Tired of all those DIY electronics projects making an awful racket? This one is whisper-quiet. You may have to turn up your volume to hear it at all.

Project creator Andrew Benson (maker of many wonderful things for Cycling ‘74) writes:

I just finished sewing together an FM synthesizer that lives on a wristband and is controlled by a little brown button that serves as a knob and a pair of small pressure sensors made from conductive fabrics. The whole thing runs off of an attiny45 chip, which is a really cheap AVR microcontroller chip that I’ve programmed with some FM synthesis routines.

It is a quiet little noise-maker, and is super fun to play with. All of the electronic connections (except for the little hand-routed PCB) are made using conductive thread. I’m still working on some finishing touches like strengthening the weak points with embroidery and providing slightly better protection for the circuit, but the functionality is all there. Let me know what you think!

Project blog post
Flickr set
More YouTube videos (this and other crazy projects)

As it happens, one of my favorite projects from the spring ITP show at New York University was the Square Band by Rory Nugent:

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.

Square Band @ ITP NYU Show Page
Rory Nugent Blog
As seen by our inestimable friend Collin Cunningham at the MAKE: blog

Solar panels? Fun, simple beat making? I’m sold.

Whether this appeals to you or not, you can bet that the growing availability, cheapness, and ease-of-use of small microprocessors will mean synths everywhere. Could be even cooler than that Dick Tracy wrist phone, after all.

Some time ago, we ran a story on a boutique German synth called the Rozzbox. Laden with knobby goodness, the Rozzbox was available only in limited quantities, and only to those fortunate enough to be in Germany (or somehow miraculously got in touch with the creator and pried one from his hands).

Tweakers rejoice! The Rozzbox has finally made it to the US, with distribution being handled by Big City Music. Still only available in limited quantities, we suspect that the Rozzbox will go fast - even at nearly $1950USD. Its unique architecture sets its tone somewhere between a broken-DX7-run-through-a-Sherman-Filterbank and an old-school gaming system turned synth. Full specs available on the Big City Music site, and demos available on the Rozzbox site (in German).

Ed.: Looks like this one has tweaked the interest of Chris @ Audio Damage, too.

And here’s a video in action from the folks at Big City Music that gives you a sense of its range of timbre. (Sure you can make it more musical when you take it home and off the chaos of the show floor!)

You know how some NI lovers were complaining that they weren’t getting new synths? You can officially stop complaining. More details on each of these soon, but Native Instruments has dropped an enormous number of new synths, including one entirely-new instrument, in a single mega-announcement:

1. Battery 3: Battery is a huge favorite drum sampler around here, so word of a new Battery 3 could be the most welcome news in this announcement. There are lots of new features — arguably a bigger upgrade than Battery 2, with new sound shaping features and adjustable flam, humanize, and roll settings. There’s a new wave editor, beefing up the sampler side of the equation. But I think the best improvement could turn out to be the redesigned, customizable matrix view, which could resolve the one part of Battery that felt clunky. It looks like it’s much easier to see and adjust your drum matrix.
2. FM8: Whereas the previous FM7 was focused on emulating existing FM synths (namely the Yamaha DX series), FM8 promises to be a truly new take on FM. Sound morphing, a programmable arpeggiator, new effects, and new presets, are among the new features. What I like best: a new, friendlier interface to make controls accessible.
3. Absynth 4: The thought of Absynth getting deeper actually makes my head hurt, but new wave morphing and freely-assignable modulation will make this synth more powerful. Fortunately, this release promises to be a little easier to use (thank you!). Previous versions of Absynth had deep but confusing envelopes. This version mercifully adds a master ADSR envelope and an envelope “step mode”, which sounds like this could finally clear the hurdles that kept Absynth from a wider audience.
4. Massive: Massive is an entirely new instrument, with “wave-scanning oscillators”, multi-mode filters, flexible routing, drag-and-drop modulation, macro controls, and an envelope step sequencer that looks inspired by Absynth (though much easier to use than early Absynth releases). I really want to say more, but … well, stay tuned, and go listen to the samples on NI’s site and see what you think.
5. Komplete 4: Naturally, Komplete needs an update with all this new feature, and it’s getting one. It’s also terrific to see that NI is bundling in the instruments that were missing, like Akoustik Piano, and including all the new stuff. The only software missing is Massive, though it’s available for a limited time in a bundle with Kore and Komplete. (Too bad Massive isn’t just rolled into Komplete, as it looks very promising.) Also, Komplete will no longer include Intakt or Kompakt, though these stripped-down samplers were already a bit redundant and obsolete, made more so by Kontakt 2 and now Battery 3, so I expect few will miss them. (I actually left them out when I installed Komplete 3.)

Got all that?

New Products [Native Instruments]

First, long-time Windows developer Cakewalk went cross-platform with their soft synth line. Now, FL Studio (Fruity Loops) creators Image Line are developing a Mac plug-in: KVR reports they’ve acquired hybrid FM/subtractive synth Toxic III and are planning a Mac port. As our resident Windows expert Adrian Anders puts it, “I guess hell is starting to get a little bit colder, if you get my drift.”

Toxic III [Image Line]

Before you get your hopes up, though, I don’t think this necessarily means you’ll see a port of Image Line’s flagship FL Studio, nice as that might be. Plug-ins are far easier to port from platform to platform than larger applications; note that cross-platform tools like Reason, Live, Cubase SX, and even Logic (back in the day) all began their life as cross-platform software. If the code is heavily tied to tools on that platform, porting can be near-impossible. (I have one word for why you shouldn’t expect FL Studio for Mac any time soon: Delphi.)

In the meantime, Windows users, Toxic III is US$59 through the end of the month; US$99 after that — but maybe we’ll get lucky and this will find its way into an FL Studio bundle. CDM Interface Verdict: Sick.

Attention, fans of boxes with knobs: I haven’t abandoned you. Especially not when boutique synths seem to be all the rage. Here’s the latest, via Gearjunkies:

L.L. Electronics RozzBox [non-German readers, just click specs]

No plastic here: aluminum with maple sides. Inside, you’ll find a 4-operator FM synth with adjustable glide (looks like you could route it for virtual analog, too) and the usual filters, envelopes, LFO modulation, etc. The synth looks really flexible, and there are some especially nifty features: external audio input, integrated ring modulation (exterminate! — uh, cough, sorry), built-in sequencers that also function as modulation, and even a tube distortion / filter option. MIDI input / output, even envelope follower in, and, for you true analog junkies, an optional control voltage (CV) input.

Gorgeous, compact, flexibly-designed, and it’s not another cheap Moog clone. Now the only question is, where / when / how much? I’ll get back to you if I hear more.

It’s got an incredibly ugly interface, and it ain’t Native Instruments FM7 by any stretch, but CuteVST has two things going for it: first, it’s an FM synth that’s open source, and second, it imports Yamaha DX7 sysex data. So think of the ugly interface as geek cred. It’s the real deal: classic 6-operator synthesis, modeling the original Yamaha keyboard. Downloads for Windows available at SourceForge. Thanks, AA!

But, wait, there’s more: CuteVST is a port of Hexter for Linux/LADSPA. Meaning you can download for LADSPA hosts — and probably meaning you can run this on the Mac, if you’re really savvy. I’m just going back to Ableton Operator, thanks.

Okay, synth sleuths. Here’s a puzzler for you from composer/producer Fer Isella. He’s got a mysterious instrument called the Webcor Music Machine he retrieved from a backyard sale, but can’t find out anything about it:

It’s really amazing sounding. It’s called “The Music Machine” by Webcor.
It’s got organ section, rhythm section, tape player and recorder. You can
record yourself playing with the radio tuner that it’s got, and the same
radio antenna has in its tip a MICROPHONE! He-he that you can sing too. The
2 speakers on the bottom sound really amazing, big bassy sound.
If you have any info about this machine please let me know.

I’ve never heard of it, though it does look fascinating. To help jog your memory, I’ve posted a gallery of images Fer sent my way. Any clue? Who is Webcor? And why don’t keyboards come with built in radios any more?

[wpg2]archived/webcor/[/wpg2]