All-Handmade Mister Resistor Music Ensemble, Live in NYC Sunday
Tired of conventional instrumentation? How about toy robots named Freddy and Teddy, a violin with a bow made out of cassette tape, and a synthesizer assembled from a 1960s electric guessing game?
We have a special guest performance for the next Handmade Music party, organized by CDM in New York with Etsy.com and Make Magazine. The Mister Resistor ensemble features various musical oddities — electronic and acoustic — created by students at Parsons The New School for Design.
Mister Resistor - the video from ranjit on Vimeo.
Mister Resistor Preview 1 from ranjit on Vimeo.
The course is taught by Ranjit Bhatnagar, who’s been a regular at Handmade Music with robotic Theremins, MIDI ironing boards, and other alternative instruments. Ranjit explains how the course works:
Background: for the last few years I’ve been teaching a studio class in Parsons’ department of Design & Technology (that’s the multimedia & physical computing department). The class is called Mister Resistor, and it’s about making homemade instruments and performing with them. I introduce the students to circuit bending, simple acoustics, synthesis, and the like, and get them making and playing their own instruments. The “final exam” for the class is a public concert. Last year’s class did their concert at the Flux Factory gallery in Queens, in the midst of a giant sound sculpture I’d worked on.
I know we have other instructors out there, so if you use similar techniques in your class (or would like to), let us know about it!
I’ll be flying all the way from Australia back to New York to co-host Mister Resistor on Sunday at another installment of Handmade Music. Various other reasons this one is special:
- I’ll be hosting a free workshop using a ribbon controller electronics kit from PAiA Corporation. Even the kits are free to makers, until we run out. (More on that kit and how to get it wherever you are soon.) You can do the whole thing without soldering, even if you’ve never done this before.
- We’ll have free beverages, supplied by Function Drinks.
- It’s in Manhattan, not in Brooklyn — our friends at Etsy Labs hooked up a fantastic space in SoHo called openhousegallery, 201 Mulberry Street near Spring Street.
- It’s in the afternoon (2-5p), rather than at night. And you can still catch the NYU ITP show Monday. (Just go; you’ll understand.)
- As always, if you’re in town, stop by and bring your own projects for show and tell if you like. (Hint: they don’t even have to function properly. We’re relaxed like that.)
Once again, that’s Sunday, 12/16, 201 Mulberry Street in SoHo, completely free, you’ll hear great music, and you’ll learn to make electronics without soldering even if you never have before.
Invite and ensemble details + music, misterresistor.com
Handmade Music Event on Facebook
Speaking of events, there’s been so much awesomeness and I’ve been so very much in Australia that I’ve gotten way behind, so apologies about some cool events I didn’t get up. I would be remiss, though, in not pointing to another ensemble, partly because you can go while I’m in a 747 over the Pacific, but mostly because I hope by second semester we’ll have massive battle of the band competitions between these things. NYU’s own NIME ensemble after the jump.
Oh, and to the 95% of readers not in New York, a calendar for CDMworld is definitely in the works so we can share the love.
![]()









