Critter and Guitari have introduced the Pocket Piano Arduino Shield – a board for making the Arduino into a portable stand alone music synthesizer.

Features:

• 25 keys and multiplexer circuitry
• 4 potentiometers, 1 controls output level
• Microchip MCP4921 12 bit SPI DAC
• Passive low pass output filter

It plugs directly into the Arduino board and provides 25 multiplexed keys (2 full octaves), 4 pots, status LED, reset switch, digital to analog converter IC, and a RCA audio jack. The Arduino board with its powerful AVR processor is more than adequate for a wide range of sound synthesis techniques, including additive / wave-table synthesis, frequency modulation, ring modulation, sampling, polyphony and various arpeggiators.

Audio demos are available at the C&G site.

Kit only, Arduino Board not included: $44.95

Click here to view the embedded video.

uses four IR transmitter/receiver pairs to detect reflective objects (such as coins) passing under one of four tracks. When such an object is detected, an audio sample is triggered on the computer.

At the recent Decibel Festival in Seattle, Splatinum appeared outside after the final show with their awesome mobile bike live rave station.

All was good with Splatinum’s mobile rave…..until the police showed up.

via thenowwave

This video captures demos of three synths/noise machines that are encased in what looks like Tupperware containers.

via puffhandy

The main goal of the event is for participants to rapidly prototype and build new projects, working through the night to complete and present them the following day. They have only this weekend to conceptualize, build, & present their projects. Hardware meets Software meets Online, all connected via music.

This event is about doing & not about just talking. Sessions will be very limited and after that its all about building and realizing real products.

Details below.

If you make it to Music Hackday Berlin, leave a comment with a link to any photos, videos or blogging that you do!

Tentative Schedule:

Friday 18th:

Open party & early-bird hacking for folks who need two back-nights

We will be at the party and later upstairs in studio B&C starting 8pm – come join

(The party is the closing party of the music conference alltogethernow. There will be drinks & food available at reasonable prices. If you have trouble finding us, look for the dude with the blue LA Dodgers hat (David).

Saturday 19th:

9.00: Check-in & breakfast sponsored by Cloudspeakers

9.25: Kick-Off: short introduction, where’s what, what’s going to happen?

9.30: Brief introductions/presenation of participating companies and their API’s: Ableton, Echonest, SoundCloud, Cloudspeakers, Mufin, RjDj and TracksAndFields

10:30 – 13.00: Break-down into workshops & hacking sessions

13:00 – 14:00: Lunch sponsored by Ableton

14:00 – 19:00: workshops & hacking sessions

19:00 – 20:00: Dinner sponsored by Tape.tv

Hacking through the night from there

Sunday 20st:

9.00: Check-in & breakfast sponsored by De:Bug

9.30: More Hacking!

10:30 – 13.00: Break-down into workshops & hacking sessions

13:00 – 14:00: Lunch provided by Mr. Wong

14:00 – open: Demos & presentations

Details:

• When: Evening of the 18th – afternoon of the 20th of September 2009
• Where: Radialsystem V, Berlin
• Registration: You need to be registered in advance.

4ms Pedals, Eric archer, and Dr. Bleep are proud to announce Handmade Music Austin!

Starting October 15th at Salvage Vanguard Theater in collaboration with CoFG, we will be offering monthly workshops in they style of Handmade Music.

We’ll have free soldering, bending and DIY noise classes, as well as workshops to build our forthcoming Andromeda Space Rocker kits. Early sign-ups for classes will start soon so stay tuned!

Rocketboom Tech correspondent Ellie Rountree visits engineer and founder of Adafruit Industries, Limor Fried, to talk about their DIY open source electronic kits.

Limor Fried is the creator of the x0xb0x, an open source TB303 bassline synthesizer clone.

via ROCKETBOOM:

SynthGlove (prototype)

via Denkitribe:

This is my first attempt at using Power Glove as a musical instrument. I made a small circuit using Arduino which converts finger movements into MIDI CC messages.

I’m planning to add an accelerometer to replace ultrasonic sensors which is embedded in the original Power Glove.

Can’t afford a new drum machine?

Then check out the d-touch drum machine, a free DIY alternative that lets you make beats using a piece of paper, a webcam and some walnuts:

The d-touch drum machine is a drum machine with a tangible user interface: it is controlled by placing and arranging physical objects on an A4 piece of paper, which we call the interactive area. The interactive area is arranged in 11 rows, each row corresponds to a different sound, as indicated by the text labels. The horizontal position of the blocks on the interactive area determines the timing of the sound trigger within the loop.

Is this awesome, or what? Now, if we could just print out a paper bassline synth, we’d be set.

If you give d-touch a try, leave a comment and tell us how it works for you!

via audiodtouch

Mike Cook made this Junk Box Monome:

A Monome is basically a simple eight by eight grid of push switches and lights. However, the official Monomes have always had a nod towards eco friendliness by incorporating renewable wood in their construction. Well I wanted to go at least one better and use parts that I already had in my junk box, or surplus obsolete parts I could scrounge, all based on a Arduino. This dictated the electronic and mechanical design, resulting in a unique variant on the Monome theme, which is why I call it the Econo Monome.

Let’s kick off by saying that 40 years of working, and playing, with electronics has given me a junk box that is perhaps deeper than most people’s, your mileage may vary.

Cool reuse of old junk, eh?

Yann Seznec, aka The Amazing Rolo, captured a set of videos of electronic musicians demonstrating their electronic musical instrument creations at Maker Faire 2009 in San Mateo.

In the first video, Elly Jessop, a masters student at MIT Media Lab, talks about her Vocal Augmentation and Manipulation Prosthesis (VAMP).

Click here to view the embedded video.

From the Maker Faire 2009: “I spoke with Barry Threw from Keith McMillen Instruments about the K-Bow, a sensor-laden violin bow that allows for powerful and intuitive electro-acoustic performance.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Moldover shows off his crazy Syncomasher at the Maker Faire 2009.

See, too, Peter Kirn’s discussion at CDM.

If there’s anybody that you don’t want driving up and down your street at night, it’s probably EXOcontralto.

This video documents how he hooked up a cheap Casio synth to his 2000 watt automotive sound system so he could rock his ‘92 Dodge Caravan like no other, with massive “Loud Ass Bass.”

Details on this hack below.

This is a remake to a how-to car modification video, explaning, and going through the various procedures involved when re-wiring speaker terminals into RCA connects, designed for hooking into external receivers, Like you Car Audio Amplifier!

Loud Ass Bass!

Directions:

Solder existing speaker terminals with Idental pair of wires, Solder RCA connects, Connect to Auxially Receiver, or Amplifier, your DONE!

Tone: Synth Bass
Bass test tones were recorded in the key of C, and I go through various steps within that scale.

92 dodge caravan

Pioneer DEH-P6000ub
Clarion Eqs746
(1) Alpine MRP-M500
(1) Alpine MRP-M1000
(3) Orion HP12 sub’s @ 2 ohms
(2) Orion Cobalt 5.25’s
(2) Polk DB 5×7’s
(2) Polk DB 6×9’s
Big Three in 0 Gauge
(1) MCR 200 amp H/O Alternator
(2) Power Acoustik PCX’5 Caps

_ – ~ Auxillary ~ – _
(1) Coleman 800wrms DC/AC Power Inverter
(1) Sony THS-K670 @ 600wrms into 4 ohms
(1) 10′ MTX Blue Thunder SVC Sub into 4 ohms

The Chiptune Marching Band is a workshop and performance that involves people from all walks of life making strange electronic sounds with one another, out in the world and in the open air.

It’s an interesting project – and they’ve got the greatest logo in the world!

Image: rarebeasts

MuseDuo is a light and temperature operated interactive instrument. It’s played by two people who cooperate to make different sounds.

Light sensors change the pitch of the sounds, and temperature sensors measure the temperature difference in each persons hand to set the tempo.

An InterArct project.

via the Synthtopia Flickr group.

This is a demo of the 555 Noisemusick kit from Maker Shed.

The 555 Timer is one of the oldest integrated circuits still available. It’s also one of the few ICs you can buy at the mall! Its hardiness — and the fact that you can drive a speaker directly from the output on pin 3 — have made it a natural choice for electronic music experiments in noise since the seventies.

The 555 Noisekit utilizes two 555 timers.

If you’ve built the 555 Noisemusick kit, leave a comment with your thoughts!

The 55 Noisemusick kit retails for $20.

via KeyOfGrey

This project by Brett Renfer uses capacitive sensing, via conductive thread and Arduino, to make a button organ.

via Make

The strange DIY project makes use of conductive fabric, nickel-plated sew snaps and conductive thread to embed circuits into the garment. 

We’re not sure about the playing technique one would use with a musical bra -but the instructions should apply to making all types of fabric music gear. 

If you’ve made a musical bra or other musical clothing, leave a comment with your thoughts!

And let us know how you play it!

“Twin Delay” Rebote 2.5 Delay Echo Digital Analog Pedal

via djthomaswhite:

Here is my build of the popular Rebote 2.5 Delay project as offered by www.tonepad.com.

This is a $14 PCB where you source and build the rest of the parts. It is actually a great kit for someone looking to get into DIY projects that have to be soldered by hand.

The enclosure is from www.pedalpartsplus.com and I got the source wrong in the video. Sorry PPP!

It is kind of hard to tell, but the powder coating these guys do is AMAZING. The delay is based on the PT2399 chip and is technically a digital delay, although on board filtering of the echo tails makes it sound quite analog. I built two echos in the same box, with echo #1 feeding into echo #2. The connection is via a switching jack so you can use it as two separate echos just by plugging in to the 2nd echo input.

Other wise it is a dual true-bypass unit with only a need for 1 input and 1 output. I’d like to have three in one unit, but two works wonders in the end. Build one!

It is perfect for synths or guitar and can handle a decent input volume. Very cool and very fun to play with.

If you’ve built this DIY project, leave a comment with your thoughts!

The Meggy Jr RGB from Evil Mad Science running MeggySeq, driving a Wave Shield from Lady Ada.

MeggySeq is a pattern-based drum machine sequencer. It has 8 patterns of 16 steps each and each step can play one of 8 samples (the colors are hard to tell apart on the video).

MeggySeq is currently in development.

Next steps: Saving patterns to the eeprom, sending MIDI (currently it just sends single characters over serial to the WaveShield) and possibly syncing to external clock sources. Or, you know, changing the tempo at all.

Image: Cypher Photography

Synth Porn Saturday: Here’s a little photographic treat for you – images of a DIY’d Moog modular synthesizer!

This comes via the Synthtopia Flickr Group – check it out and add your images!