Music

Take your creations beyond the workshop and onto the stage with diy music instruments! Let us show you how these creations range from simple, basic setups that produce beautiful sounds to more complex projects that require a greater level of engineering knowledge. With these tutorials and examples, we’ll guide you on this journey to make your own musical instrument for experimental, artistic or everyday use – so whether you’re starting out new or a seasoned sound creator, come explore the wonderful world of making your own music.

Wireless Guitar hero PS2 controller mod…

Wireless Guitar hero PS2 controller mod…

Ghw-InTheDude06 writes “I finally completed my wireless guitar hero controller mod! With so much space available in the guitar, i knew it was possible. id just never got around to finally doing it. Long story short, i had to completely dismantle the guts of the guitar to do this. its not possible to do this mod without soldering or removing parts from the guitar hero board…. at least, not the way i dd it. Since i wasnt able to find a box that could turn any controller into a wireless controller locally, i figured id take a stab with these…” Link. The project is in our new MAKE forums. If you haven’t checked, hit’em and join–they’re on fire! (In a good way.)

MIDISpeak: Speak & Spell MIDI Kit

MIDISpeak: Speak & Spell MIDI Kit

Midispell2Not a bad deal for $49. “MIDISpeak Module – Version 2, The Talking Toy MIDI RetrofitAdds a standard MIDI IN port to your Speak & Spell, Speak & Read, or Speak & Math. Non-English versions also supported. Trigger thousands of sounds–words, word fragments, garbled speech, percussion and bizarre sound effects.” Link. In MAKE 04 we also show you how to build music toys like this. Modify a Casio keyboard (or other electronic audio stuff) and start playing some of the strangest sounds you’ve ever heard.

HOW TO – The Radio Babylon

HOW TO – The Radio Babylon

Radio Babylon Web“A small wireless battery powered device – Turn it on near a friendly wireless network that contains iTunes shares and plug your headphones in. It picks a random iTunes share, picks a random tune and starts playing. Repeat until bored or the batteries are dead. The size of the system is amazing. The main board is about the size of my little finger. By default it’s running an ssh server, a web server and advertising itself to the network with bonjour.” Link.

Gramophone Recorder

Gramophone Recorder

GramophonerecorderMichael writes: “I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. I remember reading about an expensive commercial product for it, and there’s a much cheaper product available that is similar, but it records only things of a smaller size and the description seems to imply the recordings can only be played back on these machines, not regular turntables. (It’s a kit, which is nice, but the Gieskes.nl recorder looks much cooler.) I’m interested in trying Gieskes.nl’s project, but I’m wondering if there are other people out there who have done this so I can supplement these instructions a bit. Do you know of anyone else who has information about doing this sort of thing?” Link.

Update your phone? No MP3s for you!

Update your phone? No MP3s for you!

VerizonThis is a trend I think we’ll see over and over again this year with phones and the music stores carriers are going to roll out – the slow death of MP3 playback on phones, or having to have a Windows PC and Media player 10 to convert to WMA before your phone can play your music. Techdirt has a story about Verizon phones that will no longer play MP3s one upgraded to use their new music store, if customers complain they’ll get an old refurbished phone with older firmware, but it doesn’t appear that the user is warned before updating that they’ll lose their MP3 playing feature. [via] Link. (and more details here).

Simulating Phase Shifter Pedals in Software…

Simulating Phase Shifter Pedals in Software…

DubstationscreenPeter writes “In response to the earlier post, I’ve heard back from people who are using circuit simulation software to create highly accurate models of physical circuitry in software. The folks at Audio Damage use the free SPICE model and software to produce audio/music plug-ins like an upcoming bi-phase effects pedal model. That’s not the only geeky tool out there that’s useful for music: an add-on for MatLab lets you visualize MIDI music files.” Link.