“Make some noise” was a short one-day workshop about Arduino where we explored the topic of sound and it was aimed at complete beginners with no experience. To simplify the structure of the workshop we started with hands-on experiments composed by a quick set of exercises to enable the participants to understand the basics and, later on, to start exploring pitch, frequency, tone ,and multiple effects—with quite curious results.
Nick Yulman, of NY Soundworks, recently debuted debuted his Index Boogie performance piece at PS1. The piece consists of various solenoid-powered noise makers, which Yulman calls either “Surface Poppers” or “Drum Beaters”. They’re designed to be modular music devices that can easily be mated to virtually any inanimate object.
Not only is the Electronic Drum Machine T-Shirt a playable piece of clothing, but it has 63 different sounds that can be mixed, matched, and looped into the complex beat of your choosing. It comes with a mini amplifier that clips onto your pants and even goes up to 11.
We’ve written about the work of instrument inventor and musician Bart Hopkin here on MAKE before. But I just spent a bunch of time on his site today and am enchanted for the experience. A lot of instrument inventor/builders create objects that look cool but don’t sound very… instrumental. Or others create devices that make great sounds but aren’t much to look at. Bart’s pieces are novel, gorgeous, and sound amazing.
In this vid, “mathemusician” Vi Hart and Sal Khan (of the amazing Khanacademy) discuss the difference between linear and logarithmic scales and human perception. I like their joking idea of a liner scaled piano where the keys would get fatter and fatter as you moved up the scale.
The amazing Vi Hart (daughter of our Math Monday columnist George Hart) has blown our minds again with this over 12 minute video explaining the math, science, and art behind sound. In many of Vi’s videos, she talks really fast, and it’s a style that works for her, but for something this info-dense, with lots of visual aids, it’s worth going through a few times to absorb everything.
However you care to aesthetically classify this lunchbox amp, it’s a cool, thoroughly detailed project which can be applied to any type of styling. It uses the 2 Watt Stereo Kit from Carl’s Electronics. Dieselpunk Stereophonic Amplifier More: Vintage headphone mod
