Musical Hacks

1404 Articles

The Theremin Gets A Voice

July 9, 2019 by 10 Comments

Every once in a while, we come across a project that adds a ridiculously good twist on an existing design. This is exactly what [Xiao Xiao] and the team at LAM research group at the Institut d’Alembert in Paris have done. Their project T-VOKS is a singing and Speaking Theremin that is sure to drive everyone in the office crazy. (YouTube link, embedded below for your viewing pleasure.)

For the uninitiated, the Theremin is an electronic music instrument that does not require physical contact. Instead, it uses two antennas to sense the distance of the operators hands and uses that to modulate the pitch and volume of the output audio. From music concerts to movie background music to even scaring the neighbours, this instrument can do it all.

T-VOKS is a different take on the instrument, and it interfaces with a voice synthesizer to sing. There is an additional sensor that is used for the syllable sequencing, and the video below shows the gadget in operation. The icing on the cake is the instrument playing, or should that be singing in an actual concert. There is also a research paper detailing the operation on Dropbox[PDF] if you need the nitty-gritty.

We wonder how a TTS engine would work with this idea and hope to see some more projects like it in the future. Fore those looking to get started, have a look at the build guide for a DIY theremin.

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Hacking The Pocket Operator

July 8, 2019 by 3 Comments

The number of easily usable and programmable microcontrollers is small, so when selecting one for a project there are only a handful of very popular, well documented chips that most of us reach for. The same can be said for most small companies selling electronics as well, so if you reach for a consumer device that is powered by a microcontroller it’s likely to have one of these few in it. As a result, a lot of these off-the-shelf devices are easy to hack, reprogram, or otherwise improve, such as the Robot Pocket Operator.

The Pocket Operator is a handheld, fully-featured synthesizer complete with internal speaker. It runs on a Cortex M3, a very popular ARM processor which has been widely used for many different applications, and features everything you would need for a synthesizer in one tiny package, including a built-in speaker. It also supports a robust 24-bit DAC/ADC and all the knobs and buttons you would need. And now, thanks to [Frank Buss] there is a detailed teardown on exactly how this device operates.

Some of the highlights from the teardown include detailed drawings of how the display operates, all of the commands for controlling the device, and even an interesting note about how the system clock operates even when the device has been powered off for a substantial amount of time. For a pocket synthesizer this has a lot to offer, even if you plan on using it as something else entirely thanks to the versatility of the Cortex M3.

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Midiboy, The Portable Gaming Console With MIDI

July 6, 2019 by 6 Comments

The ArduBoy is a tiny little gaming console that’s also extremely simple. It’s only a small, cheap, monochrome OLED display, a microcontroller with Arduino-derived firmware, and a few buttons. That’s it, but with these simple ingredients the community around the ArduBoy has created a viable gaming platform. It has cartridges now, and one version has a crank. Now, the MIDIboy is bringing something like the ArduBoy to the world of electronic music.

Inside the MIDIboy is what you would expect from any review of the ArduBoy schematics. There are six buttons, a speaker, a USB port, and a SPI OLED display. In addition to all of this are two big chonkin’ DIN-5 ports for MIDI in and MIDI out, and yes, the MIDI in port has an optoisolator.

As for what you can do with a tiny little game console connected to MIDI, there are already a few choice apps — the MIDI Chords app creates chords, obviously, and the MIDImon sketch is a MIDI monitor. There are some controllers for MIDI synths, and of course this device is completely open source. If you’ve ever wanted a DIY controller for your favorite MIDI synth, this is what you need.

If an ArduBoy with MIDI doesn’t sound exciting, just check out Little Sound DJ. That’s a Game Boy cartridge that turns your old brick Game Boy into a music production workstation. Yes, it sounds great and there’s a lot of potential in a pocket game console with MIDI ports.

Guitar Made From Noodles Glows In The Dark

July 6, 2019 by 22 Comments

Wood.  Specifically, certain types of tone woods; woods that impart a certain tone. That’s what guitars are made of. And occasionally, plastic, or metal, or fibreglass or, well, anything. [_forwardaudio_] built his out of noodles, because, why not?

Well, not completely out of noodles. Epoxy is used to give some strength to the noodles, because, despite the fantastic tone that noodles impart to the guitar, they’re not known for their strength. The epoxy helps keep the noodles in place, focusing their noodly tone.

To add a bit of punch to the look of the guitar, the back and front of the body have UV powder blended in, blue on the front and green on the back. Once the guitar was assembled, a set of UV strings were added as well, to add even more glowy goodness.

In the video (after the break) the build process is shown along with the simplified, volume only, wiring. At the end, [_forwardaudio_] noodles around on the guitar a bit.

I’ll show myself out.

If noodles aren’t your thing, maybe you’d prefer 3D printing an extended fretboard for your guitar, or to build yourself a 12 foot long guitar.

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This Chiptune Player’s Got What Nintendon’t

July 6, 2019 by 7 Comments

When it comes to chiptunes, the original Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy get all the accolades. The OPL synths have all the fun. But there’s another chip out there in dusty old machines that is at least as interesting with a repertoire at least as influential as the Mega Man 2 OST. It’s the YM2612, the chip in the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.

[natalie] created a portable device capable of playing back the files targeting the sound chips in this venerable machine. It’s the MegaGRRL, and it’s the iPod for the original Genesis sound tracks.

Inside the MegaGRRL is an ESP32 in the form of an ESP-WROOM-32 module. There is, of course a YM2612 chip in there, along with a headphone amplifier and a battery charger. The display is a fairly standard and cheap affair that’s 240 x 320 pixels in full color, and there are seven buttons on this device, because of course you need an A, B, and C button.

Combined with a 3D printed enclosure, the GameGRRL does exactly what it says it will: it plays all the music from old Sega games. Now, when you’re in the inevitable argument with someone over the fact that Michael Jackson wrote the Sonic 3 soundtrack, the proof is right in your pocket. Of if you want to jam out on the Toe Jam And Earl soundtrack, that’s right there too. You can check out the video demos below.

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MIDI-Gurdy, MIDI-Gurdy, MIDI-Gurdy Man

July 4, 2019 by 19 Comments

The hurdy gurdy is the perfect musical instrument. It’s an instrument with a crank, and a mechanical wonderment of drone strings and weird chromatic keyboards. No other musical instrument combines the sweet drone of bagpipes with the aural experience of an eight-year-old attempting to play Hot Cross Buns on a poorly tuned violin.

Now, the hurdy gurdy is going digital. The Digi-Gurdy is [XenonJohn]’s entry into this year’s Hackaday Prize, and it’s exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a musical instrument that drones on and on, with keys plunking out a melody.

If you’re not familiar with a hurdy gurdy, this video is a varily good introduction. It’s a box with somewhere between four and six strings mounted on the outside. The strings vibrate by means of a wooden wheel powered by a crank. There’s a keyboard of sorts along the body of the instrument that ‘fret’ a single string providing the melody; all the other strings are drone strings that sound continuously. I think it was in, like, a Led Zeppelin video, man.

While it’s a slightly complicated build to make an analog hurdy gurdy, delving into the digital domain is easy: [XenonJohn] is building a hurdy gurdy that simply outputs MIDI commands with some buttons and a Teensy 3.6 microcontroller. The parts are 3D printed, and since this hurdy gurdy is completely digital, you can change the tuning of the drone strings without actually tuning them. Awesome.

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This MDF Sound Bar Sounds Great

July 3, 2019 by 12 Comments

Everyone should build a speaker cabinet at least once in their life, if only so they can realize how much thought goes into building a simple box. [John] of ibuildit.ca wanted a sound bar for his home theater setup, and that means building a sound bar. The result is beautiful, and a demonstration of how much you can do with just a router and a table saw.

[John] built this sound bar almost entirely out of MDF, which isn’t the best material but it works well enough for a speaker cab that’s meant to be mounted to a wall. The sides were constructed first, with a rabbet holding the front and back on. Both the woofer and tweeter are inset into the front, and a standard piece of plumbing pipe serves as the bass port. Slap a round over bit into the router and do some light sanding, and everything looks great with a coat of black paint.

As with any speaker enclosure, the design is effectively parametric, designed entirely around the drivers being used. In this case, [John] is using a spreadsheet named ‘Unibox’ that gives you all the formulas and graphs for designing a speaker enclosure.

With the box built and the speakers installed, the only matter left were a few aesthetic choices. [John] went with a standard black finish with a very nice wooden grille held onto the front with magnets. It’s a design that pops, but the true test of a speaker is how it sounds. That’s a bit hard to convey over the Internet, but [John] included a few sound samples at the end of the build video, available below.

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