Tag Archive for 'DIY'

End of Week Links or Steaming Summer Pile of the Interent

Published
by
kubton
on August 7, 2008
in DIY, DS, Gadget, Links, free, guitar, resources, samples, synth and theory
. 0 Comments

HACK A DAY Has a cool tutorial on how to make a really simple digital synthesizer.

Looperman has some free acapella and vocal samples.

If you like crazy musical gadgets you should check out Found Electronics.

IG Blog has a post about a soon to be launch vintage guitar hedge found. Thats right a vintage Guitar Hedge fund. Well, it can’t do any worse the than my 401k has lately. Maybe it will make rich people even richer it the nature of investment but it is a same if more cool vintage guitars will be locked up out of site and out of the hands of guitarist.

I found this entertaining video via wire to ear:

DEEPSOUND MUSIC has a cool web based sample calculator.

Ambience has a great library of free field recording capturing you guessed the ambient sounds of different environments.

Yellow Tools has 2 gigs of free samples for the download.  If your German is, like mine, is consits of a few words used on Hogans Hero’s use google transalte or babble fish.

Ronnie Pries also has a free sample pack.

Captain Beefheart is awesome.  So are his 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing.  Not your normally tips but what else would you expect.  Moses would approve.

The Chip Collection has a link to a .pdf for making your own chord wheel.

Remain Calm has a collection of home brew music making apps for the Nintendo DS.

End of Week Links or A Bunch or Unrelated Stuff

Published
by
kubton
on July 26, 2008
in DIY, Links, ableton, controller, controllers, gear, guitar, instruments, reason, tips and tricks and weird
. 1 Comment

Julien Bayle can instruct you how to make a monome clones which is good because the monome always have a waiting list.

Music might have stopped me from being a misanthropic criminal so maybe this will change some that are ready are. Jail Guitar Doors is Billy Bragg’s initiative to provide inmates with musical instrument. I believe in personal responsibility so I have to believe in punishment. But locking people up and doing nothing to change there behave other than punishment never made much sense to me. I like this idea. Johnny Cash would approve.

Audiotuts has a list of affordable mics. It is a pretty good list me thinks. But you might want to check out Studio Projects which lower then mics I think are a good value.

Audiotuts also had this link below there mic list but it is a good link that you might have miss to Jake Ludington’s guide to making you own pop filter. Anyone could do this one.

Frank Zappa is not everyones cup o’ tea but he sure is damn quotable read for yourself.

I use Reason and Ableton Live together. Reason is the most incredable sound bank rewired into Live. Here is a good video on using the 2 together.

lo dev alm has cool Max/MSP tools.

Virtual Guitar is a cool tool for fretboard learning.

If you like the strange and weird like me you should check out The Oddstrument Collection.

End of Week Links or Lot of Wires In Boxes

Published
by
kubton
on June 20, 2008
in DIY, Links, circuit bending, circuit bent, pitch shifter, plug-ins and weird
. 0 Comments

You can find this strange delay effect and other DIY audio goodness at WRONGROOM.

Along the same lines is this great video I found.  Analog sequencer in a cigar box is cool enough but controlling other circuit bent gadget is just beautiful noise.

From Kendall Scott is a Basic Guide to Understanding EQ.  A good graphics for visual learners.  You also can check out my EQ Guidelines & Free Tools.

Robin Schmidt’s Music Engineering Tools has a every practical and useful VST ptich shifter if you scroll down the page.  ANd check out the other stuff also.

Euphoria Magazine has this list of strange and wonderful instruments.

Found this cool video on EtherBomb. The one man band is alive.

For those of you that want to turn back the clock and stopping buy the new versions of music software every and just happen to have a old ST in the closet should check out Tim’s Atari Midi World. A nice page on Cubase on Atari.  It is where most of this computer music business started.  It really is not as diffent as you would think after such a long evelotion.  I now a lot of people still use it squence.  Why not?

Radiohead’s Nude Remix on PC parts or 6/8 Dot Matrix Rhythms

Published
by
kubton
on June 11, 2008
in 8bit, DIY, Music, Remix and video
. 0 Comments

I found this on the very cool Retro Thing. When I heard about Radiohead’s remix contest for Nude I was excited. Then when I heard the track my enthusiasm waned a bit. Radiohead were having some fun with the song they selected. If Radiohead was a Shakespearean character the their fatal flaw would be being too clever. I am not discounting their musical talents somethings they have done musically and other wise have suffered a little form being a little to clever. At least I think so which is odd because that special British brand of cleverness I never can get enough of in the forms of comedy and literature. Still a great band. And how often do you get access to each track of a song by a great band. That was my attract to it rather than any contest. I bought the stems and plan to have go at it despite 6/8 time and 63 bpm. Normal remixes are made for the clubby dance numbers. Which seemed impossible if you were going to use most of the music made available to you. So, I though I will just make it in to something else unique and not dancy or hip-hoppy. Stretching the sounds to a normal tempo the sounded well stretched and found it pretty hard to work with do to the songs structure. I don’t claim to be a talented remixer. I was falling miserably when The Great Hard Drive Disaster of ‘08 hit. Then I learned things like the also very clever Apple doesn’t let you download purchased music again. So, I was doubly defeated.

I was glad to see someone succeed at doing something original and generally awesome. Just give the video a minute to get going and you will see Radiohead’s Nude created on old computer parts and gear. You have to love a dot matrix rhythm sections & unintended purposes.


Big Ideas (don’t get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Fab Echo Mod or A Reminder to Delay

Published
by
kubton
on June 2, 2008
in DIY and pedals
. 0 Comments

I caught this post from Circuit Bent on modding a Danelectro FAB echo. That is where the video above comes from. They are pretty cool modded pedals though I would rather have the guts of the completely rehoused in a better non-cheap plastic enclosure. But that is just my personal preference.

This reminded I started to do this a while ago and got sided tracked by having entirely too many interests and be the scatter brained absent mind most of the time. The pedal got lost in the mists of time. I should finish it. It can be such a cool pedal.

The thing that is so attractive about the FAB Echo is they are so damn cheap & I got mine on sale. You can’t find a cheap platform to mod. It use a pretty common chip for echo pedals both DIY and commerical designs the PT2399. So, there is a knowledge base of what you can do with it(see links below.) You can bent it or add a lot to it or simply make it more than the slapback unit it was design to be. It can be a bit trick though with two boards cramemd into the plastic shell and SMD components.

ea forums

DIYstompboxes forum

Beavis Audio Research (cool rehousing for all fab units)

PVC Instruments or Blue Percussion

Published
by
kubton
on May 28, 2008
in DIY
. 0 Comments

I ran in to this stuff on accident tonight. They are nspired by The Blue Man Group(ripoff of the Smurfs -HJS) of course. I realized a year ago at this moment I was watching them in Vegas. Ah, Serendipity. Anyways, any instrument you can build from parts at Home Depot is cool by me. These are cooler than the PVC flutes I posted earlier. Here are some vids and links to PVC instruments:

BMG Construction 101
Building a PVC Instrument
PVC Hang drum

Arrrgh! or “Pirates” Contribute to Culture

Published
by
kubton
on May 11, 2008
in opinion
. 0 Comments

I visit the Guardian quite often for being not only on the other side of the pond but almost to next pond. Sometimes it is good to get a foreign perspective on US events(there is less bias in indifference) but mostly being a football(no the other kind) in America I can’t read about by teams second half of the season collapse in the local paper.

I need to check the Culture section more often when I need to stop by because the is usually good stuff. Live and Let DIY is such. It shares my idea that people should have the power to remix there own culture. It is nice to see an article in a major publication not running with the standard line.

1 Wii Remote to Rule Them All or Infrared Is Your Freind

Published
by
kubton
on April 27, 2008
in computers
. 0 Comments

I caught this video. I don’t really have cause to use a interactive white board. Or track eye movement. But it has has the potential to track anything. And by doing so control anything. Music and video performance came to my mind. A less than $40 dollar piece of hardware connected to a PC via ubiquitous blue tooth opens a myriad of possibilities. It is a wonderful when a mass produced(read as cheap) hardware can be co-oped into a whole bunch of unintended applications.

Here is some more videos form Johnny Lee’s website:

Friday Links or The Noble Prize for Making the Web Less Annoying

Published
by
kubton
on April 25, 2008
in Links
. 0 Comments

The ikea guitar

Guitarist silenced by ALS is making music again. A human interest story like this makes me feel like the local news. It something like Dr. Stephen Hawking the music produce I quess. It is pretty cool though and the best thing about PC’s is uses like this. Film at 11.

Call it LastTV. It is a good idea mashing you YouTube and LastFM. It works ok. I entered my profile and it did a fairly good job of finding video that I should like.

Also youtube related is ListentoYouTube. It will make mp3’s of YouTube videos. There is of course other ways to do this but this way is fairly painless. It makes it easy to sample YouTube easily. If you want mp3 of teenagers lip syncing and people creatively injuring themselves this will be your new favorite site.

Hometracked has 10 Myths About Normalization which is often misunderstood.

NPR has this interesting story(audio too) about a interesting mic builder reconstructing classics found via The Rambling of Some Audio Guy.

Now some cool DIY Stuff:

The 25 minute, $25 acoustic panel (or $42.00 bass trap) from the Recording Studio Design Forum is great way to economically make your space sound great. I never new why commerical option were often so expensive.

Make your own Gorilla Pod & Third Hand++: A multi-use helping hand for electronics and other delicate work are great Instructables for giving you a extra set of hands at your work bench. The are cooler than my helpings hands but it works too.

Another Instructable is this Isobaric Subwoofer for those that want to build there own floor rattler.

I found this “Ikea”  guitar on Guitar Noize it is kind of what you think. Maybe.  More info here.

DIY Talkbox Instructable or Rock Like a Geico Commerical

Published
by
kubton
on April 17, 2008
in DIY
. 0 Comments

diy talkbox rig

A while back a posted a link to a talkbox project for blamepro.   But that is not the only way to roll get that  crazy Frampton guitar mixed with vocals sound yourself.  Now here is a slick DIY talk box project on Instructables.  It is is pretty well illustrated and explained.  I will add one piece of advice for any talkbox project though.  Be careful because this project could damage you and most definitely your amp.  Any part used including the horn driver should be have double the watt rating of your amp.  Otherwise you will be looking for a new horn and possibly an amp as well.

LINK