Tag Archive for 'weird'

Friday Links or Jet Engines, Remixes, Hand Cranks, Gameboys

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kubton
on April 4, 2008
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I found this both at GetLofi & Rekkerd. Gameboys are normally used for the eight bit funkiness. the kBANG Gameboy is more of a drum machine. It controls solenoids that are used to bang on stuff.

I wrote about Foals remix thingy yesterday. Radiohead also has a remix thingy going. Just slightly higher profile. Slightly. The down side is you have to buy all the tracks from iTunes for $5.49. You also can get a Garage Band project. The track is 6/8 time. Some people might like getting away from 4/4 some people might hate that though. Its not so much paying for it for me it is paying for it form iTunes that bugs me. I don’t care for iTunes that much.

You can find a lot more tracks to remix from DanceTracks Digital. They have music available in Aleton Live format.

Old School Programing

The Automata / Automaton Blog has this cool musical box xylphone type gadget. I wonder if the pegs would fly out if you really cranked the sucker.

Yes this is for real.

This looks like it came out of a Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton Movie. If you removed the keyboard it looks like it might be a early prototype in jet engine research. You can find at more about slightly insane The Harmonic Generator at Odd Music. Any instrument that has 32 motors is cool by me.

Open Source Works can source how to run Guitar Rig on Ubtuntu. Cool. You can find more stuff like this at Linux VST Compatibility. With Ardour and other works it looks like Linux is becoming more and more viable for more music makers.

The Microphone Site is a pretty amazing collection of mic information.

I got sanother plug-ins link. I haven’t got play with them much but whiteLABEL has a bunch of free plug-ins. The look good and seem pretty cool on first inspection.

Miniorgan or Things I Would Trade a Die Cast Voltron For

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kubton
on March 7, 2008
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o1.jpg

Miniorgan is a great library of “rare and vintage musical electronic toys.” I remember some of them from childhood. I had a Casio though I none of the ones I have seen is exactly the way I remember it but that was a long time ago. I remember some of the others but did not own them. Maybe the spoiled kid(he had everything including: 2 Millenium Falcons seriously 2, the Die Cast Voltron, every Damn Transformer, etc.) up the block had ‘em. It is all such a haze now. I wish that spoiled rich kid had the sound fx machine pictured above. Looks fun.

It is not just nostalgia that makes these musical toys great. Some of the designs are absolutely stellar. Judging from the sound clips some would be unbelievably fun to play with and make music with especially the Grandstand Major Minor.

My Kind of Tupperware Party or MMM, Left Overs

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kubton
on March 7, 2008
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ADACHI makes some crazy stuff.  I would go to a Tupperware party that had these.  They look cool.  A good enclosure if you don’t have worry about interference.  The pretty damn tough as any 70’s house wife could tell you.  It is a very interesting site.  I like the vegetable instruments also.

Sea Organ or The Songs of the Sea

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kubton
on March 5, 2008
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Odd Music is one of my favorite sites. Just proves you do not know what a musical instrument is or can be. Of all the odd things on the site this might be my favorite. It must weigh many times more than even the largest cathedral pipe organs. It is played by a musician, the Sea, that probably has inspired more songs than anything other than love and its many outcomes both joyous and terrible.

An amazing public space and use of the natural environment.

More Homemade Instruments or Bang the Propane

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kubton
on February 18, 2008
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You can find more information and how to’s at his site. Including how to make a hang drum out of a propane tank.

23 Tubes or Sweet Zombie Jesus

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kubton
on January 21, 2008
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Metanonix makes “different” gear. Different meaning insane. N.O.S in most cases means “vintage” or “classic” in their case once again means insane. They have out done themselves this time with the G-1000. Pricey and probably not very practical but defiantly original.

From the site:

There is nothing like the G-1000. Not even vaguely. It is arcane and radical. It is 100% vacuum tubes, from input to output. It contains 100% new-old-stock (NOS) tubes. Types never seen in guitar amps.

The G-1000 consists of two totally independent amplifiers, with very different preamp sections. One channel is called the HAPPY channel. The other is called the ANGRY channel.

For damn good reason. One sucks your face, the other gnaws your foreskin off.

The HAPPY channel is a more-or-less conventional instrument amp. It has plenty of gain and distortion (if desired), it has a conventional guitar-amp tone control section, and it has reverb. Everything else about it is DEVIANT. It has a PHASE control, which allows mixing of normal and inverted signals—or it may be adjusted to cancel out the original signal and pass only the distortion products….and, it’s all made of unusual tubes. Mostly pentodes, ha ha ha.

The ANGRY channel is well-named. It is designed for instability and raw, berserk distortion effects. It, too, has typical guitar-amp tone controls and reverb. It uses a 6BN6 and two remote-cutoff pentodes. Ask your mother what those are. She’s already tasted your foreskin anyway.

Despite the identical output stages of the two channels, they sound TOTALLY different. In ALL settings.

The output tubes are 6BK5s. Obscure, yes, but great and forgotten. Phase inversion is done with 6GU7s. Various types are used throughout the preamp stages: 6AU6, 6BJ6, 6CB6, 6BN6, 5BQ7, 6AK5, and others. No 12AX7s, of ANY brand. How many tubes? TWENTY-THREE tubes in total. Including eight 6BK5 outputs. It might be the most complex tube guitar amp available today….

The output tubes are in a special self-balancing, self-biasing circuit. It is unique to the G-1000 among guitar amps. It does NOT NEED matched tubes, nor is any kind of bias adjustment needed. Output power is 15 watts per channel, and two speakers (or a stereo speaker) are needed.

Vast ranges of tone are available from the G-1000. We cannot even begin to explain its flexibility. The G-1000 is NOT intended for middle-aged “tone questers”, who believe that they will be able to play like Eric Clapton by simply spending a lot of $$$ on equipment. We HATE those people. The G-1000 is intended for the intrepid experimenter, not the pathetic imitator. Tone questers are invited to DIE.

No, you moron, it’s not available in combo form. Head only.
Speakers are available from other suppliers.

Artwork on the amp’s front panel by Dave Lovelace, of “Retarded Animal Babies” infamy. (http://www.umop.com)

Oh, the amp’s name? The idea came from Mike Brown of Livewire Synthesizers. Blame him. (It came from one of Dave Lovelace’s cartoons. Yes, the Fucking Fucker is a real, live cartoon character. A super-villain, come to think of it.)

G-1000 is made on a custom basis only and should be available in late 2008. Expected retail price is US $ 5000.

Guitar, Guitars, Guitars or move Oddities

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kubton
on December 18, 2007
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I am not sure about the intonation of this NES guitar but I am sure the reset button will come in handy when you mess up.

Technological innovations always get a lot of press but the is a secret revolution going that rarely get attention because it is spread across diverse fields and personified by no one thing. One of the new materials more of us are familiar with, carbon fiber, once only found in hi-tech areospace applications before it move to high perfromance automotive and maritme apllications is becoming a more affordable more common place in normal life. These six guitars are an example of that.

Gibson has gotten a lot of ink about its Robot Guitar but can it play 50’s TV show theme’s?

Robot Guitarists-Peter Gunn from dogseat on Vimeo.

More strange guitar here. The pictured punk skate board bass is my favorite. It captures the spirit and activities of my youth on one mobile platform.

tweak bench

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kubton
on June 4, 2007
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Tweakbench has great collection of plugins. They all have a simple layout elegant if you will. They all are easy to use and don’t use to much cpu. The instruments are not for use as a everyday work horse but rather they are really good at a simple task and that applies to the effects also. They can create some off the wall sounds but are straight forward and easy to use. All to often the some of the more original plugins are difficult use and have vague or confusing interfaces but not these. a random button makes them all just a little bit better. They are free to download but if you use them as much as me you probably pay the five bucks and download the bundle.

glitchy

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kubton
on May 22, 2007
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Glitch is my favorite pluggin. And it is free. It is a multi-effect unit. An effect the can be used more like a instrument. You can apply a wide variety of effects via a step sequencer. So different beats get different effects. Rather than automate a series of effect in your daw to mangle loops you can step up this single effect to mangle them. Or like me you can keep the tape running and a screw around with endless and go back and sample the cool sounds you make. It is simply endless fun.