DIY

Metku Mods, a hardware modding site, has an interesting step-by-step photo essay on modding a Casio CTK 530 keyboard.

Why spend hours turning a cheesy Casio keyboard into a control keyboard that only offers limited control? Here’s modder Jani Pönkkö’s reason:

When not modding, I usually compose some music. As an input device for the music software, I use old Casio CTK 530 keyboard. One day I realized how ugly it really is, so it’s time for modding, once again!

Pönkkö spent nothing on the project, using scraps from earlier mod projects, and ended up with an one-of-a-kind, minimal keyboard controller.

Even if you’re not into DIY projects, soldering is a good skill to know for musicians working with electronic music gear.

It’s learn to solder month at Make Magazine, and here are a few tutorials that they’ve tracked down that may help:

Make: Soldering Tutorial – Link
Gareth’s awesome howto PDF – Link
Howto solder – Link
Tin the Tip – Link
What NOT to do when soldering – Link
Soldering Maintenance – Link
Soldering Paste Stencils – Link
Hot Air Sodering Iron – Link
Soldering underneath chips – Link
Solder exhaust fan – Link
Improving a 3rd Hand – Link
Super Simple Soldering Arms – Link
Homemade nearly-free Soldering Iron Stand – Link

Mekarer, who may be the MacGyver of the music world, has turned a sponge into a snare drum, using a guitar pickup and a piece of string:

Here’s his English explanation:

“I use Reaktor to translate the signal with its amplitube to snare drums. Each punch, with sound a snare drum (not the same snare all the time, it changes after every puch) and it has a the amplitude of the punch. It is very sensitive and there are some great stuff I can do with the Reaktor, like setting the dynamic range.”

via Guy Turns Sponge Into A Snare Drum

Limor Fried, creator of the very cool x0xb0x 303 DIY project, has released MIDIsense, described as “a simple, yet extensible sensor interface system for artists, musicians and others interested in experimenting with sensors.”

The MIDIsense boards provide a simple way to integrate various common sensors with existing software such as Max/MSP, Ableton Live, etc. or directly to a synthesizer/sequencer with a MIDI in jack. Interface boards are available as kits.

The kit is available for $50 including all parts.

Graphical configuration/calibration software is written in wx/Python and is available as a MacOS X executable or source for Linux. A Windows version is planned to be released soon.

An example tutorial is available at Fried’s site that discusses using the kit to make a laser harp.

via Axehole: Experimentalist Anonymous has posted a journal of building a modular synth in a month.

“During the month of January, 2006, I built an analog modular synthesizer from the ground up. At Oberlin, where I go to school, January is a time for students to work on individual projects of their choice. It has always been a dream of mine to build a modular synth, as I not only wanted one but also thought of it as sort of the “next step” after pedal building. I started on January 4th and ended on Febuary 4th (at 2 in the morning no less!), so it really did take a month to build.”

There are currently 12 modules in the synth, as follows (from left to right):

• Voltage Controlled Oscillator 1
• Voltage Controlled Oscillator 2
• Dual Logarithmic/Linear Voltage Controlled Amplifier
• Dual Low Frequency Oscillator
• Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release Generator 1
• Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release Generator 2
• Voltage Controlled State Variable Filter
• Sample and Hold and White Noise Generator
• Dual DC Mixer
• Triple Guitar Interface
• Voltage Controlled Lowpass Filter
• Power Supply/Switch

Total price: $785.15

Pretty impressive DIY project for one month!