Current TV has done a video featurette on a Handmade Music event held by CDM, Etsy.com, and Make in the fall. We’re finally getting back to these this summer, but this gives you an idea of the kinds of projects people are up to in the NYC area — hope some of you in the rest of the world can enjoy it.

Via The Storque, Etsy.com’s excellent online magazine. (See their previous coverage of these events.)
We could really use your help raising the visibility of DIY music tech — if you’re a Current member, or can register quickly, you can give the video a thumbs-up and give it a shot of being on the Current TV network. The way it works is, Current takes popular online videos and sticks them on the actual tube. And if you want your own fame and fortune and are near NYC, be sure to check out our call for projects.

If you’re on the East Coast of the USA and want to share some of your musical (and visual) projects with us, we have a number of opportunities.

Submit now! [Was briefly broken; now working!]

• Internet Week — Evening with MAKE Magazine: Thursday June 5, 6:30-9:30pm. We’ve already programmed part of this, but there should be a couple of spots left for unique DIY music/visual hardware and software projects. Part of a week-long celebration of the Internet in NYC.


• Hackers on Planet Earth Conference: Friday, July 18. This legendary assemblage of hackers at NY’s Pennsylvania Hotel is one of the world’s great geekfests. Tech author Steven Levy is keynoting. We’re throwing a big music and live visuals party, combining forces with some of the local 8-bit community.
• Handmade Music with Etsy + Make: We’re re-inaugurating our regular series with Make Magazine and Etsy.com. Dates TBD but we hope to bring this back as a regular event in Brooklyn.
• Mystery Event in Boston! If you’re in the Boston area, stay tuned. (Providence, New Haven, you’ll want to make the trip.)

Here’s what we’re looking for: DIY music software, hardware projects, 8-bit, custom gaming and gaming interfaces for music, live visuals, hacked solutions, visualizations and sonifications of Internet data (would seem especially appropriate during Internet week), interactive projects, physical computing, oddities, custom cases, weird stuff … the usual.

For HOPE, I’m particularly interested in keeping with the hacking theme, including open source projects, Linux audio, and unusual projects built with computers. With all the cool stuff happening in DIY electronics and hardware, software often falls by the wayside. And with all of these, I’d love to see more audiovisual projects.

Deadline: Right Now

Sign up here if you’re interested in doing these. I thought about setting a deadline, but honestly, with Make it’s first-come, first-serve, and with everything else, I’d rather know sooner than later, so if you’ve got something in-process, don’t be shy!

A Google Docs live form is embedded in this story below right on createdigitalmusic.com; if you’re reading via RSS, you’ll need to click through to the site to view it properly.

Alternatively, use the direct link

Feel free to forward the call!

There’s a simply insane amount of electrified music happening here in the US this week:

• Bent Festival NY: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights are concerts at the Bent Festival in NY, not only of circuit bending but other DIY sound, as well. Stop by Saturday during the day for a day full of workshops. (also on Facebook)
• Thursday, Bent NY sponsor The Tank will be hosting Warper Vs. Splice, a 2-floor audiovisual collision in downtown NYC; I’ll be on music + eyethings in the middle of the evening. (See Facebook)
• Saturday, The Tank hosts the 8-bit crowd, also concurrent with Bent, at the regular Pulsewave, in case at that point you’ve had your fill of bending and higher bit depths
• Bent Festival Minneapolis does it all again next weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights) for the middle of America, with workshops during the day. Don’t miss our friends Beatrix*Jar (above) and CDM’s Mike Una giving a free workshop — get there early for one of 12 MIDI-to-relay kits to use.
• Ethermusic Festival in North Carolina won’t just have a lineup of all the world’s great Theremin players, with people like Dorit Chrysler (below), Lydia Kavina, Sheuh-Li Ong, and other important people, plus CDM readers Scott Burland and Frank Shultz doing a Theremin + lap steel duet. (Thanks to Frank for the heads-up!) It’ll also have something else…

It sounds as though Moog Music is going to officially announce the thing they’re making that involves subliminal guitar images during Ethermusic. So, if you’re there, bring a camera for any one of those reasons.

As I write this, both Moog’s and Ethermusic’s sites are hiccupping; hopefully the Evil Carolina Server Hag hasn’t gotten to them. I’m sure all is well as you read this.

Now, I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t actually play Theremin any better than this cat. Not worse, necessarily. I’m very much on the cat’s level. Fortunately, I won’t be playing Theremin tomorrow at The Tank.

Despite the name, the Bent Festival this year promises to be about not only circuit bending, but DIY sound in general. (Circuit shaping? Circuit straightening? General circuitration?) Our friend and CDM regular Mike Una has put together fantastic art installations for Minneapolis. Workshops in NYC and LA dig into the mysteries of sensors and tubes, the potential of video bending, and giant, battery-powered noise to drown out the rest of the world. And there are gobs and gobs of performers.

Like the North American air currents, Bent begins in the West, moves across the Heartland, and into New York City. (Okay, actually, when I first reported on this year’s Bent, the dates were different, so pay attention!)

LA - April 17 - 19

New York - April 24 - 26

Minneapolis - May 1 - 3

And lest you think Bent isn’t as Bent this year, there’s still a Furby Orchestra to cap it all off.

Bent Festival site has the whole scoop, plus Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, and whatever else you crazy kids use today. (Hey! Where’s the AOL keyword?)

If you make it to any of the festivals and document — or if you’re playing/presenting — do share.

At long last, the Yamaha Tenori-On, the unusual sampling/sequencing instrument bestrewn in light-up buttons, is getting its worldwide release.

And it’s going to be an amazing party.

Launch cities:

• Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany
• Paris, France
• Montreal, Quebec
• New York, NY
• San Francisco, CA
• (most appropriately) Tokyo, Japan

The tour kicks of in Frankfurt first on March 12, then hits the other towns April 8 - 25, finishing where the Tenori-On was born: Tokyo.

Launch artists:

We like to push the outer envelope of music technology geekdom. But what if you’re also an obsessed web geek? Then you start playing the data encoded in a Website design like nytimes.com as a musical instrument.

A new patching environment called Lily, inspired by tools like Max/MSP, works its magic using JavaScript inside a browser. So turning your browser into a music tool becomes more practical. And Lily supports the network-savvy OpenSoundControl (motto: “it’s not MIDI!”), so you can hook up an OSC controller like the Monome and jam with Firefox and the New York Times.

Finally found a use for the NY Times from Bill Orcutt on Vimeo.

How does it work? Get prepared for some Web technospeak, kids!

When the patch starts, the browser enters a DOM inspection mode and mousing over a DOM element highlights the node. Clicking on a node writes the element’s data (its innerHTML value if it’s a text element or the binary data if it’s an image) as a sound file and the file is then loaded in a quicktime player in the patch. The sounds can then be triggered using OSC messages.

Hey, where’d everyone go?

If DOM models don’t exactly get your pulse racing, here’s a strange and elegant physics-based sequencer hooked up to Reaktor. Fans of Processing, that environment is also capable of similar stuff; this is even modeled on the Processing-compatible traer physics library.

SVG Midi Sequencer from Bill Orcutt on Vimeo.

Ready to get going with this yourself? Lily is now in public beta, ready to run for free on Mac, Windows, or Linux. Browser not included.

Lily Public Beta 1

Gobs more examples and documentation on the blog

Previously: Browser Beatboxes and the Rebirth of Max-Like Patching

I’ve always been fascinated with the evolution of species. Ever seen those bizarre, short-lived organisms in textbooks, the ones that look like they have twelve eyes and a hundred really tall legs and a spindly tail that serves no purpose? I feel the same way about new instruments, interfaces, and music software. Sometimes it’s the evolutionary aberrations — whether practical or not — that are the most interesting, and that perhaps tell us the most about the more dominant species. (Hello, guitars.) And with an open door policy for DIY instruments, we’ve seen some wonderfully unusual experiments at the Handmade Music event series along just these lines.

Continuing our performance series, with assistance from Make Magazine and Etsy.com, we had some special guests last Sunday at openhousegallery in SoHo, New York: the Mister Resistor Ensemble. Headed by Ranjit Bhatnagar, the inventive sound artist who brought us robotic Theremins and MIDI ironing boards, this group of students from Parsons is lucky enough to spend a whole semester building fun instruments with hardware and software. The results are clearly experimental, but that’s the point. Some informal video clips:

Handmade Music: Mister Resistor from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

A big thanks to our beverage sponsor, Function Drinks, and the lovely venue, openhousegallery New York, for making the event possible!

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.

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.