31.5.05

Cool music-related DIY science projects

Thanks to CemenTIMental for pointing me towards my new favourite website. Spark Bang Buzz is a great collection of science experiments, many of which are music-connected. The guy makes photocells out of bits of copper oxide, builds his own vacuum tubes and makes a sound-reactive laser from 4 components. One of the best bits is this page, where he generates "Peculiar Sounds from a Drop of Saltwater on Aluminum" - and these [400kb .wav] are those sounds.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 2 comments Post a Comment

30.5.05

eBay of the Day: German alpine folk music module

If you can imagine a piece of music kit, then it's a pretty safe bet that someone out there has produced, marketed and lost money on it. I'd never imagined a stand-alone rackmount sound module specifically designed for German alpine folk music, but the Hohner 'Alp Inside' is just that. The only description I can track down says: "Not only for the accordionists. Perfectly arranged 128 sounds for folk music and popular Popmusik, various accordion sounds, additional Samples from Bariton to zither." You've got to love the cow-hide print on the case and if you've got €99, it would go perfectly with a MIDI Accordion, or maybe some MIDI Bagpipes.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 1 comments Post a Comment

30.5.05

Professor Television's Photo Theremin (just $79)

Doktor Future writes: "I recently purchased this Professor Television [I'm guessing that's him on the left] optical theremin. It took him about a year to ship it, but the email exchange was very civil and increasingly amusing over time. To make up for the delay, he also sent me a CD of his band , which is funky Christian absurdist electronica that you just have to hear to believe. This song is clearly anti-Darwin. Awesome.

"Anyway, The cool thing about optical theremins is that you get amazing effects illuminating it with the LED from an optical mouse (you hear the strobing effect as FM modulation). LED flash lights or flexi-neck led pen lights also work well, since the lens defects (i.e. flare spots) allow for some cool modulation opportunities. You can also cover the sensor with your thumb to block off almost all light, and slowly allow some photons (or heat from your thumb) to create LFO effects as the oscillator capacitor discharges. Awesome."

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 7 comments Post a Comment

30.5.05

Anybody developing a Synclavier soft synth?

Chris writes: "Hey, I was wondering if anyone had any plans to make a Synclavier soft synth, maybe with a dedicated USB controller similar to the VP keyboard?" That would certainly be cool (and a little bit more hardcore than the Korg Legacy Collection). I remember 2-3 years ago a guy had a weird-looking page where he claimed he was building a Synclavier VSTi, but I can't find it any more. Anyone?

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 3 comments Post a Comment

30.5.05

Music In Outer Space

Peter is back with another special report...
>> As this page from Nasa shows, when Astronauts want to chill out in space they get together and make music. The pic above shows Carl E. Walz playing a Yamaha PSR282 keyboard on the International Space Station. You can buy a PSR282 for about £45 on eBay, but getting a 11½lb keyboard into space would have cost NASA around $115,000. Somehow it all seems worth it when you watch this video [tiny QT] of Ed Lu playing it.
>> The real pioneer of music in space was Ron McNair. In 1984, he took a saxophone into space on Challenger. This brilliant page tells the full story, from selecting the right reed for low-pressure playing to the unfortunate 'bubble effect'. Two years later, Ron died in the Challenger Disaster.
>>

Don Pettit took a didgeridoo to the Internation Space Station - he was one of the astronauts stranded by the second shuttle disaster. He had to crash land in a Soviet escape pod in Kazakhstan, leaving the didgeridoo on the space station for future visitors.
>> Visitors to MIR were more fortunate. There was a Spanish Guitar that lived there (that's Gennady Strekalov playing 'Midnight in Moscow' on it in 1985). In 1995, Commander Robert 'Hoot' Gibson took two sets of fresh Gibson strings for the guitar when he visited in 1995.
>>

Back home, 'Hoot' is the guitarist in Max Q, an 'easy rock' band made up of astronauts. They play occasional gigs but unfortunately haven’t yet released classics like 'Another Saturday Night' ("Another sunrise, another sunset, another orbit, another day out of this world/I got devotion, I got emotion, I got the universe/Now all I need is my girl.") Max Q are currently looking for a new drummer, as Capt James Wetherbee retired from Nasa at the beginning of this year. Only spacemen need apply.
>> This page will tell you everything else that you could ever need to know about music in space. ... [CONTINUE READING]

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 4 comments Post a Comment

27.5.05

The Skellotron see-through Mellotron

Gear Junkies have the scoop on this incredible (and vile) looking transparent Mellotron built by Streetly Electronics. They describe it as "a bespoke commission and a true realisation of a personal vision", and it's even been featured in stupid-rich-men's bible Robb Report. No word on which anonymous billionaire paid for it. Noel Gallagher bought this Mellotron a while back, so it's not him. If you must go transparent, go DIY.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 4 comments Post a Comment

27.5.05

TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 5: The Channel 4 Jingle

Lord David Dundas isn't on this list because his 'Dum dee da da' jingle for the British TV network Channel 4 was particularly clever. He's here because - unlike anyone else on this list - he kept hold of the copyright and got very, very rich from those four notes. (Apologies in advance if you never watched TV in Britain in the late '80s or early '90s. This won't mean much to you…)

>> You can see Channel 4's four-note jingle (and the original 'flying blocks' logo) here. (Pause a moment to get over that wave of weird nostalgia…) Every time that sequence was played, David Dundas was paid £3.50. Every week, for ten years, Dundas received a cheque for £1,000 from Channel Four.
>> Lord Dundas' parents, the third Marquess and Marchioness of Zetland, had wanted David to become an MP. Instead, he started writing ad jingles. In 1976 he turned a jingle for Brutus Jeans into a hit record 'Jeans On' which was number one across Europe.
>> The four notes were snipped out of a much longer composition called Fourscore, which was the first piece of music played on the channel at it's launch in 1982.
>> In the late '90s, Dundas invested in GW Pharmaceuticals, a company which won a license to grow cannabis in Britain, producing 15 tonnes a year for medical research. His 40,000 shares went up 500% when the company floated.
>> Eventually, sometime around 1994, Channel 4 got fed up of paying every time they played their logo, and quietly commissioned a new piece of music. They kept the flying blocks for another 3-4 years.
>> Lord Dundas went on to compose the 'Wash and Go' jingle. His current activities are unknown.
TINY MUSIC MAKERS: GO BACK TO THE START

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 14 comments Post a Comment

26.5.05

Wireless touch-screen control surface, just $350

"Well, sorta," writes Quentin. "The Nokia 770 will be released Q3 2005, runs Linux and is completely open source. For $350, it sure beats that 'Lemur' thing. I'll be getting two!"

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 3 comments Post a Comment

26.5.05

TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 4: The Mac Startup Sound

The Mac startup sound wasn't a $$$ marketing exercise. It was a hack that was quietly dropped into the machine by an engineer with a home studio…

>> This [mp3] famous Mac startup sound (still installed in every new Mac) was recorded Jim Reekes, and first used on the Quadra 700, which launched in 1991 costing $7,000.
>> Jim's most famous pop-culture moment was the scene in Jurassic Park where the park's computers are all rebooted with his sound. But it's most awesome musical use is as the bassline in Transformer di Roboter's ace cover of 'Stranger in Moscow' - here [mp3]
>> Jim 'came out' about creating various Mac sounds (most famously Sosumi) to Boing Boing last month. But he's never before revealed how he actually made them:
>> "The startup sound was done in my home studio on a Korg Wavestation. It's a C Major chord, played with both hands stretched out as wide as possible (with 3rd at the top, if I recall). This just sounded right to me. I wanted something really fat, heavy bass, high notes, and a sharp attack. The chiffy sound was from pan pipes and something like a stick hit (I'm testing my memory here). I wanted lots of evolving timbres, stereo phasing, and reverb for further richness."
>>"Mac people are very familiar with the sound, after restarting their machines too often. In fact, that was one of the issues I was conscious of when designing the sound. Turning the Mac on is one thing, but being forced to reboot from a crash is a totally different experience. I wanted to avoid a sound that would be associated with the crash. I wanted it to sound more like a "palette cleanser".
>>"After I changed the startup sound (which required much persuasion and working around the system) the ROM engineers continued changing it with each new machine. Some of them were weak, such as the Stanley Jordon guitar strum used on the first PowerMacs. I objected to it, because that sound had no "power". The engineer wasn't a recording engineer, and not familiar enough with audio. The sound was hallow and without depth. When Steve Jobs returned in 1997, I heard he wanted only one sound for all Macs. He wanted the "good one" which was the one I created. At least that's how I heard the story, and I was still working there at the time."
>> If you're concerned that you don't know enough about vintage Mac Startup sounds, I can recommend Mactracker, which runs on Mac or PC. Don't show it to your girlfriend.
NEXT UP: The Lord who earned £1000 a week from four notes
PREVIOUSLY: The THX Sound

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 61 comments Post a Comment

26.5.05

Ebay of the Day: Remco Sound FX Machine

Doesn't this thing look like the most brilliant weird free VST plugin, but made flesh? The guy selling is hoping for $150+, and he might get it - this box gets a full 10/10/10 score at Miniorgan.com.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 11 comments Post a Comment

25.5.05

I wish I had an excuse to buy one of these...

Inner Clock are a new Australian company with just one product - the Syncshift. It's a slightly esoteric (but apparently useful and unique) box that messes with synchronisation signals between various bits of elderly Roland gear. Never mind that, how great does it look? And how often do you see bits of music gear with controls labelled 'throne' and 'plate latitude'? Come on, it's only $625AUD (£260)... (via No Future)

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 1 comments Post a Comment

25.5.05

Slightly crappy mouse-into-turntable hack

TerminatorX is a bit of Linux DJ software, and it works with a build-it-yourself turntable controller, which is basically an old mouse connected to the turntable. There are plenty of haters here at EM411 and over at Hack A Day (it looks like you 'scratch' by moving the entire platter, not the slipmat) but - as one pundit says - " i don't see you n00bs hacking anything"

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 0 comments Post a Comment

25.5.05

Where did the original Star Wars noises come from?

While we're on the subject of LucasFilm, EMusician Xtra links to Filmsound.org's Star Wars special.

Highlights: The screech of a TIE fighter is a 'drastically altered' elephant roar, and a brilliant bit about Ewok language, which is an electronic composite of Tibetan, Mongolian, and Nepali. Elsewhere on the same site is this interview with sound designer Ben Burtt, where he goes into more detail about Darth Vader and Lightsabres...

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 5 comments Post a Comment

25.5.05

TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 3: The THX Sound

"I like to say that the THX sound is the most widely-recognized piece of computer-generated music in the world," says Andy Moorer. "This may or may not be true, but it sounds cool!"
>> You can hear the sound here. It's called 'Deep Note'.

>> It was made by Dr James 'Andy' Moorer in 1982, who has had a very cool career: Four patents, one Oscar. In the '60s he was working in Artificial Intelligence at Stanford. In the '70s he was at IRCAM in Paris, working on speech synthesis and ballet. In the '80s he worked at the LucasFilm DroidWorks, before joining Steve Jobs at NeXT. Today, he consults, repairs old tube radios and plays banjo.
>> At one point, the THX sound was being played 4,000 times a day at cinemas around the world (that's once every 20 seconds).
>> The Simpsons got permission for this [mpg movie] parody. Dr Dre was less lucky. He asked permission to sample 'Deep Note' but was turned down. He used it anyway, to open '2001', and LucasFilm sued.
>> Stanford student Jesse Fox tried to recreate 'Deep Note' for a course. His version sounds like a nasty accident in an organ factory. Details here.
>> There are various theories on the web about how the THX sound was created - some people say it was a Yamaha CS-80, others that it was a Synclavier. I emailed Andy Moorer to ask how it was really made. The short answer was "On a big-ass mainframe computer at LucasFilm". But I thought I should give you the long answer here in full, just because it feels like Andy's writing his own history for the first time...
>> "I've never written the THX story down (nobody ever asked). So, here's the whole story:
>> "I was working in what was then called the "Lucasfilm Computer Division" that existed from roughly 1980 to 1987 or so. It spawned several companies, including Pixar and Sonic Solutions. I was head of the audio group. In about 1982, we built a large-scale audio processor. This was in the days before DSP chips, so it was quite a massive thing. We called it the ASP (Audio Signal Processor).
>> "At the same time Tom Holman was also working at Lucasfilm. He had developed what is now called the THX sound system. It was to premiere with Lucasfilm's "Return of the Jedi." They were making a logo to go before the film. I was asked by the producer of the logo piece to do the sound. He said he wanted "something that comes out of nowhere and gets really, really big!" I allowed as to how I figured I could do something like that.
>> "I set up some synthesis programs for the ASP that made it behave like a huge digital music synthesizer. I used the waveform from a digitized cello tone as the basis waveform for the oscillators. I recall that it had 12 harmonics. I could get about 30 oscillators running in real-time on the device. Then I wrote the "score" for the piece.
>> "The score consists of a C program of about 20,000 lines of code. The output of this program is not the sound itself, but is the sequence of parameters that drives the oscillators on the ASP. That 20,000 lines of code produce about 250,000 lines of statements of the form "set frequency of oscillator X to Y Hertz".
>> "The oscillators were not simple - they had 1-pole smoothers on both amplitude and frequency. At the beginning, they form a cluster from 200 to 400 Hz. I randomly assigned and poked the frequencies so they drifted up and down in that range. At a certain time (where the producer assured me that the THX logo would start to come into view), I jammed the frequencies of the final chord into the smoothers and set the smoothing time for the time that I was told it would take for the logo to completely materialize on the screen. At the time the logo was supposed to be in full view, I set the smoothing times down to very low values so the frequencies would converge to the frequencies of the big chord (which had been typed in by hand - based on a 150-Hz root), but not converge so precisely that I would lose all the beats between oscillators. All followed by the fade-out. It took about 4 days to program and debug the thing. The sound was produced entirely in real-time on the ASP.
>> "When we went to sync up the sound with the video (which I hadn't seen yet), we discovered that the timings were all different. I readjusted the times, generated a new score, and in ten minutes, we had the sound synced up with the video perfectly.
>> There are many, many random numbers involved in the score for the piece. Every time I ran the C-program, it produced a new "performance" of the piece. The one we chose had that conspicuous descending tone that everybody liked. It just happened to end up real loud in that version.
>> "Some months after the piece was released (along with "Return of the Jedi") they lost the original recording. I recreated the piece for them, but they kept complaining that it didn't sound the same. Since my random-number generators were keyed on the time and date, I couldn't reproduce the score of the performance that they liked. I finally found the original version and everybody was happy.
>> "If you get permission from THX, I can supply you with the written "score" for the piece (in music notation - this was used to get the copyright) or even the original C program that produced the parameter lists. I can't supply you with a program that makes the sound itself.
>> "The ASP was decommissioned in 1986 and later sold for scrap."
>> Thanks, Andy. You are truly a Music Thing Hero.
NEXT UP: Apple, Korg and the fattest bassline ever
PREVIOUSLY: Windows 95 and Brian Eno

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 53 comments Post a Comment

24.5.05

A Yamaha DX7 in your pocket?

I've covered Palm OS music software before, but MiniMusic's new Krikit synth sounds and looks pretty good. It runs on Palm OS, and integrates with their sequencer software: The guy from MiniMusic says it uses FM and "It's like having the best synth keyboard from the 80s in your pocket." Brian Eno would love it. (via Harmony Central)

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 3 comments Post a Comment

24.5.05

TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 2: The Microsoft Sound

Ten years ago, Microsoft spent $300m launching Windows 95 (just under $3 per copy sold). A tiny slice of that money went to Brian Eno, who recorded the startup sound on a handful of ageing synths in his studio.
>>There are various different versions of 'The Microsoft Sound'. I'm pretty sure that this is the one (it sounds Eno-ish with delayed pianos). Please tell me if I'm wrong.
>> Brian Eno is proper arty. He once urinated in Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain'.
>> Brian Eno has produced six U2 albums, which have sold 70 million copies worldwide. Windows 95 sold 110 million copies in just two years.
>> Brian told XFM that he was paid $35,000 for the sound.
>> In 2001, MS-hater post-rock band Trans Am released Let's Take The Fresh Step Together [iTunes Link], which is the Microsoft Sound timestretched to 51 seconds.
>> Brian loves Yamaha FM synths. In 1995 he was using: Three DX7s, one TG77 and a Prophet VS, according to this Future Music interview.
>> The told the whole Windows 95 story in this 1996 interview with Joel Selvin: "The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, 'Here's a specific problem -- solve it.'
>>"The thing from the agency said, 'We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,' this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said 'and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.'[He doesn't say how he persuaded them to eventually use a piece six seconds long]
>>"I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel.
>>"In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time."
.
NEXT UP: 20,000 lines of code, a banjo and the THX Sound
PREVIOUSLY: Yodelling, the KLF and Intel

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 62 comments Post a Comment

23.5.05

New shots of Calder Case

Some new shots of that Calder guitar case - which look great. Nick says that this is strictly a prototype, that the real thing will be lined with velour/fur like a normal case.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 0 comments Post a Comment

23.5.05

Ophone sampling art telephones

"It's me Jens from Malmö again. 8 days ago, I attended and participated in the first ever Ophoniste Grand Prix here in Malmö. A relaxed non-competition with 4 Ophones. What is an Ophone? It's 'a loudspeaker with an attached telephone receiver. When an ophonist has recorded a sound into an ophone, it is repeated infinitely until another sound is recorded into the same ophone.' You can find out more about the Ophones and their inventors and the exhibition with 4 Ophones travelling the world here. And here's their masterpiece 'Vargön' from their performance in Helsinki caught on video." Thanks, Jens!

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 1 comments Post a Comment

23.5.05

TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 1: The 'Intel Inside' chimes

Austrian KLF fan Walter Werzowa had never heard of Intel when they asked him to compose a 3 second jingle for them. Last year alone, they spent $350m promoting the sound he created in his home studio by paying PC companies to use it in their ads. It's played once every five minutes somewhere around the world.
>>Walter has a mysterious and wonderful past. In the late 1980s, he and a friend came up with an idea for an ABBA-vs-yodelling novelty record called "Bring Me Edelweiss". Then they read the KLF's 'The Manual: How to Have a Number One Hit the Easy Way' [full text here]. They followed the instructions in the book, and sold 2 million copies across Europe. That's how he had enough money to live in LA.
>>Walter's friend Kyle Cooper was commissioned to create an ad for Intel and asked Walter to provide some music. In less than three seconds, they wanted "tones that evoked innovation, trouble-shooting skills and the inside of a computer, while also sounding corporate and inviting".

>>He sat in his home studio for a weekend, getting more and more frustrated: "Everything just felt stupid, chopped off and strange," he says.
>>The breakthrough came when he stared at the words 'Intel Inside' and started to sing them. He used 4ths and 5ths, because they're the most common intervals worldwide. It took ten days to record.
>>Walter is a big synth collector (he says he hasn't got 'all of them'). For the Intel sound he used 40+ layers, including a DX7, Oberheim OBX, Prophet VS, Emulator IIIx, Roland S760 and his beloved Jupiter 8, which was the first synth he ever bought.
>>He used lots of marimba and xylophone sounds because they 'sound corporate'
>>He was paid a set fee ("not that much") for the Intel work, but it opened a lot of doors. Now Walter's company Musikvergnuegen (German for 'Love of Music') employs 11 people.
>>Walter has just finished a sound for Samsung that will be used on all their advertising worldwide. He says that listening to tiny bits of music over and over and over is an acceptable occupational hazard.
>>More on Walter in this interview from Mix Magazine.
NEXT UP: WINDOWS 95 AND BRIAN ENO

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 25 comments Post a Comment

23.5.05

All this week: The Tiny Music Makers

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the office and my friend Conor's Mac restarted. When I heard the startup sound, I suddenly wondered who'd recorded it, how they made the sound, and whether they got a royalty cheque every time a Mac crashed*. And what about those other tiny, instantly recognisable sounds, like the Intel chimes, or that cool THX noise? Since then, I've been forced to abandon my usual journalistic technique (type product name into Google, present results as my own), and actually make phone calls, read newspaper archives and… conduct interviews with real people. I hope you enjoy the results.
*Answers: A guy called Jim, on a Korg Wavestation, no.
FIRST UP: YODELLING, THE KLF AND INTEL

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 24 comments Post a Comment

22.5.05

Homemade 'acoustic laptops'

Tore Honoré Bøe makes 'acoustic laptops' - homemade wooden boxes loaded with contact microphones and various rattly/shaky noismaking things. The videos don't really help explain what's going on, but they do look cool. (thanks, Scott and Beware of the Blog)

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 1 comments Post a Comment

22.5.05

How to turn an old cassette into a USB drive

OK, this isn't really as exciting as I thought when I saw the headline "USB Flash Cassette Mod" on the Make Blog. I thought is was some neat way to plug a tape deck into your computer by USB (rather than by spending $150) but it's just a guy with a broken USB memory stick stuck in a cassette case. Still cool, though!
ps: Read about vintage cassette collectors here and here !

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 0 comments Post a Comment

21.5.05

Build your own laser harp!

Jens writes from Malmö to let me know about the Laser Harp Pages, which contain most of the information you'd need to build yourself a Jean-Michelle Jarre Laser Harp (except, perhaps, an answer to the question 'why?'). It will cost you about €500 (although a proper 'frameless' one will cost nearer €5,000), but that doesn't include installing a smoke machine in your studio. Inevitably, JarreLook, the British JMJ tribute band, have this very impressive-looking MIDI laser harp in a 4U rack case.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 1 comments Post a Comment

21.5.05

Count Dooku sings!

You might enjoy this [Real Video] clip of Christopher Lee singing with Italian 'epic metal' band Rhapsody on a song called "Magic of the Wizard's Dream", which they've recorded in four languages. This studio report should serve to remind all Music Thing readers that music can be a force for evil, if it is allowed to fall into the wrong hands. (Thanks Dave)

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 2 comments Post a Comment

20.5.05

Sunday afternoon in South London = NOISE

If this photo is anything to go by (accordion, man with box on head, strat, toy megaphone, robot raygun arm) then it might be worth getting out to see MT readers Cementimental playing at the Jumble Arts Festival in Peckham, London this Sunday 22nd May 2005 at 5pm. If you see a man with a slightly bewildered looking 2 year-old (or vice versa), it might be me.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 1 comments Post a Comment

20.5.05

The most rock guitar pedal ever made?

"Only one of these exists. Controls are SLICE and LIFT. Slice takes your signal, savagely distorts it and sends it through a unique trip decimating and chopping along the way. The Lift control takes the severed head and degrades it, spits on it and gates it. All that is left after Zahrim is a pile of limbs and a carpet soaked with blood." Thanks, Tim.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 2 comments Post a Comment

20.5.05

High-Tech, recyclable, right-on new guitar case

Former TV exec and Music Thing reader Nick Comer-Calder has designed a high-tech guitar case that's very Mandarina Duck. This is his R&D website, which also comes with a blog. At the moment it's still in pre-production, but he hopes to manufacture before the end of 2005 from a recyclable, ultra-strong, ultra light weight material called CURV, which is a kind of poor man's carbon fibre. It's possible they'll be built in China, but ideally he wants twin plants in the US and UK, to cut down on pollution from transport. Price should be around £200, which makes them a lot cheaper than the current Rolls-Royce guitar case, Calton who make built-to-order fiberglass cases for $700+.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 3 comments Post a Comment

19.5.05

Glenn Branca's Double Body Guitar

Kevin writes: "So I've been thinking about Glenn Branca lately since he recorded Symphony #13 (Hallucination City) with 80 guitars, 20 basses, and drums back in October (it should be out sometime soon). I was wondering if you'd seen these pictures of him playing a double neck guitar (not the Jimmy Page type either)." Wow! Looks like a photoshop trick, but isn't. I don't think there's enough NYC art-rock on MT.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 3 comments Post a Comment

17.5.05

Awesome, cheap, transparent guitar for children

Wesley have been selling really cheap, really weird guitars on British eBay for a while now. The Jarvis-15 is a transparent acrylic guitar, ¾ scale, with one pickup and a built-in speaker. It even comes with headphones, for £59 + shipping. Sure, it's hardly a Dan Armstrong Plexiglass, but if my parents had given me one of these when I was 12, I would probably have exploded with excitement.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 10 comments Post a Comment

17.5.05

Essential T-Shirts for Music Geeks

So, CDM has a clever roundup of music-making experimental clothing stuff. At MT, we present: Some neat-o T-Shirts (thanks, Mikey):
Optigan: You just missed buying a real-life Optigan for £450 on eBay, so console yourself with this T-shirt from the very fine Optigan.com. ~~$12~~ ("If you're interested in the Optigan T-shirt, unfortunately you'll have to wait a few months.")
Wah Wah: London-based Wah Wah do masses of music-themed T-Shirts, including Mosrite, Moog, Coloursound, and so on. £18.95
Eventide: Can you imagine how excited you'd be if you spotted another MT reader wearing one of these t-shirts? That's right! Almost excited. $15.95
Elektron: Inevitably, Elektron have a very cool range of t-shirts. Their 'SID' is nice, but my vote goes for the granny-baffling 'I'm with Machinedrum'€40
Important Records: I'm pretty sure nobody connected with EMS will see a penny from them, but these guys have an eBay shop selling T-shirts with various Moog, EMS and Korg synths on the front. $9.99

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 9 comments Post a Comment

17.5.05

Vile piano-inspired Mac case mod

Mikey writes: "This is too cheesy for words, but droll." It's Tom Owad's heartfelt story of how he was given an old PowerMac by the assistant pastor at his church. He then lovingly transformed into a piano-themed aged PowerMac for his girlfriend. Here's the money shot where the girlfriend saw dork-boy's creation for the first time. Bless...

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 1 comments Post a Comment

17.5.05

eBay of the day: Mad Analog Guitar Synth

Thanks to hAzYiNsEpT from EM411 for delivering an MT classic: This mad, fantastically ugly and, by all accounts, entirely useless analog guitar synth from 1980. It's like an analog version of a SynthAxe . I can't really improve on seanh's comment from EM411: "Amazing! It looks like it was made by someone who has never seen a guitar in their entire life." Currently just $25...

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 2 comments Post a Comment

16.5.05

Crimson Twins: They have all the gear in the world

Ever wondered what kind of music you'd make if you won the lottery, went mad on eBay and ended up with a Fairlight, a Technos Axcel, various Eventide Harmonizers, a Buchla 700, Synton Syntovox Vocoder, Yamaha DX1... and so on? Well, the Crimson Twins have answered that question. Their site contains dozens of MP3 files (which I suspect are very old - the reviews on the site date from 1990) made with the most enormous pile of gear. I'll leave the comments on the music up to you.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 3 comments Post a Comment

16.5.05

DIY Midi Theremin, just £66

Richard writes: "Sorry things are a bit slow... Why not order one of these for only about 66 sQuids [plus shipping from the colonies]" It's a MIDI Theremin Kit, which Jason from Theremin World also let me know about. You move your hand about, and it triggers different notes over MIDI.

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 1 comments Post a Comment

16.5.05

Coolest synth interface ever?

As you've no doubt noticed, things are very, very quiet in music land at the moment. If you've invented anything cool, please launch it as soon as possible. So I was very excited to read Peter at CDM's report about Harmonical, a new free soft synth from Nial Moody (the guy who build a MIDI guitar pedalboard from wood and joystick parts). Peter spotted that Harmonical is very, very loud, but I'm more interested in the fantastic 3D spinning patterns it makes (and, less so, by the way it crashes my PC whenever I put the 'wrong' settings in). It sounds kind of interesting too - sort of FM-synth-gone-wrong. [Product Page]

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 0 comments Post a Comment

12.5.05

How to: Create a totally convincing synth hoax

This page tells the story of how - in the late '90s - a guy called Elhardt spoofed the online synth world by creating a press campaign for the Sage Synth from Bahn Audio Systems. He did amazing-looking 3D renders, created battered-looking product brochure scans in Photoshop and comped his own tweaking hand into one picture. It's a very good read, and he put an awful lot more effort in than I did. (More coverage here)

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 6 comments Post a Comment

12.5.05

The Lego Harpsichord

The ever-wonderful Make have a report on how Henry Lim built a full-sized, fully working Harpsichord, entirely out of Lego (the strings are the only non-lego parts). And you can hear him playing it and watch videos on the site. (Thanks Al)

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 2 comments Post a Comment

12.5.05

eBay of the day: Dynacord Rhythm Stick

Jim writes: "Roger Dodger music in Minneapolis used to be THE place to buy synths in the 1970s and 1980s - Prince bought everything there, they had PPGs, Oberheims, Kurzweils... it was a dream place. No Japanese synths though - they had an attitude about them.
"Anyway, I was a geeky kid who couldn't afford most of the stuff but still managed to spend 3 hours there most Saturdays, much to the chagrin of the owners and salesmen. I played with some very odd things as they showed up... and one of the oddest was the Dynacord Rhythm Stick. [Modelled here by Robin Horn] It's guitar shaped, with 8 "fret" buttons, and two pressure pads. The idea is to whack the pads with your thumb and fingers (sort of in a "slap bass" motion) and whatever buttons your holding down will "trigger".
"Actually it was completely retarded - you can see how limiting it would be for making music... One of the best things about percussion is that you get to use all 4 limbs to make sounds - this reduces you to one actual sound-making limb. But like a stand-up simmons drum kit, this could be sort of a fun thing if you were an 80's sequencing band.
"So today, it showed up on Ebay. I'm considering doing a $50 bid just to see if I get it. But I'm afraid I'd win it and have this ridiculous instrument."

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 6 comments Post a Comment

11.5.05

eBay of the day: Crazy Homemade British Synth

Alex writes from Middlesbrough: "Found this odd homemade looking synth on eBay. With daisywheel printed names for all the knobs, this looks like a bit of a shambles, and therefore intruiguing. Weird... What is this?" It's a brilliant-looking design, with three octaves of toy keyboard, some kind of matrix/button panel, what look like crossfader sliders for the filters, and one of those big vernier dials from a Synthi. It has 'Quasar' written on the back, so it's possible this is a DUY Quasar, a ludicrously rare Spanish-made synth with a built in sequencer. But that seems unlikely. Currently just £53 - let me know if you buy it!

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 5 comments Post a Comment

10.5.05

VST synth as political protest

"This VSTi is temposynced and produce RAVE sounds that terrorists and imperialists are so afraid of!" I'm not sure how new it is (Bush + Bin Laden + Synthedit = so 2002) but I'm very excited by BuushLaaden 2 from Dr Tikov, the guy who made the Jew's Harp VST. It's actually quite interesting - two oscillators, two filters, a kind of weird choppy gate effect. (BTW, Dr Tikov's site is incredibly slow, but does seem to work. Just imagine you're on a 28k modem and wait for the page to come down.)

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

10.5.05

Music Thing declared "Best Music Blog"

Hey! Thanks, smiling dreadlock dude at about.com

Posted by Tom Whitwell. Story permalink. 7 comments Post a Comment

Music Thing on Twitter

follow MT on Twitter

Music Thing Hits:
Music Thing Heroes:
Music Thing Friends:
My music gear for sale
DIY Modular Synth
Matrix Synth
Create Digital Music
Analog Industries
Boing Boing Gadgets
London Video Production
Oddstrument
Wire to the Ear
Palm Sounds
Noise Addicts
Retro Thing
Analogue Haven
Music Thing Massive
About Music Thing:
Send tips to Music Thing
About this site
Music Thing Massive
RSS Feeds

Problem with the ads?
Please let me know