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.

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.

The portable SID player…

The portable SID player…

SidWow, nice project and the MP3s on the site are fantastic! – “SIDman is a portable SID music playing device. If you don’t know what SID music is, then get thee to here now. The SIDman was an experiment to see if a PIC microcontroller could emulate another processor in real time, and still carry out other functions. It seems to have been a success :-). There are still a couple rough edges here and there, but it seems to handle most tunes fine.” Thanks Johan! Link.

ScanJet Music – Play music with your scanner

ScanJet Music – Play music with your scanner

ScanjetThis scanner can actually play music, nice hack – “That’s right. The HP ScanJet 4c’s SCL (Scanner Control Language) command set includes an unofficial PLAY TUNE command. I stumbled across this after reading an article on the ScanJet 4c in the feb. 1997 issue of HP Journal (see the sidebar Sing to Me). The PLAY TUNE command basically varies the stepping rate of the scanner motor to produce audible frequencies. All it needs is a series of note frequencies and durations previously written to its SCSI buffer. ” [via] Link.

1-Second Music for the Leap Second…

Clock-1Peter writes with the results from the call for one second music in celebration of the extra second we get in 2006 – “Composers, piano tuners, producers, sound designers, and stand-up comics (and many Make readers) have responded to CDM’s call for one-second music to honor the leap second added to atomic clocks this year. The results are astounding miniature compositions, which I’ve assembled into a full song for download. Happy New Year!” Link.

Low cost Wireless MIDI glove

Low cost Wireless MIDI glove

GloveVideo of a wireless MIDI glove…“haduz is a 24 year-old computer engineering graduate and musician from Bologna, Italy. He’s developed the 3DID wireless MIDI glove, with 5 bend sensors (I’m guessing that’s fingers), 3 gyroscopes, 3 accelerometers and 18 hours of battery life. As he says: “The most exciting thing is that the cost of the actual prototype (the glove shown in the video) together with the wireless receiver is about 150 euros.” Thanks Tom! Link.