From Sarah and Lara Grant, we have a dress that makes music, with tube-like apparatus made of felt for connecting sound, modular fashion. From the raucous duo Great Tiger, we get a homebrewed arcade controller Ableton Live that mashes loops into dance music with a quick button push. Yep, it’s Handmade Music time again in New York tomorrow Thursday. If you’re anywhere in the area, come on down – and feel free to bring your own projects and/or expect some surprise technological appearances. If not, we’ve still got some MP3s, visuals, and how-to information to share.

If you do make it to Brooklyn, we can promise some behind-the-scenes demonstrations, noise, at least one live set, and free, ice-cold Colt 45s while they last.

Read on for event details, a preview of the projects, and videos and downloadable MP3s from Great Tiger.

Wearable Patch Cords in a Sonic Dress

Sound artists, inventors, and designer sisters Sarah and Lara Grant present an in-progress audiological fashion experiment involving patch cords made from felt. (I love the gorgeous conceptual drawing.) They’re working with a dancer to make this into a performance, and we get to see the work evolve before our eyes.

the title of the piece is ‘Audiotrails’, playing off of the word ‘entrails’, since as you’ll from the drawing attached, we are designing a dress that has several felted cords coming out from the gut which will act as patch cords. These patch cords connect to different parts of the garment to produce various noises and effects.

What we will be bringing is an example of our patch cord concept in the form of a felted swatch and a concept drawing of the final piece, which we have not completed, but hope to present either next month or the following at handmade music. We will be talking about our process and answering any questions based on that. Sarah and I had been envisioning our set up on a table in the smaller room, since had not been planning to perform and since our goal has been to show our progress of a project that would take a couple months to finish.

Here’s a look at one of the coils, a felted patch cable that can then become part of the garment:

Sarah Grant has also done fascinating research into what she calls “felted signal processing,” in which textiles can themselves become active sound elements.

Push the Button: DIY Arcade Controller for Ableton Live and the Button-Mashing Music of Great Tiger

That’s button mashing in a good way. Inspired by games, fast push-button moves and combos, and electronic music, the duo Great Tiger has built a custom rig for mashing samples in Ableton Live.

The custom arcade controller, looking like what happens when an 80s arcade cabinet and the monome have a love child, was featured on the DJ blog DJ TechTools. (Worth reading that article for lots more technical details from the duo.) This video by Great Tiger gives a behind-the-scenes look at how the hardware is used with Live and how it’s put together.

Here’s Great Tiger live in action at Brooklyn’s Red Star:

Free Great Tiger MP3 Downloads

Great Tiger were kind enough to share a couple of their fun tracks with us, so you can grab them wherever you are.

Great Tiger on MySpace | Facebook

Come Visit Us

RSVP to handmade@3rdward.com OR
RSVP on Facebook

Handmade Music’s Brooklyn edition is held at 3rd Ward in East Williamsburg, a brisk ride on the L train out of Manhattan.

FREE, as always
…plus FREE Colt 45
7:30-10:00 pm, Thursday, October 15 (arrive by 9 or you’ll miss a lot)

Presented by CDM with our friends at MAKE, Etsy, and XLR8R

View Larger Map

If you’re in the New York area, tomorrow night we have another noise-making get-together at the lovely 3rd Ward. The event is free, and we have free Colt 45.

Amanda Ervin is the featured guest this month; see one of her circuits above. Her designs are intended to be something that other folks can make, so they could be an excellent starting point for the project you’re dreaming of. (And once you get sequenced events down, of course, you can assign them to whatever sounds or visuals you like.)

Thursday, September 17
7:30 – 10:30 pm
FREE
3rd Ward in East Williamsburg; Directions
With the support of Etsy.com, Make Magazine, and XLR8R.com

Full details:
http://handmademusic.noisepages.com/

And on Facebook:
Handmade Music Night

Nice blurb on myopenbar.com

I’ve given up on live streaming from the event because we can’t get a reliable connection, but we will have documentation for CDM on the projects afterward.

Amanda Ervin makes elegant noise-making apparatuses from simple circuits, and is able to share that process with her students (see her classes among 3rd Ward’s Circuits lineup). She’s going to show off some of her latest creations at the open showcase of Handmade Music Brooklyn, our monthly party + science fair + musical performance + ruckus. (More details soon on Handmade Music events that are springing up worldwide, thanks to the hard work and creativity of the DIY music community!)

What really impresses me about these projects is that Amanda has made both the project and the curriculum – that is, she can teach you to make these, too! It’s often easier to make something for yourself alone than it is to make it reproducible, so I do admire that in a design.

If you’re in the New York area, you can catch the event free, Thursday evening September 17. (Directions) If not, we’re working with 3rd Ward on ways to translate the educational experience online.

Here’s a musical excerpt from Amanda, as well:
Animal.mp3

Handmade Music info: More on Amanda’s work (with additional sounds and videos) on our Handmade Music site:

Handmade Music Brooklyn: Amanda Ervin’s Circuits, Open Call

Want to contribute your work? If you can make it to NYC this month, we’d love to present your work. All projects, all media (electronic, acoustic, hardware, software), and all levels of functionality (working, partially working, in-progress, completely broken) are welcome!

Handmade Music 9/17 Call for Works [Google Docs form, also embedded after the jump]

Showcasing amazing projects is a good thing. But we know that no creation emerges fully-formed. They start from nothing, with lots of mistakes along the way. You get help and ideas from other people. And you need time.

So this month’s Handmade Music in Brooklyn we’re declaring an Open Lab. Got a kit lying on your shelf, waiting to get made? Got a half-finished project that needs fixing? Just want to hang around some musical and visual DIYers and see what they’re up to? And just need a few hours to make some progress? That’s the idea.

Software projects, hardware projects, gear hacking, circuit bending, coding, patching in Reaktor or Pd or Max – it’s all welcome.

We also have a very special guest this month in the form of Morgan Packard, a talented multi-instrumentalist and computer musician (video at top, with live visuals by superDraw creator Joshue Ott). At 7:30p, Morgan will show off his free Ripple musical environment, built on the powerful open source SuperCollider code-for-sound platform. It’s a great chance to see what SuperCollider can do, how a scratch-built environment can open up musical possibilities, and what you can do with Ripple yourself.

Full details: Handmade Music Brooklyn: Open Lab, Featuring Morgan Packard’s Musical Code [handmademusic@noisepages]

Facebook Event Page

The whole event runs 6:00p-11:00p at 3rd Ward Brooklyn. As always, it’s completely free. Be sure to bring your projects and the tools you’ll need; we can provide power, a PA, space, and other folks to hang out with. And we can help give you an excuse to set aside a few hours of time.

We’ll also be taking notes on how the setup works, as we know this may be something other Handmade Music events want to try in your neck of the woods.

Electronics and synths are hard and you can’t hug them; plush animals and toys and blankets and pillows are soft and huggable. And we won’t even get started on the slightly-absurd gender associations of soft textiles and hard, toxic electronics. Or at least, so goes the traditional assumption.

But increasingly, designers are becoming interested in soft design. So in a last-minute addition to Handmade Music NYC, Richie Brown has added plush instruments – a ring modulator and two synths, which in turn can be patched together. They’re instruments you can hug. (Next step: make the connections soft, too, I think.)

As this was happening, by coincidence I was checking out a project called felted signal processing [Flickr set], using conductive soft materials for sound. That project is the work of Sarah Grant, and something I hope to cover more. We’ve also seen felt used as a very practical material for a surface and keys on a synth project (with a hard enclosure), and none other than monome creators Kelli Cain and Brian Crabtree did a feature story here on CDM on their felt + circuits project.

Don’t get me wrong: making electronics work with soft things is a significant challenge, and sometimes feels like trying to make an airplane fuzzy. I hope we’ll work on some community documentation and collaboration here – and perhaps we’ll even have a soft-themed hacklab online and with handmade music.

One superb reference: CNMAT’s wiki, particularly the Materials section.

Check out Handmade Music NYC

Squeezable instruments are just the beginning. Handmade Music Brooklyn for July is, quite literally, our biggest, craziest lineup ever.

If you are in the NYC area, be sure you don’t miss Handmade Music tomorrow night (Thursday).

Complete lineup at handmademusic.noisepages.com
RSVP on Facebook or email handmade@3rdward.com

View Larger Map

CrudBox by Steven Litt at ITP from Core77 on Vimeo.

How much performance power can you pack in a briefcase? What if you could have a magic box that did whatever you wanted?

That’s the question asked, in various different ways, by the artists we’re showcasing at this month’s Handmade Music NYC, Thursday evening 7/16 in Brooklyn. It’s a free event if you’re in the New York area, and we’ll be bringing as much of the work to you online around the world. Full event details:

Brooklyn, July 16: Suitcase Sequencers, Handmade Loopers, APC Hacking, Shake That Egg

Facebook event/RSVP

Join the global Handmade Music group on noisepages

The projects:

Sequence everything: CRUDBOX / STEVEN LITT
The CrudBox is an original hardware step sequencer in a briefcase, which plugs into and sequences everything from cassette decks to power tools and turns them into musical patterns.

Looping hardware: LOOOP-R / RUI PEREIRA
Looop-R is a musical, visual, hardware, software instrument.

Shake the beats: EGGBEATER / TED HAYES
This wireless, egg-shaped controller lets you mash loops, control filters, and play music using live gestures.

Ableton hacking: AKAI APC40, HACKED / MICHAEL HATSIS
Live laptop fans, take note: the commercially-available Akai APC40 Ableton Live controller warped to make new musical performances possible.

Handmade Music is FREE and, as always, made possible by our hosts at Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward creative space, plus our friends at XLR8R Magazine, MAKE Magazine, and DIY marketplace Etsy.com.

Handmade Music’s Brooklyn home:
http://www.3rdward.com/handmade-music/

Handmade Music in NYC and (soon) around the world, @ CDM’s Noisepages:
http://handmademusic.noisepages.com

Handmade Music hits Brooklyn again Thursday night with a terrific lineup:

• Robotic gamelan instruments with the Gamelatron, created by Zemi17 and the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) – check the video above!
• Rescued PDAs and iPods making music, with the Linux-powered ReWare project (which even allows you to run Pd on an old iPod), by Hans-Christoph Steiner – expect a box full of handhelds making noise
• Gestural Android handheld music, as I demonstrate the possibilities of the Google Android platform and G1 phone for OSC
• The Arduino-based Hard/Soft synth, designed by Gijs Gieskes and built by MAKE’s Collin Cunningham

Full project details at:

http://handmademusic.noisepages.com/

How to participate:

Online! Wherever you are in the world, you can join our live video stream:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cdm-tv

Apologies: while a test of the connection had worked for us last time, network performance was inexplicably poor. We’ll try to work on a better solution for the future. It’s the challenge of relying on a connection other than your own.

Schedule:

7:00p Online chat with the creators

7:30p Public event starts

8:00p Performances + demos

You can also ask questions to our creators by leaving them in comments here, or the day of / during the stream by sending a Twitter message with hashtag #cdmtv. (Follow CDM on Twitter) We’ll have clips of the show available by Friday

In NYC:

FREE, at Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward, 7:30p Thursday. rsvp@3rdward.com or on Facebook

Directions

3rd Ward

Thanks to Pabst Blue Ribbon for the free beer, plus our co-organizers at MAKE, Etsy, and XLR8R.

Last-minute NYC-area projects! If you have a project you want to bring, we will have a PA, amp, and projector. We welcome those last-minute projects that manage to come together. Just bring it by and find me at about 7p.

In Your Neighborhood:

We have folks interested in starting up Handmade Music around the US and internationally. Sign up via Google Docs if you have any interest in helping organize (no commitment) and expect information in the next couple of weeks.

Who are the people in your DIY music neighborhood?

Well, quite a few of the DIYers here on Planet Earth are converging this week in New York. Lover of circuit bending, creative electronics, and DIY music hardware are gathering for the massive Bent Festival in Manhattan, complete with performances, workshops, and a book launch. And we’ve got a special edition planned of Handmade Music featuring several artists from Bent, too, in our monthly free event. For the rest of the planet, I hope to share some of these goodies well beyond the borders of the five boroughs.

To give you a taste of the kind of work we’re doing, check out the videos here of Chiptune Marching Band, getting kids making noisy circuits for the first time and the fantastic electronic workings of Peter Edwards’ brain, plus NPR radio coverage of Ranjit Bhatnagar’s hand-crafted “Instrument a Day.”

Here are the highlights of the events.

Bent Festival, April 16-18, The Tank in Manhattan

bentfestival.org

• Nightly performances by Dr. Bleep, VBLANK, Christopher McDonald, Computer at Sea, Rhythmmemory, Playboy’s Bend, Die Schrauber, Peter Edwards/casperelectronics, E-Squared, Family TV, Devgon Ash, Ken Rei, Dr. Rek, Pixel Form, Boring Machine, Burnkit 2600, Anti Social Musik Order, plus Handmade Music veterans Lesley Flanigan, Loud Objects, Tristan Perich, and Don Miller / No Carrier … plus free beer every night at 7p.
• Nic Collins launching a new edition of his book Handmade Electronic Music – The Art of Hardware Hacking. (Can’t wait to read that.)
• Workshops on making your own Noise Box or miniRungler (sounds like Dr. Seuss), working with sensors and networks and big installations of lights that switch on and off, microcontroller programming, circuit bending, circuit design, and other Brainy Topics for beginners. There’s even a family-friendly workshop on making your chiptune marching band instruments.

Chiptune Marching Band from jamie allen on Vimeo.

And from your cheery neighbors here at CDM and our friends –

Handmade Music returns with a special Bent Edition – free, Thursday, 4/16, 3rd Ward in Brooklyn:

• “modular synth meets circuit-bent Barbie dolls. noise, drone, dance party with Peter Edwards of casperelectronics.”
• A surprise mystery instrument(s) from Handmade Music superstar Ranjit Bhatnagar, who promises it’ll be “something weird.”
• Me, with the DIY Radio Shack contact mic and some custom software, showing you how to have fun with cheap impulse-buy contact mics and make music with water
• Hopefully surprise cameos from Bent Festival’s Jamie Allen and Jo Kazuhiro talking about the circuitry, the music, and the magic of the Chiptune Marching Band
• Free beer courtesy Pabst Blue Ribbon, while it lasts

Presented by createdigitalmusic.com with our friends at music trend-setters XLR8R.com, DIY bible makezine.com, and self-made marketplace Etsy.com

Hosted by artists’ facility and happening location 3rd Ward

7:30pm, Thursday, April 16 – FREE!
3rd Ward is located at 195 Morgan Ave., at the corner of Stagg St., in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
(near the Grand St L train)
Directions
RSVP: handmade@3rdward.com

Facebook event page

See also lots more at:

casperelectronics

For more on handmade music and Ranjit’s brilliant, self-motivated hand-crafted Instrument a Day project, NPR did a fantastic piece on All Things Considered:

An Instrument A Day, Crafted By Hand [audio, interviews, and sound examples of some wild and wonderful instruments]

Wonderful things happen when you invite lovers of noise together in a room. Musicians and non-musicians, electronics geeks and first-timers, folks pick up a soldering iron — often for the first time — and cause utter mayhem. So we again had a fantastic time at Handmade Music last month. I’ve just gotten the photos in, so decided to share.

We’re looking for folks to bring stuff to Handmade Music on 4/16 – see the bottom of the article and give us a shout if you have software or hardware creations to share. They don’t even have to work, entirely – this is the place to find people to help give advice, so we like even partly-functioning inventions.

Even if you live far, far from Brooklyn (like back in Old Amsterdam), the featured March projects are within reach:

• Loud Objects Noise Toy was the star of the evening. Lesley Flanigan and Tristan Perich of Loud Objects — superstar composers and sound artists themselves — were onhand as patient teachers and guides in the ways of Noise.
• glitchDS on PC and Mac: The DS homebrew creator Bret Truchan delighted with not only his mobile gaming creations, but a netbook running a new PC cellular automaton MIDI sequencer, ported to Processing. More on that soon. (See the image captured by Make Magazine’s Collin Cunningham.)
• Pulsantes I got Jaime Munarriz’ strange Processing + Pd pulsating rhythmic toys working on a PC – thanks, Jaime, for the virtual contribution!
• jReality Peter Brinkmann demonstrated the sonic capabilities of audiovisual virtual reality framework jReality. Intense stuff – you don’t even need to use Cartesian coordinates. Elliptical, baby!
• Networked Objects: Eric Beug brought by his DIY wireless synth modules and an iPhone for control. This progress is under development, so I hope it makes a repeat visit.

By the way, in case you wondered what happens when a bunch of people play all their newly-built Noise Toys at once? It sounds something like … this (and sorry, my digicam mic was entirely incapable of capturing the resulting sonic chaos):

More photos from Collin Cunningham and our event co-host MAKE Magazine:

Hey, You! Yeah, You!

So, folks in automobile / railroad / Zeppelin distance of New York, we’d love to see what you’re working on, be it a Max/Pd patch, Processing sketch, circuit-bent instrument, DIY controller, sensor project, or wearable SweaterSynth. Definitely bring cables, and (if you’ve got one) a portable PA; otherwise plug into our PA and projector.

Next engagement: Thursday, April 16 (this coming Thursday).

Form below, or head directly to our form on Google Docs:
Handmade Music Call for Works: Form

Once a month, CDM goes from its virtual state to a sort of augmented reality existence in Brooklyn. (In Williamsburg, no less, which has itself been augmenting itself into neighborhoods formerly known as Bushwick.) Tonight is one of those times.

If you’re in Brooklyn, you should come enter our physical dimensions so you can:

• make your own NoiseToy with Loud Objects’ Tristan Perich, and take it home for the low, low price of ten clams. (Dollars, though I think clams are actually worth more at the moment. I’ll eat the clams.)
• witness strange, wonderful things happen in the areas of audiovisual virtual reality and free, new sequencers for Mac and PC
• watch me make a fantastic musical Processing sketch work, shipped over the Interwires from Spain!
• hang out with us and discuss our other projects that don’t work (because, really, that’s part of the process

TONIGHT = 7:30 pm (drop by late if you must) = Brooklyn, here

If you are separated from Brooklyn by time and space, fret not. I’m working on a site that will start to document these projects, and we’re extending our geographical dimensions so that these events start happening in other cities / countries / continents (perhaps among the all-Firefox crowd in Antarctica, where I gather they use Linux as they actually are penguins).

Also, a lot of these hardware and software projects are available for your consumption — sometimes free (as in beer and freedom), so we can all share the love.

For instance, learn about / acquire a Noise Toy on the Noise Toy site!
http://www.loudobjects.com/kit/

But it’s my belief that the future of CDM really depends on the interplay between physical and virtual reality in all sorts of dimensions. That is, so long as in the process I don’t become unstuck from time. I’ve watched Lost / Doctor Who, and that often ends badly.