Handmade Music, the semi-regular evening of DIY musical oddities brought to you by CDM, Etsy, and Make Magazine, will mercilessly descend upon yet another peaceful Brooklyn evening. Expect an informal, free party + show and tell + science fair featuring self-made electronic musical projects.

Already confirmed for the lineup:

• The MIDI Pick, a pressure-sensitive DIY digital guitar pick by Roy Vanegas


• Mystery musical controllers from Eric Singer, the mind behind the world-infamous LEMUR, an educational outlet in Brooklyn and collective of musical robot/electronics-creating artists
• Theremin-playing robots and possibly other surprises from series favorite Ranjit Bhatnagar. (See the Theremin robots in action, covering Gnarls Barkley. If we’re really lucky, Ranjit will bring his students. Students, if you’re listening, we’d love to have you there!


• David Brynjar Franzson with a generative piece using custom software built in Max/MSP

And I’ll have a new iteration of my video/gesture-controlled musical creation, which allows users to virtually navigate musical structures via a webcam/DV cam. Going to keep working on that until it develops into something, then share how to do it, hopefully. I may have a surprise or two, as well, in addition.

But that’s just the beginning of the lineup, because part of the lineup can be … you.

Share Your Work in Person

As always, we welcome projects in progress to show off and share. Got something brilliant? Got something partly finished? Got something completely broken you can’t figure it out? Bring it out. I know we had at least one person from the circuit bending challenge in the greater NYC area, so of course we’d love to bring some of that into meatspace / the real world.

Share Your Work Virtually Around the World

I’ve felt bad that we can’t involve the global CDM community, much of whom, as it happens, don’t live in the NYC area. (A remarkable number of you are in Australia and Norway.) So, the circuit bending challenge video submissions worked so well, we’re going to open up the event to virtual projects on the Interwebs. Got an unusual music project — even one in progress — you’d like to share? Send us photos and/or embeddable video links by Thursday morning New York time or so, and we’ll feature it here on the site and hopefully (if wifi is cooperative) even have a “kiosk” going at the party. Best way: drop us a line on the CDM contact form.

Fair game: circuit bending, chiptune - vintage gear, DIY controllers, handmade software (code, Reaktor - Max - Pd patches, SuperColldier, whatever), hacked hardware, the works.

Drop by!

As always…

Where: Etsy Labs (blog)
325 Gold Street, 6th Fl.
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(the building has a big clock tower on it. Do NOT put too many people in the elevator! Read the sign!)

Subway: Take the A/C/F to Jay St. or B/M/Q/R to DeKalb.
Map

When: 8:00pm - whenever

Cost: FREE (light refreshments provided; feel free to bring some more)

Bring stuff if you like, or just come to hang.

Collin Mel brought some wonderful soundmaking projects to Handmade Music last week. Face-to-face community is a beautiful thing (if loud, crowded, and prone to elevator failure — I like to think the Etsy elevator was slashdotted). But it’s also nice to keep up with Web documentation of projects. Collin’s got a great blog with updates on his latest, and some lovely Flickr photos. Included: boxes with lots of knobs that make sounds, and giant, clear, tube-shaped enclosures. And extra points for hacking together an amp and calling it “Ol’ Crappy.”

He also has some nice words about the Thursday party, which I hope will help inspire setting these up, even informally (invite a few friends!), in other parts of the world:

What made this event extra fun for me was the fact that it was the first time I was able to demonstrate some instruments I’ve been working on to a very supportive and interested community. I have to say, the positive feedback I received (regarding the atari tube in particular) warmed my heart. I have spent so much time learning the language of electronics over the past few months - toiling over wire and solder - that I almost forgot how good it feels to see someone else enjoy something that I’ve made. What I see as a noisemaker with a couple of knobs on it becomes an instrument once someone else picks it up and begins to play. That is a very good thing.
A big thanks to everyone who came out to the event - Hope to see you again soon.

A Heart-Warming Night of Noise
Narbotic [Collin's blog]

Tommy responds to our call for screen grabs of software with this fascinating Jitter patch:

He writes:

used lloopp and jitter runtime to make this instrument that uses a firewire camera as a source for effecting sound generators. i like this shot because of the video feedback.

What’s lloopp? Glad you asked. It’s a live improvisation / looping / performance tool built in Max/MSP and totally open source. That makes it ideally-suited to use if you’ve found other live performance tools to be overly restrictive on their own.
lloopp

Speaking of free, unusual interfaces, Tommy also sends along this elegant image from ixi software’s spindrum. They have a whole range of free, Mac/Windows tools for music making, all with organic interfaces and strange, floating objects, a bit reminiscent of the design of instruments like ElectroPlankton.

ixi software

It’s all proof that not all music software has to look the same, and the future is bright for innovation in on-screen interfaces. Software has a major interface on traditional instruments, too, which is that the interface for playing, the sense of a musical score, and visualization/imagery for the sounds themselves can all be united in the virtual domain. There have always been echoes of that in instrument design: buxom, carved women on viola da gambas, the way a piano keyboard reflects a system of tuning and pitch relations, and fantastical landscapes painted on virginals and other instruments. But I suspect we’ve only begun to see how this area could be blown up with digital instruments.

The only danger: we’ll have to keep from getting overly distracted by eye candy!

As the last couple of decades have led to making music in software, some of the materiality of physical instruments is lost. No matter how much you love your hardware synths, odds are you spent at least a little time looking into the void of a computer screen. And to the public, much of that is obscured by the back of a display. Instruments face outward; computers face inward.

Enter online photo sharing. Screen grabs can make software rigs visible. For example, someone’s been busy putting together a monster bass channel strip in Ableton Live:

Contained: the synth source is Vember Audio’s Surge digital synth, fed into Ohmforce’s Ohmicide saturator/distorter, Waves’ C4 (a multiband parametric compressor), L2 (ultramaximizer) and Maxx Bass (bass enhancement), and Ableton Live’s own Auto Filter and Saturator. Kids, don’t try this at home. I’m amused because this is hilarious, goes-to-eleven overkill.

Got some screen grabs you want to share? Add them (and anything else music-related) to the Create Digital Music Flickr pool, and drop us a line if you think we’ll find it especially interesting.

I’ll be interested to see if tools like plasq’s upcoming Mac utility Skitch also catch on for this purpose.

While on the subject of wonderful handmade musical instruments, Max (and Audrey) aka farnea have been posting some fantastic creations to Flickr over the past few months. They recently cropped up on the Create Digital Music Flickr Pool.

The Sound Destruction Unit:

DIY modular synth made putting together a lot of things I’ve built in the last times. There is a Weird Sound Generator, a Crackle Box, a random pattern generator, some filters (cutoff, square to sine), a gate controller, a Vactrol based controller, optical sensors and body contacts, mixing and power stuff.

Orange Commodore 64 Synth: A lovely, custom-painted “Modded C64 with SID2SID expansion and Prophet64 cartridge.”

The C64 also has a helpful discussion of paint. Music DIY extraordinaire Fibra advises:

Always apply at least one layer of plastic primer. Let it dries enough after each layer. Also apply at least 2-3 layers of paint. I also used spray canned paint (for cars) which is probably better than acrylic based.

Hmmm, I’ve got a few keyboards that could use a custom job. (”Pimp my Synth,” anyone?) Please don’t be shy about joining in on our Flickr group, by the way. It seems like it could be a great way not only to document impressive hardware DIY projects, but also custom software patches in Max/MSP and Reaktor, unusual clip configurations in Ableton Live, racks in Reason, musical scores, performances — all kinds of things.

Another nice example: choking sun’s very nice studio.

Now, some videos of the Sound Destruction Unit:

Reed Ghazala, popularly accepted as the Father of Circuit Bending, writes us with his latest creation:

Long coming, here’s a finalized version of my Magnetic Patch Bay on the Fractal Oscillator prototype that I published last spring/winter (2007).

[It's] a Yamaha PSS-6, circuit-bent, and with my magnetic patch bay added on the rear panel. The idea goes back to when I used magnets to hold a wire in place, bridging the 2 body contacts on my first bent synth (the Odor Box, c. 1967) so I could adjust the other controls (freeing my hands from the contacts). This patch system opens up lots of great alternatives for signal routing and mixing…

Fractal Oscillator with Magnetic Patch Bay [Flickr Set]

The magnetic patch bay in particular is an innovative design; I wonder if it’s a concept that could be developed in areas beyond circuit bending per se. Here’s how Reed describes it:

In this version I’ve captured rare earth mini magnets within steel mesh, the mesh then attached to the wire. Heat-shrink tubing covers this soldered connection point. Obviously, the instrument pads could be magnetized instead, the patch cords then terminated with conductive ferrous caps of appropriate shape instead of magnets.

For circuit-bending, this is a great leap forward in signal routing. While I’ve a utility patent filed and pending on this, don’t let that stop you from experimenting with the technique for your own use. I published it here (and last winter) so people could try it out.

If my theory of The Threshold of Invention holds true, even without my distributing all the pics last winter via internet, I’m guessing others will have originally discovered this by now, too. Heck - might even be patented already in the 1920’s (try a patent search yourself and see what you pay the pros for). All I know for sure is that you’ll like it, it feels great to use, and it’s SO much fun to play with! It should be a standard for single-conductor patching (like in contemporary circuit-bending or vintage voltage-control synthesis).

On a sadder note: Unfortunately, Reed is also the bearer of bad news. Back in October, he warned us that phenomena like Make Magazine aside, the surplus and DIY parts business was in trouble. Since then, it’s gotten worse:

My prior warning call about the weakening status of handyman-surplus orbits has been confirmed and re-confirmed many times since. Mendelson’s is trying to close down (20% off all stock now), Fair Radio (Lima, OH) confirms the problem (lots of surplus - not enough MAKErs). And etc.

Sad news, indeed. Fortunately, more great designs from Reed always lift my spirits.

Previously:
Reed Ghazala’s flickr Set: From Circuit Bending to Digital Art to Generally Crazy Ideas
Keyboards with Eyeballs, Circuit Bending Info and Book

Maker Faire this weekend had plenty to offer fans of DIY musical gear, from Theremin karaoke performances to wild, home-built instruments from independent DIYers and academics. I spent most of the weekend tied to my booth, making music by scanning barcodes, manipulating a simple infrared sensor and touch sensor, and running live interactive visuals in Jitter. (The last turned out to be a huge hit with babies and their parents. Seriously.) But I did get out a bit; my impressions are documented on Flickr:

Maker Faire 2007 Flickr Photoset

If you were there and have some images of your own, or have seen a gallery you especially like, send it our way!

New stuff with knobs, keys, and touchscreens: yep, it’s Giant German Music Tech Trade Show time.

Our friend Rainer Knobloch got to spend a few hours on the Messe show floor, so we politely pointed him to some of the gear that inspired the most drool. Topping the list, of course, is Clavia’s new Nord Wave, just because Clavia hasn’t yet published anything on their site. (More Nord details coming later today; sorry for the delay.) But we also learn via these photos just how cool the Arturia Origin’s flip-up panel looks, and we get to see John Bowen cradle his new synth, the Solaris. (See our interview.)

Messe 07, by Rainer [Flickr Set]

If you were at Messe and shot some photos of your own, feel free to add them to our Flickr pool. More of my favorites:

We had a fantastic time last night in Brooklyn at the first “handmade music” event at Etsy Labs, sponsored by DIY seller site Etsy.com, MAKE Magazine, and yours truly and Create Digital Music. Instead of doing long, formal presentations, we decided to set everything up “science fair” style so people got a chance to play and chat. The results exceeded our most optimistic expectations for our “pilot” event. (MAKE will continue to do this on other themes, and I’ll be helping them and will keep working on getting together music and motion folks, as well.)

Thanks to all the CDMers who came out. We had I think nearly 100 people there through the course of the evening, drawing from CDM, MAKE, Etsy, the NYC blogosphere, and beyond — a whole lot of people were new to this kind of stuff. Welcome! For those of you in other parts of the world, well, we’ll just have to do a world tour. In the meantime, here’s a quick round-up of some of the projects.

Crisp Shirts AND Music!

Ranjit Bhatnagar teaches students at Parsons to build alternative instruments and creates his own interactive art and musical gadgets. He showed off his MIDI Ironing Board, which controlled interactive music patches using heat sensors. Iron normally, and via Plogue Bidule for data patching magic, your ironing is translated into music.

More Music with Blocks

Jeff Hoefs showed his Beat Blocks, co-created with Stijn Schiffeleers and Greg Zifcak, a tangible synthesizer based on striped blocks of wood. It was probably the most popular interactive plaything of the evening, as visitors were fascinated by putting together grooves using objects. Here at CDM, of course, we’re quite accustomed to various variations on the “blocks as musical interface theme”, but this one is quite effective.