Comments on: Augmented Xylophone

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:26:38 +0000

Piezos don’t have to kills the sound. You can put them on the nodal point of the bar (where it sits on the frame) and it won’t suck up the sound but in this toy metallophone there isn’t a convenient way to do that.

Some professional vibraphone pickup systems use one piezo pickup glued to each note (Yes, it’s really fiddly).

I think the goal of this (class) project was to make a toy, and i think they were successful, it’s just for people to play with for a minute, not for taking to gigs. I think that in that context, the simple connection between the gesture and result is a good thing.

To the haters: maybe you should send blog posts of *your* augmented xylophones?

Here’s a blog post about my augmented vibraphone.
http://cmpercussion.blogspot.com/2009/05/show-at-front.html
http://cmpercussion.blogspot.com/2008/10/duet-for-vibraphone-and-computer.html

By: Ania

Ania — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:40:26 +0000

Also, this is a collaboration with Greg Borenstein and Hana Newman.

By: Ania

Ania — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:39:37 +0000

Will post a link soon to the final piece, these images and youtube videos are from the prototyping phase.

By: ג'רוזלם פוסט לייט

ג'רוזלם פוסט לייט — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:28:49 +0000

Dunno…

This is kinda silly.

A long while ago I took a xylophone glued a touch mic to it’s bottom, with the mic’s cable going through a pitch bender and ends with a 3.5 plug. I later removed the 3.5 and used a large PL instead, and used to feed the signal into delay, reverb, and distortions pedals.
The mic was really sensitive, so it even picked up my voice singing along, so I didn’t even have to use an extra mic for vox.

By: chinese new year

chinese new year — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:45:55 +0000

i like!!!!you are tiancai!

By: عاشق النور

عاشق النور — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:04:16 +0000

nice hack

By: xeracy

xeracy — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:46:46 +0000

I augmented a toy kazoo to control the vertical motion of my mouse.

http://xeracy.wordpress.com/

flame me for toys+electronics as well?

By: chuck

chuck — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:46:38 +0000

Definitely a creative way to tie natural objects into instruments of design. Now if you could only modify these original sounds, that would make it that much more interesting.

http://redlinemg.net/blog

By: James

James — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:15:25 +0000

Again, this seems like a total waste.

By: Steven Harris

Steven Harris — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:10:56 +0000

Puts me in mind of the (possibly true) myth that Pink Floyd spent six months working on a follow up to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ by making instruments themselves out of nails and rubber bands and canibalized toys and things. They gave up and went back to synths in the end but I can’t be the only one who’d be interested in the aborted tracks.
http://doctorbeatnik.wordpress.com/

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:40:50 +0000

nice hack

By: cameron20020

cameron20020 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:39:19 +0000

look, if you angry people are just going to criticise, constructive criticism is good, but plain insulting people is shit and not the good shit.

chill out people, and stop expecting every hack, every day, to be a monster hack, why not just check in once a month, and you might be more impressed, furthermore, if not, find somewhere that doesnt leave you so unhappy..

about the hack, i like it, its interesting,
i like how the original sound is kept, but also
the extra sounds are added

By: Reggie

Reggie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:07:11 +0000

I like it, the project has split the input device away from the sound engine and given it a new sound engine, could do with something to deaden the noise of the xylophone ‘bars’ as their pitch has been killed already, easily done though, turn the output up on the sound engine part :D

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:43:57 +0000

A bit lame, IMO.

By: therian

therian — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:17:37 +0000

@chrisjohnson2003
so true and straight