The theme this month seems to be open-source. Romagnetics has designed a pedal to control his favourite groovebox and Naaackers kept a diary of building an open-source guitar pedal which wasn't smooth sailing. Maybe it's 'blue ford syndrome' since I've been obsessed with an open-source project that I've been building and customising for myself.
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So without further ado, read on for more musical news, views and reviews.
I've been obsessed with this project over the past few weeks and although I'm still refining, I've reached an important milestone.
The Haxophone is an open-source saxophone-based instrument with mechanical keys. I don't play sax and wanted something similar but with recorder fingering and since the Haxophone is designed to be hackable and customisable, it was easy to make the modifications.
I now have a working Haxocorder.
It's surprising that the first few bars of this are so consistent, but when they start to drift, that's when the magic happens.
Yann Seznec played a Bach prelude 15 times and overlaid the video and audio.
If you were around in the mid to late 80s, you'll know the sound of Stock, Aitken and Waterman, one of the most successful record-producing teams in history. Apparently they made 100 top 40 hits - all with the same backing track (just kidding, in case you liked that stuff).
It wasn't my bag but I still enjoyed this deconstruction of You Spin Me Round and investigation of the actual samples used.
NAMM 2026 has happened and it's been difficult to find the interesting stuff among the guitar videos and high-profile interviews. Sam Gutman gave me what I was looking for: a look at some of the interesting and bizarre musical instruments, including the Korg Phase8, the Stylophone theremin and Neotone handpan.
The device in my thumbnail is exactly what you think it is.
My experience with the Haxohpone was extremely good. Naaackers' experience with the Funbox guitar pedal wasn't as good. He admits that he got in 'over his head', hit some snags and it took eleven months to complete.
On the plus side, he's someone that enjoys writing documentation and has done lots of that as he's gone along to help others on the same path.
So if you are curious about an open-source guitar pedal that you can load with software from a selection of different effects, or if you enjoy watching someone struggling, this is for you.
Imagine a groovebox like the Deluge but where every button is a tiny screen. That was Craig's dream, and here it is.
The 19th century was a time of invention and the understanding of hearing and audio underwent rapid advancement. Lucas Thompson has a rundown of some interesting experiments and devices.
This has been on my 'to do' list for a very long time and Des has beaten me to it!
A while ago, Floyd Steinberg demonstrated a cheap smart ring being used as a MIDI controller. It worked out of the box using a script on the user's computer to receive the data from the ring.
It works but is slow. Interpolation helps with this but Aaron Christophel has created custom firmware for the ring and an uploader which makes it send data at a faster rate. It's not perfect but not bad.
This is a very detailed but accessible look at how a digital instrument pedal is made.
Emily Hopkins talks to Dan from Old Blood, who did the coding for a pedal that they've collaborated on.
The Roland SP-404 is Romagnetics' favourite groovebox, but some operations require two hands which is inconvenient if you're holding a guitar or other instrument, so he developed the FP-404, a pedal which controls the SP-404 via MIDI messages.
He's made this open-source, so you can build one and customise it.
You will have heard this very unexpected but very good news by now but just in case...
The Eurovision Song Contest is not the defining point of my year but a lot of people get a lot of fun out of it.
I don't think the song has been announced as I write this, but the artist has. For reasons I can only guess at, Sam Battle aka Look Mum No Computer has been chosen. He's much-loved in the DIY electronic music world and has his own museum of musical and electromechanical devices including a telephone exchange and full pipe organ.
Since planar speakers are expensive but easy to make with a flexible pcb, Electronoobs decided to try the DIY approach.
Spoiler: it wasn't an unmitigated success but we still learned a lot about this speaker technology and building decent speaker housings.
I first heard the name 'Optigan' during a Steve Hackett concert. He'd used one of these organs to create a track and used one to perform it live.
The ingenious organ plays sampled backing loops from an optical disc. These discs are being manufactured today using the original recordings and there is a modern midi-controlled device that can play the discs.
I wasn't aware of Chirp from Minecraft but it uses samples from the Optigan Bossa Nova disc. This video is a fascinating look at that music and its background - Pea Hicks has some of the original session tapes.
This is only loosely music-related but is still fascinating.
Liam was curious about what happens when you pass a video signal through a guitar pedal.
Chippo is a chiptune-inspired music-generator from Emily Hopkins - the harp lady.
The results are... well, what you'd expect from a random note / sequence generator, but fun to play around with for a few minutes.
The 8-bit Big Band have won a Grammy for their arrangement of a Mario Bros medley. It is an incredible arrangement and won the prize for Best Arrangement: Instrumental or A Cappella.
The Glissopipe is an entry-level instrument in Daniel Vashi's Gliss series. It's reminiscent of a slide-whistle or swanee whistle but with more playing possibilities.
This is Sarah's review.
This isn't really a review of the book, but Kevin finds it excellent and I agree - I bought a copy last year, read it cover to cover and have built some of the projects.
In this blog post, Kevin builds a circuit from the book - the 'Hello World' of electronic music - a simple oscillator. He has developed it and designed a pcb. He says that it's sparked "a number of ideas about using logic chips with oscillators".
diyelectromusic.com...nand-oscillators-and-logic-sequencers/
This organ is owned by James Dundon, Cornwall, United Kingdom. There's a little of its history in the description of this video and there are many more pieces of music on his channel.
Presenting instrument-making on the radio is a challenge but always an interesting subject.
Cellist Verity Sharp interviews three instrument makers, Victoria Hurley, Christopher Bayley and Adam Doughty.
There's a gallery of accompanying images here.
This show was first broadcast in February 2016 and is now available on 4 extra.
Related to the above but with a twist, in the latest in his series The Instrument Makers, David Lien interviews a longtime friend, Rhea Burdick about her fascinating idea to incorporate a banjo head into a fiddle.
Buying an instrument that has little or conflicting information online can be a challenge.
David Hilowitz' latest challenge is this zither-like instrument.
This single-string fretted instrument was both cheap to build and easy to play. It was used in church by Scandinavians. It could be plucked or bowed.
Andrew has made a beautiful job of building and playing this one. He says that the high wooden frets are surprisingly effective.
Love Hulten's latest creation incorporates not one but two Deckard's Dreams along with a Mercury 7, Cosmos and an Osmose keyboard for MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE).
It's for a client who obviously *really* likes sliders.
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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