Exhibition of Gijs Gieskes' Music Instruments

A friend introduced Gijs to me many years ago.  We've stayed in touch as much as possible, considering he lives all the way over on the other side of the ocean in Holland!

 

He recently had an exhibition of some of his vast instrument library.


His elegant, yet slightly jagged approach always impresses me.

His adoration of the connection between the sounds of physical and electrical media tickles my fancy!

What physical objects would you go out of your way to incorporate into electronic instruments?

Subwoofer Build From Scratch by Svinec

Svinec builds a large subwoofer from scratch, including coils, spider,  foam, everything!  It's nicely documented and has a great sound track of "Bass Music"!  Pump it up!

 

This is a really nice video.  It is well worth the 10 minutes.

Get comfortable with a friend, watch the construction and enjoy the details!  

Do you think you could pull this off yourself? 

Bitcrushing Versus Sample Rate Reduction

http://hackaday.com/2013/08/25/the-difference-between-bitcrushers-and-sample-rate-reducers/

This brief, easy-to-watch video points out the difference between:

•  Bitcrushing

and

• Sample Rate Reduction

Watch it and listen to the difference!  Then use it to make awesome digital music instruments!

StompShields from Open Music Labs!

The StompShields I ordered from Open Music Labs arrived pretty darn fast!

 

StompShield from Open Music Labs

I just got them at home right now hahha!  

I can't play with them right away, b/c....

I am in the midst of modularizing the mixer code in the Bass Stick...



Guess what else arrived at the same time?  My Owl programmable stomp pedal with the stm32f4 in it!  I'm soaked in stm32f4 music instruments :)

The pedal is neat and whatnot, but I'm preferring original instruments at this time :)  They do look like they have a decent cross-platform development system though!  I would love to be able to interoperate with it!

Funk Theory of Music

Can Anyone Explain Funk Music Theory?

Recently, this thread came up on reddit and I found it very informative.

It tells you what types of chords, progressions and rhythms are used in several well-known funk songs.

Tufts Design Electronic Music Instruments

This is the end-of-semester demos for a number of excellent electronic music instruments

There  are many original designs in there, and some familiar ones:

Laserharp

Rainflute

Schwinnophone

 E-Cordian

Stringless Guitar

Bonus Stringless Guitar from another group!

3-D Printed MIDI Controller from ADAFruit

I think this is pretty neat!  It combines an instrument housing with a microcontroller and LEDs.  The result is a decent-looking instrument.

Of course, I would rather see it made in wood and include its own synthesizer!  But things like this are going to be good first steps toward lutheir-quality digital music instruments.