Stewart MacDonald the best place to buy stuff for Stringed Instruments

I recently discovered Stewart-MacDonald online. They have anything (parts, strings, other stuff) that you could need to build or repair a stringed instument.

Music from a box

I discovered this wonderful example of using sampled sounds to create music. The premise was to give a 3 year old a cardboard box, some rubber band and proceed to record the destruction of the box. The sounds were then sampled from the recording an made into a song.

Here's the link: http://theurbanmyths.blogspot.com/2007/01/music-from-cardboard-box.html

DIY Electronic Music Projects

Here's a website with a bunch of do it yourself electronic musical projects: http://www.home-wrecker.com/articles.html

Balloon Instruments

Here's a great site dedicated to the "Balloon Bass", a very simple instrument made with two balloons. The site includes several pictures, videos and sound files. Be sure to check out the video on how to make a balloon bass.

Also check out: Balloon Drums. This site includes some great ideas for creating simple and cheap instruments, especially for kids.

Here's an online source for quality balloons.

NAMM 2006 Oddities

I found a great link to a website by Barry Wood, who has visited and reviewed products from the Winter NAMM event. On his website he highlights his picks for the best 'oddities' which he finds on the show floor each year.

"Kalimba thumbs"

I've benn making several kalimba's in the last couple weeks. One of the side effects of tuning a new kalimba, or even playing the kalimba for a long period of time, is that the keys either give you a blister on your thumbs or it wears the skin thin. This is especially true when the ends of the keys are rough cut and not finished, as during the pretuning of a new kalimba.
So, I went back to a trick that I learned from Stevie Ray Vaughn. That's right I learned this trick directly from the blues master himself. You see in college I worked security for concerts. It was a great way to make some extra cash and get a great spot to hear the music. The evening that Stevie Ray Vaughn was in town, I was given the detail to guard his bus. I got to spend a few minutes with Stevie before the show while we were waiting for the super glue to dry on his fingers. That's right, Stevie played so hard every night on tour that it would literally rip his finger tips apart, so he applied super glue in layers to his finger tips. During the show, it would wear through the super glue rather than his skin.
I tried the same trip for my "kalimba thumbs" and it works great!!

Check out ChucK

ChucK is Princeton Universitys: Concurrent, On-the-fly Audio Programming Language.

"what is it? : ChucK is a new audio programming language for real-time synthesis, composition, and performance, which runs on MacOS X, Windows, and Linux. ChucK presents a new time-based concurrent programming model, which supports a more precise and fundamental level of expressiveness, as well as multiple, simultaneous, dynamic control rates, a precise and straightforward concurrent programming model, and the ability to add, remove, and modify code, on-the-fly, while the program is running, without stopping or restarting. It offers composers, researchers, and performers a powerful and flexible programming tool for building and experimenting with complex audio synthesis programs, and real-time interactive control.

You can download ChucK here. There is also another link to the Princeton Soundlab and all of the software created by the soundlab.

I haven't had a chance to download or play with it yet, but I imagine that it's not for the faint of heart. However, Princeton University has a new music ensemble called PLOrk dedicated to using ChucK as a basis for the performance.

New BLOG on Frame Drums

I've started a new blog, focused on framedrums, hand drums and middle eastern rhythms. It's at http://riqq.blogspot.com. I'll use that blog to post the more dance and middle eastern drumming topics, but I'll still post articles here on the unusual percussion instruments that I run across.

Online directions for building a Conga/Cajon

I discovered some excellent directions online for constructing a conga/cajon. This type of drum has a wooden playing surface. Looks like it will take about 4-5 hours of construction time if you have the right tools.

Ceramic Instruments by Rob Mangum

Rob Mangum makes some incredible ceramic instruments (in addition to some other functional pottery). The Double bass shown on the right is just one example of the ceramic instruments which Rob has created. You can find more examples on his website, including fiddles, banjos and other stringed instruments.

Make Magazine Vol 4 Now on Newstands

I took quite a bit longer than I expected to finally get my copy of MAKE magazine VOL 4, but I bought it at Tower Bookstore earlier this week. It has some very interesting projects including an introduction to circuit bending and an indepth article on building cigar box guitars. Now, you can find a lot of this information already on the web, but the guys at MAKE do a great job of outlining a simple projects with great graphics and pictures.
I hope that I have some time over the holidays to attempt my own cigar box guitar. I'll post pictures from the project when I do.
By way, the newstand price for one issue is half the price of a years subscription, you can guess where my money is going...

Virtual Percussion for Frame drums

I learned about this site from the Framedrummer listserv at Yahoo. Pascal Fricke created these virtual drums (made with shockwave), that play the various tones of the drum as you move your mouse around. A virtual tonbak, a virtual Darabukka, Tar, Bendir, a virtual Ghatam, Riq, Marocan Derbouka and Turkish Darabukka. It's really cool, especially to demo a drums sound to someone when you don't have your drums available.
Also, while you're there check out Pascal's Music.

Great Article on Ken Goldberg

Here's a great article on Ken Goldberg. I met Ken 10 years ago when he was working on his Telegarden project. I was an applications engineer at that time and Adept Technology was the manufacturer of the robot that Ken used for the telegarden projects. Ken has been involved with many web-based telepresence projects over the years, and he's also an interesting artist.

Great little "Jam movie" on Atom Films

You've got to check out this awesome little film (about six minutes) on Atom Films. Works best on high speed: http://www.atomfilms.com/contentPlay/videoAutoPlay.jsp?id=six_drummers

MAKE Magazine Vol 4: DIY Musical Instrument Projects!

MAKE: Magazine V0l 4 is onsale now. It includes 9 "Do it yourself" Musical Instrument projects inluding:

• Cigar Box Guitar
• Circuit Bending
• Air Scratch
• "The art of Digital Music"
• Mint tin amp

League of Eletronic Musical Urban Robots

I stumbled into the coolest website tonight. You have to check out the LEMUR website. These guys have created robot musical instruments that are controlled by computer. They have combined my passion for making music out of found objects with my formal training in robotics. WOW, if only I had thought of that. This also reminds me of a physical version of Animusic. (the second Animusic DVD is due out at the end of the month.) If nothing else, check out the GuitarBot video.
In fact, you can now create your own robot with the MidiTron Electronic Interface (I'm ordering my first unit).
Another cool resource is Artbots (but it's not really musical)

Play the Virtual Gametone Instruments

Want to spend a few moments being creative online? Check out the Gametone Instruments online. You can also see a collection of their instruments. MonkeyC also has an online instrument collection.

New Drumming Search Engine

Check out the the new drumming and percussion search engine: drums.com They have indexed all of the leading drumming resources on the web to provide a comprehensive and quick search tool.

RANT: Six Monthes in Jail for Posting Lyrics Online!?

I'll tell ya, I am not the biggest fan of the corporate recording industry, especially when they can't get their heads out of a hole long enough to see the future. Now it seems that they've taking to sentencing a French lyrics website operator to 6 months in jail for posting "copyrighted" lyrics. As a musician, I clearly understand the copyrights owned by both the publisher and the songwriter, but to press the legal rights for this seems insane in my book. I remember the days of sitting down with a piece of paper and 'reverse engineering' a song to learn the chords, notes and lyrics (in the days of 8 track tape players and vinyl, no less). Should we make today generation go through the same pain? (learning the skill of listening and writing, not using 8 track tape - may it rest in piece). It's my belief that there is little harm in posting the "correct" lyrics, if anything it's one more viral marketing opportunity. I would say that the sheet music for a song is different entity, but lyrics? Come on. It's the naughties baby, and the world is evolving around us (well everything but the huge record companies it seems).

Freenotes - a great pentatonic instrument

One of my favorite instruments for non-musicians is the Freenote by Richard Cooke. I own the wing in the key of A, and I frequently bring this to flute circles where folks can easily jam on the wing while someone else plays the Native American Flute or another rhythm instrument. This is a great instumement for kids, as you don't need any music theory too make music on them.