Sunday Synth Jam: Sound designer Diego Stocco is always doing something amazing and this short promo piece is no exception.

If you’ve been dreaming about a new synth or new app, see what Stocco does with a bunch of old junk:

A short abstract piece created during one of the sessions I did for an upcoming project.
I used an old dismantled piano, antique zithers collected in the past few months and metallic wind chimes. Played with piano hammers and a dulcimer bow.

See more of Stocco’s videos at his Vimeo site.

rishabhrajan demonstrates his MacGyver multitouch surface, with some general applications and then with a Flash version of Brian Eno’s Bloom ambient app.

Below, a “paper piano”, created with Community Core Vision, Pure Data and Logic Pro.

Do you think 2010 will be the year somebody packages this concept and turns it into a general music app?

Sound Textile experimentations at Modefabriken – umlautbrikauski “freaking out on the Textile Harp”.

This is obviously early on in development – but the idea of fabric synth controllers is intriguing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Because it was there: Ableton Live 8 does Twitter, with a bit of help from Max for Live, MXJ and Jython.

“I sat and watched fifteen minutes of the Twitter public timeline while recording this video,” says Nick Rothwell, “and have now lost the will to live.”

Maybe if we could just use the Twitter stream to trigger events based on keywords in tweets……

Throbbing Gristle’s Chris Carter posed this short demo of a black Gristleism.

The Gristleism is described as a “Throbbing Gristle palm-sized loop playback machine.”

You probably already know that synth meetups are a great way to meet and learn from other people that are into synths. This video, from Pacific Northwest Synth  2009, documents five more reasons to go to a synth meetup.

5 Reasons To Go To A Synth Meetup

1. They are the synth geek equivalent of a trip to the Playboy Mansion – everywhere you look, you see something gorgeous.
2. Everybody there thinks that guys rocking out with keytars are cool.
3. Where else are you going to see a giant Mini Modular?
4. Analog IS better than digital. Especially when it’s digitally-controlled analog.
5. Three words: MIDI-controlled skulls

If you made it to Pacific Northwest Synth 2009, leave a comment with your experiences or links to videos and photos from the event!

via redmartian:

Here is a live performance of the MMM demo number four featuring the stack of MMMs behind, the Syntar (the father of the MMM) and the new AcidLab MIAMI in MIDI mode.

The bass line, arpeggio and drums were sequenced in Logic.

The Skulls were triggered via Logic (the percussion tracks) using Division-6’s MIDIFY.

New with the Thingamagoop 2:

• Arduino + Analog
• CV i/o
• Much more….

No pricing or release date have been announced.

This can’t end well.

You create a synthesizer-controlled Frankenstein robotic dog, and pretty soon you end up as dog food.

via SpillerNo:

How to controll a frankenstein robot dog with animatronics using a toy synthesizer. Fra programmet «Tekno» som går mandager 21:30 på NRK 2

WABOT-2 relaxes by jamming on the electric keyboards.

Next, he will rip off your arms and beat you with them, because he doesn’t need you anymore. 

WABOT-2 was created in the early 80s.

According to developers, Wabot-2 “can converse with a person, read a normal musical score with its ‘eye’ and play tunes of average difficulty on an electronic organ. The WABOT-2 is also able of accompanying a person while he listens to the person singing.”

via NoiseForAirports, MusicMachinery

Seeburg Style H Orchestrion plays Barney Google

The largest and most ornate American built orchestrion, the J P Seeburg model H, performs in the shop of Reblitz Restorations as the staff readies the instrument for delivery.

Somebody needs to get ahold of one of these and “repurpose it” for modern music, don’t you think?

via ampicoab

They include these recommendations for Electronic Music For Sex:

Electronica
If you like to chill out and go through various speeds and tempos while doing the deed, then this music will serve to give you and your girl exactly what you’re looking for. This music, along with a good bottle of wine, can turn your session into something hypnotic.

Suggestions:
Cafe Del Mar Volumen Once
Paris Under A Groove – Stylistique Vol. 1

Dance
Considering you’re doing your own horizontal dance, listening to some soft, original dance music will serve to make her sway her hips more so on your penis. Personally, I think this is the best kind of music to have sex to.

Suggestions:
Beautiful Tomorrow – Blue Six
Nude Tempo 1 – Muguel Migs
Penetrate Deeper (Reis) – Deep Dish
Addictive Beats – Saeed & Palash

Never mind the horrifically bad commentary – Sex advice FAIL!

Perhaps Donna Summer & Giorgio Moroder’s I Feel Love?  Klaus Schulze’s Body Love soundtrack? Art Of Noise’s Moments In Love?

I don’t claim any special expertise in this area – but I expect that Synthtopia readers can do a lot better than AskMen’s cheesy advice.

Got a recommendation? Leave a comment below!

Breakfast at Sulimay’s, a video blog that features retirees reviewing current music, takes a look at MGMT’s Kids.

They’re pretty dead on. What do you think?

Note: the part of the MGMT video about 5 minutes in looks like just about every kids’ TV show I watched as a kid. Maybe that explains something.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ben Brown plays his bizarre DIY monome guitar synth thing, aka the Guitarnome:

I’m playing the guitar I made from scratch, with a monome kit embedded in it. It was a long project… but fun.

Some parts are a bit out of tune(need to do some more guitar work) and Im still figuring out the setup(running 7up live on the monome). The audios pretty crappy on this recording unfortunately as my speaker setup was a bit janky… but hey! it was fun. Ran the vid through ScreenFlow for some super quick editing and export.

I’m using Ableton Live for my audio bits and a Presonus Firepod to process my voice and guitar signal. We kinda just did this spur of the moment so I didnt get the audio from Ableton.

The Guitarnome is not a traditional guitar synth, but rather a monome/guitar mashup.

The Guitarnome has a body made from cherry, wenge, and maple, a neck with a zebra wood fret board and a birds eye maple neck.  Brown embedded a Monome within the body and custom built the encasing for all the electronics. The Guitarnome has USB & 1/4″ outputs.

In preparation for the new products coming out in early November, we’re having a sale on shirts and the last remaining Thingamagoops.

Only a few of each color combo are left.

Normally $130, the Thingamagoops are selling for $90 while stock lasts.

OT: I’m as anti-violence as the next guy – but this video montage of 1 million frame-per-second images of bullets hitting things, set to house music, is pretty amazing.

Video of bullet impacts made by Werner Mehl from Kurzzeit. But you could probably tell that by the annoying copyright watermark splashed across the entire thing.

Yeah, yeah – here’s that “talking piano” video that’s been bouncing around the Internet for a week.

I didn’t feature it here, because I thought Conlon Nancarrow was doing a lot more interesting things, and more musical things, with player piano sequencing back in the 1940s.

And, if you’re going to make a talking instrument, in my book – it’s either got to make music, or it’s got to say “Exterminate!”

But others are obviously seeing potential in this. Or that je ne sais quoi that makes an Internet meme.

Anyway, this video captures a”speaking piano” reciting the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court at World Venice Forum 2009.

Composer Peter Ablinger basically pixelated sound, at a resolution appropriate to the range of the piano, and used the pixelations as “notes” to sequence and reproduce a lo-fi version of the original sound.

UPDATE: Astera on hackaday wrote a rough translation:

Pretty amazing, how all of a sudden the words of the Declaration become understandable to a European Environmental Criminal Court. Wien Modern was one out of ten cultural institutions asked for an artistic contribution to the event in Palazzo Ducale in Venice. The ambitious goal was to make this message audible with musical means, without falling back to a simple setting.

Berno Polzer: I think, its partially understandable, partially not. And it plays well with the limits of our construction abilities. That is, we hear sounds that obviously arent normal Music, but neither they are language, and one could say that sometimes, a bridging happens. Personally, I think you can understand individual words even without knowing the text, and the Eureka moment happens when you see the text, and suddenly, the language is there.

Yet another bridge: Miro Markus, an elementary school student from Berlin, narrated the text for the performance: Youth as a hope for the older generation.

The Austrian composer Peter Ablinger transferred the frequency spectrum of the childs voice to his computer controlled mechanical piano.

Peter Ablinger: I break down this phonography, meaning a recording of something the voice, in this case -, in individual pixels, one can say. And if I have the possibility of a rendering in a fairly high resolution (and that I only get with a mechanical piano), then I in fact restore some kind of continuity. Therefore, with a little practice, or help or subtitling, we actually can hear a human voice in a piano sound.

Volkswagen created this musical staircase with the idea that “happiness is the absolute easiest way to get people to change”:

Take the stairs instead of escalators or elevator and feel better” is something you often hear or maybe read in Sunday attachments. Few if any people have followed this advice.

Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator on a normal day in Stockholm, by making it more fun to take the stairs?

The result you see here.

It’s an interesting concept and project.

If you know anything about the technical details on this, leave a coment!

This demo captures the Atari 2600 synthesizer in action.

Eigenlabs

The Eigenharp Alpha, right, is their professional level instrument. It allows the musician to play and improvise using a limitless range of sounds with virtuoso skill.

It has 120 playing keys, 12 percussion keys, two strip controllers and a breath pipe. It’s available in a variety of custom finishes.

What’s in the box?

• Eigenharp Pico in robust cardboard carry case/box.
• Product Activation card for website support and tutorial materials.
• Breath pipe.
• Two mouthpieces.
• Neck strap.
• 3M Pico to computer USB2 connecting cable.
• Eigenlabs 8GB USB stick with latest install software (Macintosh) and getting started tutorials.

The Eigenlabs Eigenharp Alpha is priced starting at Price £3950.00 (inc vat).

The Eigenharp Pico is designed to be simple to use so anyone can play it.

With 18 playing keys and 4 mode keys, a strip controller and breath pipe, the smaller Pico has the majority of the playing features of the Eigenharp Alpha. It plays an unlimited range of sounds and is available in two finishes.

The Eigenharp Pico, with its ease of playing and transformational approach to learning scales and music theory, represents a new and easier way to learn to play a musical instrument. The Pico gives you freedom to express your creativity through improvisation like no other electronic instrument in existence.

What’s in the box?

• Eigenharp Pico in robust cardboard carry case/box.
• Product Activation card for website support and tutorial materials.
• Breath pipe.
• Two mouthpieces.
• Neck strap.
• 3M Pico to computer USB2 connecting cable.
• Eigenlabs 8GB USB stick with latest install software (Macintosh) and getting started tutorials.

The Eigenlabs Eigenharp Pico retails starting at £349 inc Vat.

This is a little off-topic, because it’s not an electronic instrument – but this Glass Harmonica performance is amazing, and offers the same sense of otherworldliness that people often try to coax out of synthesizers.

Ben Franklin invented the Glass Harmonica in 1761, after hearing a performer play glasses musically.

“He collected a number of glasses of different sizes, fixed them near each other on a table, and tuned them by putting into them water, more or less as each note required,” according to Franklin. “The tones were brought out by passing his fingers round their brims.”

Franklin thought he could do better, and came up with the Glass Harmonica design, which puts glass hemispheres of descending sizes on a spinning shaft.

G. Finkenbiener manufacturers Glass Harmonicas based on Franklin’s concept.

via johntamaro:

Invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. Music by Wolfgang A. Mozart. Played by French artist Thomas Bloch, exhibiting the glass harmonica in the Paris Music Museum, Nov. 29, 2007.