Artist and design Yoshi Akai (no relation, as far as I know) treats analog electronics as an art form, a sculpture, an instrument, and an exercise in interaction design, all wrapped in the velour of vintage hardware design. For everyone who misses the deco elegance of meticulously-engraved surfaces and tastefully-appointed enclosures of early-century electronics, Yoshi’s work will be a special treat.

These aren’t just pretty boxes, though: they work as instruments. A prolific inventor with a background in textiles and design, Nagoya-born Yoshi Akai has spun out countless playful experiments in musical interaction, and all make fascinating sounds. There’s a turntable that scratches Swedish rye crackers as though they’re records, a step sequencer made from a telegraph, thumb-controlled instruments, and various synths, noisemakers, effects, and drum machines, some quite practical. Some emphasis electrical, analog sounds, while others go chip/8-bit in timbre. All look beautifully handmade, with some tending toward luxurious front panels while others flaunt intentionally disorganized arrays of knobs.

(Just don’t say the word “steampunk” — the designs seem to be to be placed pretty firmly in the electrically-powered early 20th Century, and there’s even a reference to Czech proto-science fiction landmark R.U.R..)

Yoshi Akai Artist Site + Gallery

MrYoshiAkai YouTube Channel

There are many models, so it’s worth investigating the full YouTube gallery and his site gallery. I’ll call attention to the two most theatrical. First, LEGO blocks form the playing pieces for a musical sequencer. That’s fitting: Ableton CEO and founder Gerhard Behles once revealed to me that he adored playing with LEGO blocks as a child, a design element that resurfaces in the sequencer he helped design. LEGO blocks are modular, they’re playful, they’re neatly color-coded, and because of their shape and interchangeable design, they easily represent blocks of sequenced time in music.

Here’s a video of the LEGO sequencer in action:

The Wireless Catcher produces rawer sounds than some of Yoshi’s creations, but you can’t beat its whimsical presentation and unusual conception. This isn’t just another Theremin-style device, either: the creation intentionally sucks up the wireless radio activities happening around you. Adjusting the angle of the device causes it to receive different sounds. In an age when wireless interference and overcrowded spectrums threaten to shut down even digital technology, this is one of the few instruments I’ve seen that makes interference the signal, rather than background noise. This could be what we’re all playing wirelessly as the spectrum continues to fill up.

I knew those Knäckebröd Swedish rye crackers would be good for something. See how neatly they fit on a turntable?

A Nord Modular made of Legos
Ten Entertaining Videos about Max/MSP (Not to be confused with 32 Short Films about Glen Gould, made back in 1993 before the Web and digg had made “x-number lists” of things hot.)

Tom also notes that CDM and Music thing were each mentioned in PC World’s 100 Blogs We Love. Thanks, PC World!

Updated: Retro Things beloved, too! James Grahame, friend of CDM and occasional CDM contributor, is also in the PC World roundup, for Retro Thing. Nice to see some of our favorite, lesser-known (compared to the likes of Boing Boing) blogs making the cut in the mainstream press!

First, some musical inspiration:

Anders: The Album Leaf – Making The Album “Into The Blue Again”, featuring Joshua Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv on the beats. A really cool look into the creative process for one indie, electronic music influenced band.

Kirn: This band has really been one of my favorites of the year, between Eustis, a detailed attention to sound, and generally creative music making on acoustic, analog, and digital instruments. And I wish I could mix records in Iceland.

Anders: Binarwiese – A crazy Lego Breakbeat mashup.

Kirn: Legos strike strike again.

Anders: 45king… nuff said.

Kirn: Yeah, I don’t get these people who spin LPs. Darn kids with their new-fangled technologies. All about the 45s.

Anders: ……..WTF?!?!?!?!

Kirn: Start drinking the sherry — total drunken chaos in one of the best clips from the insane guys at Museum of Techno. If you’ve ever wondered if you could watch a YouTube clip and feel drunk, this should answer your question. Oh, and there’s something about recording drum loops. Maybe. Parts I and II:

Legos, the ultimate prototyping material. Many of us have wished we could have music controllers that could be assembled and customized with the ease of Legos; the Lego-like Mawzer modular controller system got our hopes up but still doesn’t seem to have evolved into a product you can actually buy.

Of course, why build something that’s reminiscent of Legos when you could just build it out of real Legos? The stekgreif project has done just that, thanks to a team of three German students (as near as I can figure) named P. Zentis, D. Tzschentke, and G. Homann. (Guys, if you’re out there and want to check in and tell us more, please do!)

stekgreif project page
Flickr stream (currently only one shot in there)

The project looks fascinating. What they’ve done is to take standard sensor components (pots, buttons, a joystick, touchpad, IR beam, and music keyboard), build them into blocks that can connect to a standard Lego board, and provide electrical connections through the board — utterly brilliant, and utterly doable. If you want to recreate the results, they’ve even included a DIY section with schematics. It also looks like they pulled some resources from the uCApps / MIDIbox open source project. First-time DIYers would probably have trouble with this, especially as the documentation is scant and in German, but I could see this as igniting a Lego revolution among those who do know what they’re doing.

Via Matrixsynth, via the beautiful gear-filled SoNiCbRaT.

If anyone has further insight into this, please do chime in in comments.

More MIDI projects:
Legos in the archives of the MAKE:blog (for endless Lego-based DIY hardware fun!); including, yes, a guitar made of Legos as pictured below

Lego DJ booth on CDM