music

443 Articles

Stribe 1 Kits Available

November 13, 2008 by 11 Comments

stribe

We first spotted the Stribe music controller at Maker Faire. [Josh Boughey] has since refined the controller’s design so that it can be constructed in a modular fashion and it’s being sold in kit form by Curious Inventor. The kit has two columns of 64 LEDs and a Spectra Symbol SoftPot for control. You can daisy chain eight modules together using a ribbon cable. It uses SPI control, with a separate wire for the data line (not in the ribbon). An Arduino is used to hook the controller to programs like Max/MSP.

-hard PlAYer- 8 Bit Tunes Hardware Player

October 22, 2008 by 4 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgb_NFdTHZc]

For people who miss the golden age of Atari music, you can recreate the magic of 8 bit music with the -hard plAYer-. [Tolaemon] put a lot of thought and work into this hardware player. From the AY-38912 programmable sound generator, which used to be in old computers like the Atari or Colour Genie, to working with the YM file format, each piece is put together with the utmost care. [Tolaemon] also provides his design, firmware(ZIP), and parts list so that you can make your own hardware player.

[via Matrixsynth]

Drawdio Kit Lets You Make Music While You Draw

October 9, 2008 by 20 Comments

[blip.tv ?posts_id=1345490&dest=-1]

Drawdio, designed by [Jay Silver], is a fun, simple toy that uses the conductive nature of pencil graphite to generate different sounds. When you use the Drawdio pencil to draw or write, you also simultaneously create music. The entire kit is available for sale at Adafruit Industries, or for the more adventurous, separate components and parts are listed. The circuit is fairly simple and we wonder what other devices people can come up with based on this theme.

Arduino Solenoid Concert

September 25, 2008 by 21 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_hiz-Kx0kM]

[jay] reminded us of this old video of solenoids banging rhythms on furniture and household objects. There’s no schematic, but in the video it looks like an Arduino drives a bunch of solenoids through relays. The PC interface is run on Pure Data, an open source programming environment for audio, video, and graphic processing. Thanks [Jay].

Aurora Mixer No Longer Available

September 5, 2008 by 11 Comments

A few days ago we wrote about the aurora open source mixer being available and that orders for the DIY or completed kit needed to be in by September 1, 2008. Well that day has since past and if you were on the fence about it and didn’t get your order in don’t worry about it. Turns out no one will be getting a mixer.

Aurora informs us that they needed to secure a minimum of 50 orders to cover cost, but in reality they were only able to secure less than 20 orders. Because of this, they will not be able to meet the initial production numbers and have postponed the sale of the mixer indefinitely.

All is not lost as they will keep the site up, along with the instructions on how to build your own mixer from scratch.

Coyote-1 Guitar Pedal Available Now

August 26, 2008 by 3 Comments


OpenStomp’s Coyote-1 is now available for $349. The guitar effects pedal lets users design and upload their own effects to the device. It has two stomp switches with LEDs, an LCD display, and four user assignable knobs. The back has 1/4″ in/out and one selectable 1/4″. It also features NTSC composite out, a headphone jack, mini-USB for uploading, and an RJ11 I2C bus for expansion. The processor is a Parallax Propeller Chip. While the OS on the pedal is open source, the hardware design and effect design software are not. You can check out the source and product manual on their forum. If you’re more interested in breadboarding hardware, you might like the Beavis Board we covered earlier.

[via Create Digital Music]

Electric Mannequin Leg Maraca

August 19, 2008 by 14 Comments


[Richie Brown] created an electric mannequin leg maraca. The leg is filled with little bits of plastic, metal, and wood. Hook it up to a looping pedal, add a piezo disc mic, and you’ve got an unusual instrument with a lot of potential. [Brown] has other projects that encourage interaction and invite curiosity, from disembodied mannequin parts to repurposed piano keyboards. The creations come attached with contact mics that pick up noises as people touch, poke, and play around with them.