Innovative controllers seem to be the flavour of the month. Three resemble fretboards but are from different worlds. Diapasonix is designed to be familiar to guitar or bass players and is open open-source. The Haken ContinuuMini is a premium product, while Love Hultén's twin-necked instrument is art.
Also among this month's medley of melody-making media are a couple of historical curiosities, a spring reverb packed into a drainpipe and a line of speakers that resemble organ pipes.
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So without further ado, read on for more musical news, views and reviews.
My musical 'lucky dip' system hasn't been the creative stimulant that I'd hoped and my channel has been fairly dry of music for a while.
Sometimes ideas just pop into your head and turn into something finished very quickly, which is what happened here. The video side is the part I like least and it frustrates me that to get my music heard I have to use a video-sharing platform but that's the way it is. So this time I tried something a bit different and think it works.
Alastair has designed and built this child-friendly, tactile music toy. It includes a step sequencer, synth module and speaker. And a dancing panda.
In this video, Kale demonstrates how to build a noise synth out of a cheap solar garden ornament. It reminds me a little of the cracklebox. He credits @zurowetz for the concept but I'm linking to Kale's video because I enjoyed his build.
This has been very popular on social media but in case you haven't seen it, This is the NTRON, a retro game machine that also contains a chiptune synth. There's a matching keyboard for note entry. This is a beautiful video showing the build.
Gestural control has been the future for a very long time, as shown in this meme. (I feel that you could say the same about "VR"). It's amazing to use it but somehow it has never become mainstream.
Devices and apps exist that allow you to fall asleep to birds, water, white noise and so on. optimus103733 has made such a device that allows you to mix these effects and is also a beautiful sculpture
Stefan Schultze's current project is called Hyperplexia. It consists of two pianos, one played by Stefan himself, the other converted to player-piano that can be triggered by MIDI. That means that he can duet with other keyboards and controllers, and/or an AI agent that is trained on his own playing.
Turi Scandurra has revealed this new open-source instrument which is based on a guitar fretboard. It has tapping and strumming modes. It allows you to tune the strings differently or simulate a capo. It contains a polyphonic synth and speaker and can output MIDI.
This synth has no less than eight voice cards with voltage inputs, envelope generator and filter. A microcontroller converts MIDI input and provides all of the CV signals (with one DAC and a bit of multiplexing).
Thanks to Matthew for this video about The Great British Spring, which is a stereo spring reverb inside what looks like (because it is) a piece of drainpipe.
He shows us the innards and the power supply, before using the device to make a suitably 80's-style track, also using Studio 5000 running on a BBC Master.
This is the musical score and source code for Hello World in Velato.
In this video, Dreams of Code looks at five cursed programming languages. One of them, Velato, takes a .mid file as its source. My timecode goes straight to the Velato part, so you can hear what that score sounds like. If you're into programming, skip to the start for the others.
Although this looks like a bank of organ pipes, it's actually a speaker cabinet. One of several shapes and sizes from Conn. The pipes are supposed to resonate at certain frequencies - judge for yourself how effective that is.
In this video Doctor Mix lists his top seven Minimoog riffs and recreates them using his Geddy Lee signature Minimoog.
PocketBoy has written this Instructable about converting a small drumkit to a quiet practice kit using piezo triggers. The aim was to be able to practice at any time of day or night in his apartment building.
www.instructables.com/Acoustic-to-Electric-A2E-Piezo-Drum-Conversion
David found an old graphing calculator and discovered HoustonTracker which is a tracker written for it. However, the output is 1-bit since it hacks the data output.
This inspired him to create a simulated graphing calculator on which you can design waveforms.
Moby Pixel recommends this "Cheap Yellow Display" touchscreen as a DIY MIDI controller.
I'm not sure that it changes everything but it certainly has some very interesting interfaces for creating music with a stylus.
Hainbach found this interesting 1960s device in the sale of Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider's estate. It sold for 10,000 dollars but he has aquired a similar one for demonstration purposes. It allows teachers to chalk notes on the stave and then touch it to play the notes.
The Cartridge of Time is project to recreate the music from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as 8-bit soundtracks, recorded directly from Giovanni Rotondo's NES and released on vinyl and NES cart.
He's Kickstarting the project and it has already exceeded its goal, so it'll become a reality.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/grotondo/bitshift-a-zelda-tribute-album
In his last video, Ben Eater got a SID chip working with his breadboard 6502 computer. He has followed that with a look at a couple of modern drop-in recreations of the SID and compares them with the original.
Davide Bucci has been working on a DIY synth that drives two ARMSIDs using a microcontroller for MIDI input.
Within this thread there are some renditions of ReSIDence, a track he's made using the SID outputs along with an Arturia Drumbrute machine.
oldbytes.space/@davbucci@mastodon.sdf.org/115626023617035642
The Soma Terra is a touch-based synth which is beautifully-crafted but also very expensive.
Venus Theory bought one, and explains how it offers him some new inspiration.
Another innovative MIDI controller that vaguely resembles a fretboard rather than keyboard, but a commercial product this time rather than open-source project is the Haken ContinuuMini.
Composer Josh Madoff demonstrates the instrument for Haken makes a great job of demonstrating the device, software and peripherals.
LFT has made a recording of Bolero which is ambitious in the number of his own instruments used. He counts 9 instruments and 52 mixer channels. That includes some disk drives and one automaton.
Linus has also published five performances from a festival called Wood Chip Fest in which he uses his C=tar.
He's performing the lead part while another C64 renders the accompaniment. I'm linking to the fifth video, you should easily find the others on his channel.
You may well have seen this video, it's done the rounds on social media. The group use reel to reel tape players as instruments.
I'd love to know more about what the magnetic tape 'bows' are actually doing, since the players are also using keyboards. I assume effects, possibly filtering.
Weird Garden is a "noise meditation retreat" in Lincoln, "full of unobtrusive treasures" according to its bio.
I'm linking to a recent performance by Duty, explore the channel for more.
A month or two ago we learned about the arpeggione thanks to David at The Instrument Makers.
Here Samurai Guitarist learns to play one and finds that using a bow is harder than it looks.
This is a fascinating restoration video in its own right but what makes it really special is that this is one of the earliest models of electric piano and one of three known ones left.
Love Hulten's designs look as if they've been designed for the set of a 50's sci-fi film and this is no exception.
This one isn't just about looks. It also looks like a very playable instrument. We've seen other touch-controllers with a guitar-neck layout this issue, but the very long necks and the ability to play two-handed takes this to the next level.
I found this interesting because unlike other 'plant listener' projects which use changes in capacitance or resistance to trigger sound, this 'sculpture' captures ultrasonic signals produced by the plants and transforms them into sound audible to us.
www.dezeen.com...plant-pulses-installation-design-miami-video
All that remains is for me to thank everyone who blogs, vlogs, writes articles or posts pictures on the subjects I'm excited by.
Nor can I do the things I do without your support, so thank you for that.
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Happy music-making!
Shiela Dixon - Editor / curator
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