Haken Continuum/Kyma Demo with Sally Sparks
A quick look at the Haken Continuum and Kyma sound engine. Thanks to Sally Sparks for the demo.
More at www.experimentalsynth.com
Arpie – Bouncing Ball Music Sequencer
Arpie is the novel musical composition system. Put balls as many as you like, and watch as they make nice music. Higher balls hit the keys with long pauses, as opposed to lower balls which hit fast and repeatedly. By combining them you can easily make a wide variety of musical sequences.
MusixCube – making electronic music with Rubik’s cube
A tool for producing electronic music, based on the interaction of the Rubik’s Cube, B.A. Thesis project at Muthesius Academy Of Fine Arts And Design by Hauke Scholz
Video shot and edited by Stefan Horak
Beach Sampling | Music made with sand, rocks & water
A short video showcasing sound design techniques. The music and sound design were created by using exclusively vocal recordings and sounds of found objects, all recorded at a beach. Location: Kalamitsi-Halkidiki (GR)
Video, Music, Sound Design, Vocals \\\ John Valasis {johnvalasis.com}
Female Vocals, Support \\\ Vittoria Volovik
MR-808 – mechanic drum robot
Moritz Simon Geist created the MR-808 – described as ‘the first drum robot that reproduces the drum sounds of the 80′s. The installation is a version of the famous Roland TR-808 – but with robots playing the drum sounds!
Let’s get physical: MR-808 is the first drum robot that reproduces the drum sounds of the 80s – in the real world.
The robot installation MR-808 is a replica of the famous 1980s electronic drum machine TR-808 – with robots playing the drum sounds! I (Moritz Simon Geist) have been playing electronic music for several years now, and at some place I was bored of the electronic music production process. With binary logic, everything is possible.
So I decided to go back to the roots of sound generation – the physical sound generation – but combine it with the electronic music structure we like so much.
I liked the idea so much, that I couldn’t stop building my own drum robots, and ended up replacing all the electronic sounds of a whole drum computer, placed in a 3,3 x 1,7m² case. I am very proud to present the “MR-808” – a mechanic replica of the famous 1980s electronic drum machine TR-808!
Read on: sonicrobots.com/mr808-eng/
—
MR-808 – mechanic sound robot (all drums, miced)
A mechanic relay controlled via arduino (bass sound)
Gameboy – Arduinoboy hardware (8 bit chiptune sound)
Everything was programmed in Ableton, only equing and compression has been applied.
—
Filmography: David Campesino
Music: Moritz Simon Geist
THYX – Project Tape Evidence – featuring Mind.in.a.box
Earlier this Summer, Stefan Poiss, the mastermind of THYX and mind.in.a.box announced about a new project he was starting. This was a project he was doing together with all of the fans to THYX and mind.in.a.box and everyone could send him sound material and Stefan would be creating a song from that material. The experiment is now finished and you can listen to the result. The video is created by Justin Arnold.
Background description from Thyx:
This is an experiment I did with all mind.in.a.box and THYX fans via facebook. Everyone could send me some sound material, noises, whatever they want and my challenge was to create a whole song with this material.
It was not so easy. Most of the people sent me whole songs not just sounds. So first I had to listen carefully what I can cut and use. Bassdrum and Snare for example was cutted out from some songs they’ve sent me. I created sample sets from every sound. but it was too less. I needed some more and different sounds and so I began to build waveforms from the sounds. Zoom in, cut only one wave… load it into the sampler and let it loop.
The Lyrics I got from two guys. I mixed it so half of the lyrics are coming from one guy, half from another guy. I hope they will forgive me.
After creating a structure of the song I did a small loop for the refrain and posted it on facebook. Everyone should play this loop and record their singing with their handy or whatever device they have. I got about 25 recordings and I tried to build a chorus with them. Most important was that the timing from the singing from every recording was good. So I had to cut and trim a lot (and laughing a lot 
) but in the end it went far better than I expected.
So this was it. The experiment called “Tape Evidence”. Every sound source from this song comes from the fans, except my voice of course. I really learned a lot and had a lot of fun during this project. I think even this song, where every sound source came from different people, sounds a little bit like mind.in.a.box or THYX. This is one of my big realizations of this project.
Big thanks to Justin Arnold who did this amazing LEGO style video!
…and thanks to everyone who was involved!
The song is free to download via our facebook page. I will post a link there soon.
http://www.facebook.com/thyxmusic
Nuclear Musicians: Radioactive Orchestra
Radioactive orchestra is a cross-boundary collaboration of nuclear physicists, a DJ and one media artist. The project wishes to inspire young people to learn about the natural sciences, but it also has an artistic aim to find new musically interesting patterns. By giving every radioactive isotop its own sound based on scientific algorithms they turn nuclear science into music, hence making a world available to us that our senses can not otherwise percieve.
SCRAPHEAP SYMPHONY
Interesting experimental video from Chris Cairns, details below:
So glad to be able to share this!
We, and by we I mean isthis.gd, built a MIDI orchestra from old computer junk. Photocopiers, scanners, fax machines, printers,hard drives, modems and the like.
We thought it’d be most fun to do it for real.
We were really inspired by Tristram Cary, James Houston, BD594 and other radical tinkerers. Making cold stuff warm is fun.
We found loads of old machines destined for landfill, took them to bits and reverse engineered them to make noises that we could control via MIDI.
Badman Will Cohen made an arrangement of Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ but the orchestra can play any MIDI arrangement, or indeed be performed live.
Maximum respect to Neil Mendoza, Marek Bereza, Will Cohen, Stefan Dzisiewski-Smith, Justin Pentecost, Mike Harrison, Mat Holloway, Bonnie Anthony, Jason Oakley and all at Partizan, Liat Wassershtrom, Ben Joffe, Tim Leask, Jack Ellis, Ozzie Pullin.
Awesome cinematography by Denzil Armour-Brown and Daniel Lowe. Tight edit by Ross Hallard.
Mixtape Alpha – Synth Demo
Mixtape Alpha is the smallest synthesizer we could make without a prescription. It has a stylophone style input for continuous note generation, and 6 buttons for discrete notes. With 4 voices, 4 effects, and 5 note polyphony there is quite a range of expression. But, the best part is, you can record the songs you make, and trade mixtapes with your friends! Perhaps even better, it’s based on the ATmega328p, and can be hacked to make even crazier sounds than we came up with.
If you want to dig into the guts of this 8-bit synth, check out the wiki page. There you will find all the schematics and code, and we even have a Pure Data patch for making your own wavetables. Mixtape Alpha even comes in its own cassette case, with instructions! So check out the Mixtape Alpha store to own your very own.
Mixtape Alpha was done in collaboration with Jie Qi from the High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab. It’s an attempt to break down the barriers between people and electronics: To get them comfortable touching PCBs, and change expectations about how electronics should look. To this end, there are resistive touch pads, and all the trace routing took aesthetics into consideration as well. These are ideas very familiar to circiut benders, and we’re hoping they catch on with other folks as well.
Light Globe Synth
A small synth box with 2 light sensitive Oscillators modulated by 2 pot controllable LFOs.
Circuit using a single 40106 CMOS chip freeformed (no circuit board) inside a re-purposed incandescent light bulb.
Amplification is from a single LM 358 deadbug style under the wooden control panel.
Speaker is a tweeter from a car stereo. Powered from a 9V battery.
Fun to play in the sunshine aswell.
Sound recorded with the camera mic.
Sorry for the out of focus, had trouble with the cam.
DATAMASKIN
