Current_tv segment on Etsy Labs' monthly Handmade Music nights.

Homemade Music Makers [via]

[Editor's note - The music nights usually with MAKE, but for this one the entire NYC team was out of town at another event, so that's why you didn't see MAKE --- our makers were there though! - it's usually Create Digital Music - ETSY - MAKE handmade music night - pt ]

Originally commissioned by Walk the Plank for the inaugural and very first Manchester Art Car Parade, the 'People's Prize' winner >> tonefloat << continues to entertain and delight with its sub-lime fusion of form and function, revelling in the grand tradition of the English Eccentrics.
Milkbottles have a pretty harsh tone when empty, but when filled with 'milk' to different levels a semblance of tonal scale emerges, and the fun begins...

- Tonefloat's site

- Tonefloat on Flickr

All toy instruments should have MIDI jacks -

The idea was to take a child's toy xylophone and get the computer to play it. Now I know that the computer is capable of making noises electronically but it is much more interesting to watch an instrument being automatically played. I am sure you have all seen crowds around fair ground steam organs, whereas tapes of the same hardly sell at all.

Picture Me Rollin' is a manufactured surface designed to produce beats as roller luggage is pulled across. Tones are produced as the wheels of the roller luggage encounter different textures, and these tones will be arranged in a way to create beats. Multiple parallel surfaces are planned, as to allow for multiple bags to generate more complex melodies. The tones produced are modulated and amplified using contact microphones and Max/MSP.

Background
After the concept was formed, we began conducting research on different surface materials with different bags in an effort to isolate our variables and find sample tones to work with. With the sample tones, we generated sample beats which we then used to guide our patterns of construction.

Audience
Commuters in airports/bus/train stations.... and everyday travellers. Hopefully, this project will lead to other interventions, including rollerbladers in Central Park, etc.

User Scenario
Our ideal user would be the hustling commuter rushing through an airport corridor with their roller luggage in tow. As the wheels of their roller luggage pass over the textured surface, they would hear interesting rhythmic beats.

Dug North sent word of this interesting weight-driven music box -

"Andante Grazioso" (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / KV331) played by a "Mechanical Music Box in a Drawer" made from recycling materials found in electronic-waste, bulky trash and at home.

Related:

Make your own mechanical music box

A slightly more complex version of using a water surface as a music controller featuring five lasers instead of just the one. Please note that this is a prototype version, and as such does not represent the variety of output for the finished thing

Read a little more about the Toriton Plus

Synthcart is a cartridge for the Atari 2600 written by Paul Slocum. The program uses the Atari 2600 keypad controllers as an interface for users to trigger notes and beats on the video game console.

Read more about Synthcart control

Anonymous pointed out this darn fine lookin' MIDIBox64 PIC based controller.

• 12"x12" Faux Walnut Case
  
• 16 Knobs
  
• 5 Faders
  
• 16 Arcade Buttons
  
• 32 MIDI controlled LED buttons

Check the MIDIBox site for more info and a list of project code - uCApps.de

Resident video tech Eric Beug demoed his Wireless Sound Objects @ ITP's Spring show this week -

Wireless Sound Objects are objects that either make sound or control the sound that other objects are making. They can interface with a computer, with other existing music hardware or be used as stand alone units. They can be used for performance, recording composition, improvisation, and education. Think: Modular Synthesizer without all the patch cords. Think: Live Electronic Music without getting the sense that a performer is just playing back an MP3 while checking her email.

In addition to being a novel oscillator source, speaker feedback can be a means of analog/digital signal exploration -

Speaker Synth is a five-speaker array with no external audio input, created by Lesley Flanigan. The only components in the system are the instrument's speakers, piezoelectric microphones, amplifying circuits, and the hands of the performer. Speaker Synth is played by positioning individual piezo microphones with their corresponding speakers and manipulating their associated on/off and volume controls to induce a variation of feedback effects. During the performance, samples from both Speaker Synth and a vocalist are captured and sequenced to build a dense sonic pallet of rhythms and melodies.

Speakers are so readily available these days, often discarded while still in perfectly usable condition. Projects like this do well to showcase the simple components' versatility and value. - Speaker Synth

Bugbrand is running a workshop on building the above seen touch-contact instrument - a good-to-go self contained kit built on CMOS logic -

3 oscillators - two of which can be sync'd to Osc1 resulting in very rich harmonic drone sounds.
Each osc has a switch for hi or lo pitch. The Oscs are all running at audio-rates (rather than the sub-audio clicks of the PostcardWeevil)
Mixer and comparator to bring together the Oscs and give a stable output level even when starved. The starve also has two settings - stable and unstable.
CMOS overdrive with tone contol and drive setting.
13 touch points!
10 dials!
7 switches (well, 6 if you discount the on/off switch)
1/4" jack output and/or onboard mini-amp.

Results? Power drones and chaoscillations. Touchy-screamy!

What's that you say? - you don't live anywhere near Berlin or Lisbon? Fret not. Tom Bugs' has vowed to share his design plans for the PCB shortly. No word on possible kits as of yet.

The Synthinetic user-powered noise box just begs to be played with, and it most definitely looks the part -

To play the instrument the player has to turn big square knobs that turn the motors and slowly electricity is fed to the circuit, power is stored in capacitors that slowly charges. The instrument will start to produce sound when it has enough power. Two LEDS show how much the circuit is charged
There are various controls, knobs and switches to manipulate the sounds.
It gets most interesting when the capacitor is pushed to its limit - The sound will vary and produce unpredictable results.

One of the best features is the KILL switch - the switch, accessed by sliding your finger in a fur hole, drains all the electricity into a motor that spins a pirate flag. The sound slowly dies as the flag spins. Pressing the button again will stop the kill process and use whatever energy is left to run the circuit.

Solar + synthesizer = two great tastes in one! -

A wearable, portable square-wave synthesizer designed to be worn around the wrist so that he or she can be musically expressive whenever the moment strikes them.

Rows of buttons run along the underside of the wearer's wrist for triggering of musical tones and a light sensor is available for shifting the pitch of the tones being played. This design allows for a form of musical expression that integrates itself very intimately with the human body. Tapping with the fingers plays tones and movement of the wrist and arm shifts these tones in pitch up and down.

This noise maker titled "Coke's Satan Noise Maker" uses two photocells and a 555 timer to make the crazy sounds documented in this video. Really simple project with some nice results if you watch the above video.

There was a strong emphasis on solar energy @ ITP's spring '08 show - for example, this design for sun-run speakers -

The Solar Sound System is a portable audio player powered by the sun. Its slim design for easy travel, and its unique angling system allows you to harness the sun's rays from any postion. Now you can jam along to your favorite tunes ecologically guilt-free knowing that you're utilizing 100% green power!

An interesting piece from ITP's spring show, the Crudbox records button presses as a sequence controlling onboard 5v ports -

There are 4 speaker terminals on the box, into each of which you can plug any object that can run on 5 volts. In the video I've plugged in LEDs because it makes the interaction clearer, but my main interest is in plugging motors in, attaching them to the box, and amplifying the sounds they make. Each speaker terminal has a button and a pot. Pay attention to which of the 4 tempo LEDs is on, then press a button, then let go. It will switch on the object (motor, LED, etc), then switch it off when you let go. The next time it cycles through the loop of 4 LEDs it will switch on and off at the same points. The object will pulsewidth modulate at different speeds depending on what position the pot is in when you switched it on. You can do this up to 8 times and can change the PWM with each one, then do the same with the 3 other objects.

Ladyada's just churning out the new kits these days; I'm not sure she's human. The latest:

Adding quality audio to an electronic project is surprisingly difficult. Here is a shield for Arduinos that solves this problem. It can play up to 22KHz, 12bit uncompressed audio files of any length. It's low cost, available as an easy-to-make kit. It has an onboard DAC, filter and op-amp for high quality output. Audio files are read off of an SD/MMC card, which are available at nearly any store. Volume can be controlled with the onboard thumbwheel potentiometer.

Here's a video of the Wave Shield for Arduino in action:

You can add "drum machine" to your list of things you can do with dead hard disk drives.

HDD drum machine (connection/synchronisation test)

How to synchronize five metronomes with two soda cans and a board.

Synchronisation [via]

Check this 12' x 4' guitar for sale by its maker -

"Heavy Metal" is a large acoustic style guitar sculpture that can actually be strummed to make some musically appeasing sounds. This sculpture can be made in any size or style and can be installed in various ways, it would be perfect for a guitar lovers home, or perhaps a music store, restaurant or bar/nightclub.

This trio performs the Tetris theme on bottles of various sizes and water levels. They give you some clues to how they made it, one being the clicking metronome in the background and sped up effect; they must have performed it much slower then sped it up. My lips hurt just looking at it, though. Via Geekologie.

In 1958 the BBC established the Radiophonic Workshop to explore and produce innovative sounds for radio programming. The group's unconventional approach to sound synthesis and arrangement poised them at the forefront of music technology - making them the envy of many pioneering musicians. Looking back at some of their hardware setups, it's no wonder current-day sound makers still hold the workshop in such high regard.

Workshop member Delia Derbyshire is responsible for what is commonly accepted as the group's signature recording - recorded in '63, the original theme from Doctor Who.

Simply unbeatable - electronic music doesn't get any better than that.

Visit the Radiophonic Workshop gallery

Read more of the group's history on Wikipedia

This Sequential Resonation Machine by Joseph Casbarian routs any amplified sound source through a twelve position switch positioned at the top of the device. Each of the 12 valves contain a speaker, turning this steampunk looking device into a sequencer of sorts that uses pipe resonance to produce pitch.

Sequential Resonation Machine

Eric of LEMUR talks trons, slime, and sound -

Eric Singer has more than just a penchant for making his musical bots. In fact, he has a separate category altogether for very innovative musical controllers he creates and calls "Trons." Here, we take our first look at the Slime-o-Tron - a controller that works by moving conductive slime around copper nails.

Hmm, ferrofluid could be a fun option - LEMUR Slime-o-Tron: A Slimey Controller [via matrixsynth]

Related:

Slime-o-tron

Andrew Turley turned a microfiche viewer into a musical/MIDI interface simply by pointing a photodiode at the screen and feeding the light values into an MCU and out to a Casio keyboard. As you scroll through the microfiche content, the changing light values of the data make music.

Maker Faire Highlights: Making Music the Hard Way

Related:

• Musical interfaces @ Maker Faire

The wood version of the "Weird Sound Generator" (pictured above), is one of a series of home built synths by Sascha Neudek. Really nice construction on all of the synths and he even sells them from his site which is pretty cool since they have a one-of-a-kind type look and feel.

Subtle Noise Maker

This project by Aleks Kolkowski creates records by using a vintage record cutter to carve grooves into old CDs and DVDs. In his recent showing of the project at the Futuresonic Festival in the UK, visitors came by with sound files which he would carve into the discs and then give copies back as a playable record. Really nice remake of two technologies that are slowly dying out to MP3s.

[via], Aleks Kolkowski
CD-Recycled 45rpm

Here's a vid showing just a few of the many musical interfaces on hand at Bay Area Maker Faire. There were so many cool instruments, yet so little time to play them all. It was truly awesome to see such a great turnout on the sonic front - big thanks to all who made it happen!

In this "Dipping Duck Orchestra", music is randomly generated by 8 dipping ducks or drinking birds where the circuit is completed when the duck's bill hits the water. The project resembles a keyboard of sorts, where each duck plays a different note when triggered. Check out the video above for the full effect.

Dipping Duck Orchestra