News, views and information from Shiela Dixon / MIDI IN

This month a running theme seems to be 'cheap through to premium'. In contact mic news, Lost Wax has made one using an old digital watch and Metal Marshmallow, who makes a professional-quality contact mic has announced a solution he's come up with for connecting contact mics to guitar effects and amplifiers.

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My world

First try at making music for FM synthesis

Over Christmas I received a gift from Ed Brindley, creator of the AY-3-8910 8-bit sound card for RC2014. He has been working for a long time on an OPL3 FM synth card for the same Z80-based computer.

Composing for FM synthesis is a different ball game from 8-bit chips like the SID or AY. Sounds are much richer and harder to create.

I discovered Furnace Tracker, which can target this chip. It can produce a .vgm file, which the RC2014 can play. My first attempts use existing instruments from a library. I'm very happy with the tune and like the sounds that you can create with this generation of computer sound card.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivijAE1Xoy0

Anubis

This tune is intended for Amiga but I initially arranged it using modern tools and samples / software instruments. I played some parts using MIDI controllers and programmed some in the DAW.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYGBC3Y5VSc

MIDI Inbox

Intonarumori: 100-year-old noise machines

In this video we learn about the futurists and these noise-making machines called Intonarumori.

Martyn has embraced the futurist movement (down to the waistcoat he wears) and has reproduced these instruments as accurately as possible.

This may well be my favourite in the Instrument Makers series so far.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS_6DlZ-310

More about the Connect 4 musical instrument

In a previous issue we saw Ben's giant connect4 musical instrument. This is a better article that includes a presentation by Ben.

makezine.com...fusion-of-music-and-technology

Caedence named finalist for 2026 namm tec awards

As I write this, The NAMM Show 2026 is imminent. There will be five days of musical events and exhibits in Southern California.

Caedence has been named as a finalist for their TEC awards (Technical Excellence and Creativity).

It's a laptop- or tablet-based system for keeping real musicians in sync. It's helpful for teaching, rehearsal and performance.

midi.org/caedence-named-finalist-for-2026-namm-tec-awards

Music that draws pictures when you play it

A traditional oscilloscope draws onto a CRT based on two signals corresponding to the X and Y axes.

Usually the X signal is a sawtooth which makes the beam zip back and forth allowing you to visualise the Y signal over time.

However, with the right signals, pictures can be drawn to the screen and it's possible to make music that creates beautiful artwork when 'played' into a 'scope.

Cosine Tony explains how that works and shows some demos that he's made.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aACHxWfsWjU

Building a DIY studio microphone from AliExpress parts

Sir Freak has built this studio mic from cheap parts. He fully documents the build with lessons learned along the way, and demonstrates how it sounds.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqc6s_yq3mY

Can you make a guitar pickup from an old watch?

Also in 'cheap home-made mic' news, Lost Wax made a contact mic from the Piexo disc found in an old watch, also using the watch-back as a housing.

He and Rusty Robot made a track in the studio using only this contact mic (I think vocals were added later using a regular mic, I'm not sure). The results aren't professional quality but surprisingly good, particularly on the acoustic guitar.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XETnnPqOJVI

Metasonix D1000 - overview and patching

Metasonix made synths and effects through the 2000s using vintage vacuum tubes for that special distortion and boss-level power consumption.

They are now closed and the small-run products are fetching four figures.

In this short, Hainbach gives a very brief overview and demo of this 'primitive' drum machine. How does it sound? You decide.

www.youtube.com/shorts/jh7pW-KT6Jw

Vintage analog preset drum machine

This is a demo of all of the sequences within a Uniivix SR-95 drum machine from the early '70s.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYNMmcSFUH4

Making a sawtooth and sine from a triangle wave

organfairy adds components to a classic VCO circuit to try and create a sawtooth wave and a sinewave from a triangle.

It results in a VCO with several waveforms and he demonstrates it using a sequencer.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5gJWvVMLj8

Winamp-style audio front panel

mircemk has built a touchscreen interface for a real stereo system based on the iconic Winamp music player.

It takes advantage of the fact that Microsoft have released the source for Winamp and Rodmg's open-source software project Linamp.

Inputs include local mp3 files, CD, bluetooth and Spotify.

The Hackaday project has a Youtube video embedded.

hackaday.io/project/204832-winamp-style-audio-front-panel-on-raspberry-pi

Steampunk nautilus speaker

You may remember the nautilus speaker design from B&W but this build uses a real nautilus shell.

This uses 'haptic drive', an exciter physically drives the shell rather than having a speaker inside (which sounded 'boring' when hide-key tried it). This means that you can 'feel' the sound when you hold it.

The maker is interested in the way that the sound interacts with the shell's shape and there's a lot of interesting information in the text of this Instructable.

www.instructables.com/Cyberpunk-Nautilus-a-Haptic-Speaker-Born-From-a-Li/

The MOOG Liberation keytar

The Moog Liberation looks like a Moog synth that can be strapped on and played like a guitar because that's just what it is.

It's a surprisingly well-featured mono synth with aftertouch and a ribbon controller on the handle.

Sam demonstrates it in his inimitable style.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=487OSQ0Lazk

Sound chips and retrocomputing

SP0256A-AL2 Twelve Days of Christmas

Earlier last year, Kevin showed us his experiments with the SP0256 speech synthesis chip. He was making it sing by changing its clock frequency with each syllable.

With more work it turns out to be more effective than I expected. He demonstrate it with the Twelve Days of Christmas.

makertube.net/w/diBkzrhkh3tekAPBhGzrVj

PET Sounds

Later Commodore Pets came with a piezo buzzer on board. Earlier ones had no sound. However, it was possible to wire an amplifier and speaker to the user port and 'bit bang' it for beeper sound. In fact the popular Invaders game comes with instructions on how to do this.

Rather than tie up the CPU to toggle that line at the desired frequency, the PET has a shift register (intended for serial communication) which can be set up to generate a square wave with different frequencies and pulse widths.

Dave explains all of this in this older blog post, which he has recently updated.

As a bonus, he embeds a video by Look Mum No Computer in which Sam circuit-bends a PET and uses PETSynth, software to turn the PET into a 1-bit synth.

As an extra bonus, the author of PETSynth has released 'PETSynth II MIDI', a combined hardware/software product.

blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2022/05/pet-sounds.html

SID and OPL3, digging for new sounds with code

AnyBit Fever Dreams has released a video in which he creates new sounds using an on-screen interface he's made for his Foenix retro computer.

First he demonstrates the SID version and mentions the difficulty of using advanced features like ring modulation that combine voices. The he demonstrates the OPL3 version. The star of the show for me is the 'randomize' feature.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSmGOvMXY_s

Products and reviews

A guitar pedal on steroids for contact mics

Fluffy tribble holder Michael Krzyzaniak of Metal Marshmallow has created this "guitar pedal on stereoids but for contact microphones".

In this video he demonstrates the device. The problem it solves is how to connect a contact mic to something that expects an instrument-level signal, like guitar effects or amplifiers. In addition it adds a multitude of cool effects and since it's based on the Spin FV1, half of the effects are reprogrammable in its own assembly language, meaning that there's a huge library of effects and you can write your own.

The Metal Marshmallow Campfire is live on Kickstarter as I write this. This is simply a way for Michael to take preorders ahead of manufacture. Unlike some kickstarters, the product is fully developed and ready to go and I can understand the benefit of having pre-orders ahead of spending the big money on the manufacturing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pq4ESvytjs

Sim'n Tonic Nome II

Sim'n Tonic has made the Nome II, a MIDI metronome. In this video he explains the problem and the reasons that other solutions didn't work for him. There's also a demo.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgdWIz6wDbU

Double oscillator synth from vintage calculator

stevegallery has modified this vintage calculator to work as a synth. There are some controls. Entering numbers on the calculator also affects the sound.

In this video he demonstrates it with and without effects. As I write this, it's listed on Reverb. I don't know whether it's a one-off.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL-1uPWbRPM

Performances

8-Bit Psycho

8-Bit Psycho is the "unexpected love child of Psychobilly and Chiptune".

It's a one-man act combining real vocals and upright bass with GameBoy sounds.

He's currently touring. You can hear the singles on Bandcamp, and his social media has some videos.

8-bitpsycho.bandcamp.com

Traditional and acoustic instruments

Rare Iron Age war trumpet and boar standard found

A carnyx is a bronze battle trumpet, used by celtic tribes, including the Iceni tribe led by queen Boudica, to intimidate their enemies.

This Norfolk find is very rare and it's remarkable that it has survived in the ground as well as it has.

This TV news story has footage of someone playing a reproduction, although I'm not sure that we know what the battle calls would have sounded like. I'd still love to jam on one of these things.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr7jvj8d39eo

But is it art...?

Speaker as an abstract sculpture

Erwan Bouroullec wanted to redesign the speaker so that it stands as abstract sculpture when not in use. The result is Music Studio, marketed by Samsung.

The flat Music Studio 5 fits a woofer and two tweeters into something the thickness of a picture frame and sounds like a chunkier speaker than it is.

Bouroullec has also designed a similar speaker in a more traditional boxy shape called Music Studio 7, which was unveiled by Samsung at CES.

www.dezeen.com...erwan-bouroullec-music-studio-5/

Steve Parker etches bird song into playable oak records

In 'Funeral for a Tree,' Steve Parker has cut bird song into slices of an oak tree as you would vinyl. It amazes me that they play at all.

The same exhibition at Ivester Contemporary featured a brass-style instrument with tubes that resemble roots and other musical works using the same oak tree.

www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/01/steve-parker-funeral-for-a-tree-sound-sculpture/

All that remains is for me to thank everyone who blogs, vlogs, writes articles or posts pictures on the subjects I'm excited by.

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Newsletter 19 Jan 2026

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