prosthetic knowledge
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Glockentar
Hacked together music instrument mash-up combining a guitar and a glockenspiel, with added projection-mapped lighting on the strings (ssing Arduino, openFrameworks, and MadMapper) - by Aaron Sherwood (video embedded below):
Glockentar from Aaron Sherwood on Vimeo.
The Glockentar combines a glockenspiel with a guitar.
Each time a string is plucked a glockenspiel bell is struck with a solenoid, and a beam of light is projected across the length of the string.
More at Aaron’s blog here
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Playa by Ruben Dhers
Sound installation features 14 guitars with hanging computer-controlled fans - the result is beautiful ambient music - video below:
playa from Ruben Dhers on Vimeo.
14 acoustic guitars, 31 dc motors, 300 m cable, fabric and computer.
Neues Museum Weimar, Alemania
2012 -
Ministar Travel Guitars
Electric guitars designed without the familiar body, yet fully functional.
From Design Boom:
The ‘ministar’ series of travel guitars offers a full sound in bodies that are not only as small as nineteen inches long but also appear to be lacking a central component: the guitar body. resembling elongated panels, the designs are the result of extensive research by american instrument designer bob wiley, who discovered that despite continuous controversy to the contrary, the body shape of a guitar is of little importance to its tone.
The ‘ministar’ series is thus composed of only the neck and head, along with a battery-powered headphone amp termed a ‘scamp’ (‘self-contained amp’). the scamp includes its own distortion circuit on electric guitar models and EQ and contour boost on basses. a volume knob— on/off in older models, continuous in newer versions— and various pickup selectors are also positioned at the lower end of the device.More information, including a video demonstration, can be found at Design Boom
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Room Sized Electric Guitar (via Design Boom)
A fully working guitar in an enclosed space with 8 8-meter long strings:
architect marcelo ertorteguy and sara valente collaborated with takahiro fukuda to create ‘cargoguitar’, a room sized electric guitar. eight strings start from a vertical media column stretching eight meters to another horizontal media spine resulting in a hyperbolic paraboloid. each peg is tuned to a different note, achieving varied sound scales to be captured by the transducers. two amplifiers allow the vibrations to be felt in the room. a glow in the dark coat is applied to the strings, allowing visitors to not just hear the sound but to see it as it as well. the inhabitable instrument is on show at the kobe biennale 2011.
More can be found at Design Boom, with more photographs (including that of its development) and video / sound examples.
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iTar - turn your iPad into a guitar via Kickstarter
Our project is designed for musicians, guitar heroes, electronic artists, iPad junkies and hackers looking for a fun and easy way to take their show on the road. At it’s heart the device is a button-based guitar fretboard (Starr Labs patented fingerboard) integrated with a dock for the iPad which will transform the tablet into a 21st century musical instrument we call the iTar (tm).
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Playing dubstep on real instruments via Hack A Day
The inevitable merging of two popular musical genres …
This will not be for everyone’s musical tastes, but certainly interesting - using traditional electronic rock instruments to create music that is normally sequenced on a computer (with a little help from some technology). The lead guitarist has mounted a bluetooth keyboard at the base of the strings, but more interesting, the bassist uses an accelerometer device on his thumb which creates that characteristic dubstep ‘wobble’ (see the video above at the 56 second mark):
First up is the bassist, [Nathan Navarro]. He wears a Source Audio Hot Hand on his right thumb. This little box is a two-axis accelerometer that communicates with his pedal board using RF frequencies. With the Hot Hand, he has control over two parameters on Hot Hand Pedals. The envelope effect is awesome, but it’s worth noting that [Nathan] is sponsored by Source Audio. We’re thinking it would be relatively easy to cram a Wii MotionPlus and microcontroller into a wristband. Tied to a computer and MIDI interface, the homebrew solution would do the same thing.
[Derek Song] is the guitarist and he’s used multieffects for most of his musical life He has a small Bluetooth keyboard and touchpad mounted to the front of his guitar that controls just about everything on his pedal board. The Bluetooth controller sends commands to [Derek]‘s computer that outputs MIDI CC messages to his pedal board.
More info and videos can be found here
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RA Podcast 279 - Luca C and Brigante
A mix which features laid-back rock, cosmic-synth, and krautrock:
How and where was the mix recorded? Can you tell us about the idea behind the mix?
Sebastiano: The mix was recorded in Ibiza where we’ve been doing most of the recording for Invisible Cities. It is basically a tight selection of songs from the playlists we were listening to while working on the music with the additional analogue embellishment here and there to make the whole thing flow. There are a few classic artists on the mix that sometimes get left out of mixes because of their mainstream appeal. We tried not to let their status influence our selection. If we loved the songs enough, they stayed in the mix. In retrospect I guess it is an atmosphere that ties all those songs together. There is a certain blissful haze surrounding the mix which reflects our head space during those months and what we were trying to achieve with Invisible Cities.Tracklist:
Neu! - Seeland
The Eagles - King of Hollywood
Pluto - Into A Totally Different Race
Durutti Column - Sketch for Summer
GAG - Flyin´ Bolero
Fleetwood Mac - Hypnotise
Bon Iver - Towers
White Noise - Firebird
Pink Floyd - Fearless
Luca C & Brigante - On a Star
Tangerine Dream - Cloudburst Flight
John Martyn - Big Muff
The Byrds - Moog Raga
The KLF - Elvis on the Radio
Spacemen 3 - Feel So Good
The Woodentops - You Make Me Feel (Late Night Version)More information and download links (requires sign-up) can be found here
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“the NeXT blues” - on LEGO MindStorms NXTs
Lots of contraptions made with the LEGO Mindstorms kit to play music together.
Don’t get me wrong - the music here is far from perfect, but it’s imperfections are part of its charm.
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Tim Exile - Google Guitar Homepage Song
Song created through live sampling and looping - probably the coolest video you will see today
It had to be done! I saw the Les Paul interactive guitar Google homepage www.google.com a couple of hours ago so I performed a quick song/mashup about it… here it is.
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Air Tap by Eric Mongraine
Old but a personal YouTube favourite - one man guitar performance, playing the guitar flat and tapping the strings for notes. Great stuff.
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The Boo Radleys, Brave Captain, Martin Carr - A Bitterweet Pop Selection via Paris DJs
The Boo Radleys were one the best Pop bands of the 1990s, from shoegazing riffs to psychedelic songs and britpop hits, they paved the way for the next decade’s UK stadium pop groups. Their leader Martin Carr, one of the most talented songwriters of the last 20 years, never stopped marrying experimentation with pop melodicism, he’s been running a critically-acclaimed solo career for 10 years now. This selection, on the bittersweet side of his music rather than the obvious hits and anthems, should fit perfectly with this sunday’s snowy mood of Paris…
Tracklisting :
01. The Boo Radleys - Boo! Forever
(from ‘Boo! Forever’ single, 1992 / Creation)
02. The Boo Radleys - Lazarus
(from ‘Lazarus’ single, 1992 / Creation)
03. The Boo Radleys - Upon 9th And Fairchild
(from ‘Giant Steps’ album, 1993 / Creation)
04. The Boo Radleys - There She Goes
(from ‘So I Married An Axe Murderer’ soundtrack, 1993 / Sony)
*05. The Boo Radleys - Wilder (Rock Field Mix)
(from ‘14/94’ promo compilation, 1994 / Squatt)
06. The Boo Radleys - Fairfax Scene
(from ‘Wake Up!’ album, 1995 / Creation)
07. The Boo Radleys - Everything Is Sorrow
(from ‘C’mon Kids’ album, 1996 / Creation)
08. The Boo Radleys - Tomorrow
(from ‘Find The Way Out’ compilation, 2005 / Sanctuary UK)
09. The Boo Radleys - The Old Newsstand At Hamilton Square
(from ‘Kingsize’ album, 1998 / Creation)
10. Brave Captain - Raining Stones
(from ‘The Fingertip Saint Sessions Vol.1’ album, 2000 / Wichita)
11. Brave Captain - Big Red Control Machine
(from ‘The Fingertip Saint Sessions Vol.1’ album, 2000 / Wichita)
12. Brave Captain - Corporation Man
(from ‘Corporation Man’ single, 2001 / Boobytrap)
13. Martin Carr - Goldrush ‘49
(from ‘Ye Gods (and little fishes)’ album, 2009 / Sonnyboy)Havn’t heard this stuff in ages, so a welcome mix (for me anyway). ‘Giant Steps’ is a favourite album of mine. Definately shoegazey, proto-Chill Wave, proto-Britpop of personal choice.
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“I’m a tumblr,
born under punches”
Funnily enough, I was thinking this in my head the other day. Fantastic track from Talking Heads. (via winstonsmith / thismustbetheplace-)
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Hendrix's soundman: How I invented Jimi's guitar sound (via New Scientist) How did you get to work with Hendrix?
I met Jimi at a club in 1967. When I showed him what Octavia could do he loved it, and wanted to use it on the solos in his next singles - Purple Haze and Fire - and many more tracks after that. That started a collaboration between us that continued until Jimi died in 1970.
So he wasn’t a purist about technology besmirching his art?
Absolutely the reverse. He was like an artist of old being given a new range of pigments. I was providing new colours, techniques and textures for his palette. We worked together to further the range of sounds he could possibly create. He loved breaking new ground.
