Fresh hacks every day
A while back [Michael] inherited a broken bass guitar from a friend. The headstock for this bass was cracked right down the middle, and the friend attempted a repair with a bolt and a couple of washers. After trying to figure out what the addition of a bolt was trying to accomplish, [Michael] set to work repairing this bass and ended up doing a headless conversion. A headless bass, just as the … [Read more...]
[James] wrote in to show us his honors project for his fourth year at Victoria University of Wellington. He designed and built this robotic bass guitar. You can hear it performing "mass hysteria" by the band Muse after the break. It sounds great, but we'd love to hear it without the full accompaniment. [James] doesn't have a site up for the MechBass, so we've included details below. … [Read more...]
[Jon Ferwerda] managed to fry the analog electronics on an old electric organ while conducting some circuit bending experiments. It's a loss, but he's still left with some cool equipment to play with. Recently he got to work generating tones using the organ's foot pedals. There were two types of foot pedal included with this organ, the set that is arranged like a keyboard, and a rocker pedal … [Read more...]
[Jeri Ellsworth] finally set aside some time to talk about the build process for her Commodore 64 bass keytar. We think what started by taking a band saw to the guitar body ended up as a fantastic new instrument. When she was showing off the project at Maker Faire we really only got a cursory look at what it could do. Her most recent video covers all that went into pulling off the project. Once … [Read more...]
[Diego Stocco] makes music with instruments he assembled. For instance, his Bassoforte uses piano keys, the neck and strings from an electric bass, and what look like some cymbals. Throw in a hammer from that piano and a double bass bow (plus heavy use of audio software) and he's in business. Big business actually, his work has been in video games such as The Conduit and in feature films like … [Read more...]
We've been watching this project ever since [Dann] emailed us about the first prototype back in September. This bassline generator has a lot of functions we like, such as an adjustable melody seed, light-sensitive controls, and device interactivity. Line up a row of them and they'll sync up the beat, building layers of sound on top of each other (see the first video after the break). The system … [Read more...]
Back in 2001, the Bigmouth billy bass was still relatively new. Hacking one to record and play back both audio and movement was quite a new feat. You can read all about how they pulled it off. Though most of us agree that this could be done easier now, with off the shelf microcontrollers, this is a great example of constructing your own system to fit the need. We've seen a similar hack done very … [Read more...]
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