synthesizer

All posts tagged synthesizer

Another DIY tiny instrument

Posted by Patrick McMullen on January 20, 2012
Posted in: music, tech. Tagged: , , , , , , . 1 comment

You’re probably thinking, “what the hell are those things: 3G and 4G service indicators? Scientologist E-meters? Alien Communicators? Tiny electronic instruments?” Yes actually. They are e-meters, I mean tiny instruments. Esty shop owner WaxxMuseum, self described maker and seller of, “One of a kind instruments / electronics / noise makers” has a pretty interesting piece here. Essentially, this thing is a combination of a thumb piano, theremin, and drum machine. Each of the variably-sized poles can be plucked, strummed, or even played with a violin bow (as in the video below) to produce different pitches and sounds.

The maker of this piece has a youtube channel called vcs3dreams where you can see all of his crazy contraptions in action. I’d love to see him rocking out on one of each of his instruments at once, in what would be Dr. Frankenstein attempting to produce music for Bassnectar. In the video for the Blue Box below, he has one of his Blue Boxes running through a Boss RC-20 loopstation, with some echo and decay in there somewhere. If I had one of these, you can bet I’d be making some crazy Star Trek sounds to run through my Korg KP-3 effects processor and sampler.

-Patrick

five tiny instruments in six hours on engadget!

Posted by Patrick McMullen on January 15, 2011
Posted in: music, tech. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

Getting much less attention in the wake of CES was a musical technology expo show in Anahaeim called NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants). This event goes on January 13th through the 16th, and it includes live performances, special apperances, conventions, and a whole lot of sweet new tiny instruments. On second thought, I think I might go look into this thing a little more, because it sounds pretty cool.

Anyway, yesterday, engadget, one of my personal favorite gadget blogs, ran no short of five stories (quite a few on the topic for them) on some pretty rad new instrument tech from legends such as moog, korg, and akai, as well as the recent teenage engineering op-1, and apparently a new model from Roger Linn, maker of many great synthesizers and drum machines. These all look like great instruments for aspiring tiny musicians. Check out the posts on engadget for more information about those particular instruments, and I’m going to look into more of the releases and demonstrations, and perhaps some performances, at NAMM ’11.

(Click Me I’m a Gif!)

 

-Patrick