Inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. But what an incredible moustache he's just grown! If anyone has a better picture than this one, please send it in.
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So, there's this guy called Leon Gruenbaum from New York. He's 40, he's in a band called Math Camp, and he's just re-invented the keyboard. He's taken one of those ergonomic PC keyboards and messed with it (and spray painted it) so that it's a MIDI keyboard. Rather than playing notes, each key changes the pitch of the existing note. So... press one key and it might jump up two notes in a scale. Another key might make it jump down three notes. Press loads of keys really fast, and you get very convincing widdly-widdly guitar solos, as this (53mb) video demonstrates. Oh yes, the keyboard is called: 'Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee'. Selected quote from Marvin Minsky? "Probably does everything except what you want it to do." (Thanks Mikey!)
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You have to admire anyone who builds speakers from Ikea salad bowls. That's what this group of semi-bonkers Princeton people did, before moving on to a combination of MDF and car stereo speakers. For some reason, they seem very popular with chaps playing experimental stringed instruments. Why? Because they "provide a complex and fruitful alternative to the traditional paradigms of sound production".
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Eagle-eyed readers might remember the Guitars Shaped Like Guns post from back in September. #10 was a link to what I described as "a tantalising hint of an amazing world of Japanese manga-themed ray-gun guitars". Well, that amazing world has been thrown wide open by Gizmodo this week. This is the Heat Hork guitar, a baffling plastic combination of string and sound effects. I want one now. If any weird-japanese-guitar-import people are reading, get in touch!
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Ebay is full of freaky-looking homemade guitars, but I've never seen anything quite like
Joel from Gizmodo is on a trip to Japan, and he spotted this marvel in a shop for 80,000 yen (£410). Don't resist Joel! Buy it and your life will be better! (More gun-shaped guitars)
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Inevitably, the mighty Sound on Sound have just got the real scoop on Reason 3. No VST instruments, no audio recording. The combinator will just let you save a chain of instruments and effects as one 'combi patch' (whatever that means), plus there will be some new sounds etc. Blah. UPDATE: Here are the full details from the Props website.
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There's a great story here about Daisuke Inoue, the former keyboard player who invented Karaoke. In 1971, Aged 31, he hooked up a car stereo, an amp and a coin box, and made history. (He forgot to patent it and his company flopped when Laserdisc machines were invented). This is his new invention, the New Aqua Trio, which "is purported to electrolyze water for washing laundry, cleaning dishes and even rinsing mouths without detergent or chemicals". At $3,800, sales are apparently slow. (Link from Create Digital Music)
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No music company does hype like Propellerheads. On Sunday, tiny weird graphics appeared dotted around their site, which eagle-eyed-geeks started collecting here. By Tuesday, the geeks had assembled the picture above- a new bit of Reason 3 called 'Combinator', with the message "This modest device will change Reason forever!!!". Now, they're all wondering what the thing is for (recording audio? playing VST instruments? Some kind of boring thing to combine bits of different synths?) Then, yesterday, Propellerheads put a post on their home page asking for Beta testers for Reason 3. Cynics might say that every other company in the world manages to find beta testers without advertising for them on the home page, but I'm not a cynic...
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Yes, it's Steve Porcaro from Toto. There's really nothing not to like about this picture, from the nylon shell-suit trousers to the picture of Einstein, who I'm sure has inspired Steve deeply. Yes! Looks to me like that's even an oscilloscope by his leg. The picture comes from my new favourite website ever in the world, which is here. It's a slightly mysterious Spanish site called 'Sanctuaries' with page after page after page of cool photos of geeky people sitting in amazing studios. My favourite is this picture of Vince Clarke, which actually does make up for all the times I've had to listen to awful Erasure records on the radio. But can someone remind Brian Eno that it's about the gear, not the music? (Thanks, as ever, to Tommy Walker III)
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Lots of rumours about 'Asteroid', which is supposed to be a firewire interface for GarageBand, set to cost $129 and be announced in January. Here's the basic story with a not-too-convincing mockup, and here is Gizmodo's coverage, with the rather more convincing mockup on the left. I'm going to get really hacked off with this 'Apple producing products that I want to buy' business pretty soon, but don't worry, the Behringer BCA2000 is shipping. Hmm... Not really the same, is it?
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This is the new Fairlight Dream Suite - yes, it's the same Fairlight, still based in Australia. I have to admit that I don't understand any of the words in the Harmony Central story about it, but it's something to do with sound for film. There isn't even a price, you just lease the machine from Fairlight for $1,750 a month. Somehow, I can't get all that excited...
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I wasn't too impressed with DJ Dangermouse's 'Grey Album', but this video of one of the tracks is amazing. Persevere throught the wonky 'John Lennon Breakdancing' bit, and you'll be rewarded with Ringo Starr DJing, which is ace. (Link from the excellent Rummage Through The Crevices blog)
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While everyone else has moved on to ironic plastic guitars and boring guitars, Justin from Algonquin, Illinois (that's him with Kelly from LA Guns and a polka-dot BC Rich bass with EMG pickups and a tremelo arm) is buying and selling and collecting the guitars that made 80s heavy metal. Not just blood-soaked pointy guitars but dozens of identikit Charvel, ESP, Ibanez and Jackson super-strats. His site is divided into guitars with Floyd Rose trems, and guitars without them. The highpoint, inevitably, is a skull guitar that he once sold to Randy Piper from WASP. One day, the Smithsonian Museum will swoop down on Angonquin and buy the whole collection for the Nation.
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Music Thing reader Kelan Champagne read this post about building a DIY synth for £70, and was inspired: "After some looking around I settled on the Paia Fatman. I started this weekend, and so far, so good. It was only $180 for the parts and rack-mount panel." He's just sent me some pictures: This is his keyboard-filled apartment. This is the kit as it arrived. Step one: resistors (I love that picture!). A lot of soldering and a moderate amount of Mountain Dew (too much gives you the shakes, not good for soldering) and he had this. Stay tuned for more Kelan & Fatman updates!
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Keep those pictures of rubber-clad synth babes coming. Meanwhile, here's a small, cheap gadget. It's a keyring sound level meter, which can tell you if sound levels go above 100db - a bit like one of those radiation badges that people wear in power stations. Just £9.99 from here. (Thank to SoS)
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Neil writes to say that he's enjoying the music things and all, but he'd like some more pictures of people. "I want vinyl-clad sluts and/or men with big moustaches," he says, quite reasonably. So here's a picture of two ageing men with strap-on keyboards (yes, that's Rick Wakeman on the right). I'd be grateful if any readers have pictures of vinyl-clad sluts and/or men with big moustaches that they'd be able to share (they must also include vintage synths and/or unusually-shaped-guitars, obviously).
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You'd have to be
Like the man says: "How many basses have a belly button?" You won't be the only person with a Stoneman nude girl guitar, because he's already sold one to George Clinton's guitarist. In fact, his six-string is significantly more obscene(scroll down a bit). But 'J Stoneman' promises not to make any more once he's sold this one - although he's not had any bids yet, and it's starting at $2,499. Details and loads more incredible pictures here... UPDATE: Nobody bid for the bass, and the guy took the pictures down, so here's the really obscene guitar!
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I love Colin's awesome marimba-filled home studio in Florida. Bigger pictures here, where you can see he has a copy of 'Users Guide to Propellerhead Reason' next door to 'The Celestine Prophecy' and the New Yorker. Cool!
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In the late 1960s, when all synths were big black boxes that looked like electronic test equipment, two MIT professors invented this thing: The Triadex Muse. It's often billed as the first digital synth, but it's not really a synth - it's a sequencer, or at least a composition machine. The sliders affect the musical notes, not the sound produced (although you seem to be stuck with the on-board sound - it won't connect to anything else). As the Synth Museum says: "The exact logic behind the composition engine is rather technical, and not exactly intuitive." One of the MIT professors was Marvin Minsky, the artificial intelligence legend who advised Stanley Kubrick during the filming of 2001 - ultimately, he's the father of Hal 9000. There's a very primitive 'virtual Muse' program here. Only 280 Muse machines were ever produced, so it seems odd that 0.7% of them are on Ebay at the moment: this one for $1,299 and this one starting at $999.
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Of course, if you can't afford an Ultra Harmonizer, you could settle for this. Ooh, actually, I quite fancy a t-shirt. What I really want, though, is a Black Gate t-shirt (they're they people who make audiophile capacitors)
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The Eventide Harmonizer is an utterly legendary early digital effect box. Tony Visconti had the second one in Europe, and used it on David Bowie's 'Low' to make huge drum sounds. When David asked him what it did, he said "It fucks with the fabric of time." They come up all the time on US Ebay, selling for $700-1000. [link]
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You might have spotted a run of weird guitar accessories. I've been reading Guitar Player magazine, which has brilliant small-ads. I just spotted this vile guitar rug in 100% polypropylene. It seemed pretty obscure until I found 25 of them on ebay. (If you're wondering how it might fit into your room, David has one, and he's also looking for a gig in a Christian rock group). If you're in the market for a guitar-shaped rug, you're in luck, because there's also this one. And while we're in this world of pain, why not visit Guitars 'n Ties...
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Little Fretty is a plastic model of the top five frets of a guitar neck, invented by Willis Whiteside of Atlanta. The idea is that you can practise and warm up on the fretocizer, before a gig. Somehow, it looks kind of obscene, but that's almost certainly just me. There's a list of possible uses for Little Fretty on the website, including "use as a tongue depressor in case someone is having a seizure" and "Stick him in your coat pocket and pretend he's a gun to ward off a mugger." All for just $19.95. Good luck with it, Willis! More
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Remember Tyler, who's Grandad was Semie Mosely? Well, he's got back in touch with some great pictures of the incredible one-off Mosrite that Semie made for his mother, complete with a personal message under the varnish and 'Lisa 88' stamped into the fingerboard. More here.
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This is the Hipshot String Bending System, a kind of lo-fi mechanical version of the utterly bonkers Transperformance self-tuning guitar system. I just love the look of an ordinary guitar with some crazy mechanical contraption bolted on, like this, the Hipshot Trilogy system (you move the levers to select altenative tunings) on a Resonator.
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Extremely stylish circuit-bending duo Censtron have attacked a second-generation iPod and turned it into something with a bright red LED on the front, a proper on/off switch (nice!), a pitch-bend mod wheel and the ability to play glitched-up guitar solos. It's not totally clear what they've done to the poor thing, but it looks like it will never play another Dido album. Hear it here and buy it on Ebay here it's currently just $31. (Thanks to gopherwartz)
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See this picture? Looks like some speakers in a corridor? That's not a corridor, it's the biggest sub-woofer in the world, built by mad people in Italy out of bricks in the basement beneath the room where they listen to music. There are 16 Eighteen-inch subwoofers in a one meter high tunnel built underneath what they call "the geatest AUDIO ROOM for private music listening of the world". This wonky diagram explains how it works, roughly. What's extra cool is that they have a studio in the room, with a drum kit, amps and guitars. But how do they decide who gets to be bass player? (Thanks Peter)
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Hard day at work? Got a bit of a cold? Girlfriend sulking because you spent $1,250 on a phono lead? This should cheer you up. Or this. Yes, in that second picture, nestling behind the coloured cables, engulfed in aluminium, is a Casio VL-Tone. More on Dr Joe Paradiso and his incredible giant synth here. (Having trouble finding the VL-Tone? It's here).
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If you're someone who designs synths or amps or computers for a living, please spend some time looking at the Japanese Product Design Database, a crazy (and ironically badly designed) collection of great Jap product design from the 70s and 80s. Then maybe we'll end up with more gear looking like these Yamaha YHL-003 Headphones or Technics RS-777 reel-to-reel, and less looking like the M-Audio Audiophile USB.
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You can keep your PodXT Live, I want a Jesusonic CrusFX 1000. Created by Winamp inventor Justin Frankel, it's a utterly awesome giant computer/pedal with a fantastically old-school DOS-style interface (he's also releasing a software version). Here is Justin's story of building the box - an epic tale of backlit keyboards and lots of sanding. (Thanks, Pheezy)
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Not strictly about making music, but wouldn't this look nice in your studio, pumping out multi-coloured beams while you're mixing your latest cheese-trance opus?
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Even though there are a dozen better and easier ways to do a similar thing, I love the idea of Miss Parker, a Belgian open-source digital stompbox. They've built a box containing the same DSP chip that's in an Alesis Ion. The idea is that you download a patch and turn the box into a phaser pedal. Get bored of that, and you can turn it into a moog filter. Obviously all the knobs can be programmed to do anything you like. So far they’ve built just five prototypes, and no word yet on if they'll ever be commercialised.
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I'm pretty certain it's not new, but I only just found this page about DJing with homemade double-needle cartridges. There's a nifty flash thing so you can listen to how it sounds (not pretty).
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If you've built your Soundlab Mini Synth and fancy something more challenging, try Kit-Ten-Net-Tik, a choice of two amazing looking wooden-cased battery-powered synths with built in speakers ("You can take it out to the woods and freak out birds.") The kit looks a bit intimidating, but it's only $250, which seems reasonable. (Thanks for the tip, Jim)
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It's hard to see how "phil5fac" can possibly be doing the right thing, selling 20 vintage 1970s Fender guitars as a job-lot on Ebay, although with five days to go, they're already at £7,100 (or £355 each). So, if you're going through a really spectacular mid-life crisis but can't be bothered with wandering up and down Denmark Street, then today is your lucky day. Alternatively, if you really have won the lottery and are clinically insane, you might want to bid for 101 Pianos (They're currently in Long
