MIDI and Music

…a Goatskin drum (Bodhrán)

March 4, 2013

Ever since I saw Mike Oldfield remix the Blue Peter theme back in the 80′s I was fascinated with the strange looking drum be played half way through… It was only recently that I found out it was called a ‘Bodhrán’ [Bo-rawn] (which I’m told might mean ‘deaf’ but that was probably a joke, or […]

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FAME! I wanna live forever (etc…)

December 14, 2012

I just got an email from Pierre-Alain (thanks!) alerting me to the fact that my picture was being used to sell a sound font of the laser harp. Fancy that – I contacted the seller, and reported the posting to Ebay, but there doesn’t seem to be a policy about using pictures of people to […]

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…Orbital Spex for under a tenner (dollars that is…)

March 10, 2012

Sure, you can buy those centrally-located LED miner’s lamps, but nothing says 90′s geek chic like your very own Orbital glasses. Now you can recreate those halcyon (harr harr) days of almost pitch black gig-ness (“When do Orbital come on?” – “They’ve been playing for the last 10 minutes”) I needed a pair of these […]

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…infringing patents (probably)

November 23, 2011

I’ve been meaning to build one of these for ages. Can anyone guess what it is? It’s not a Taser, or one of those shocking buzzer things – the clue is that the coils are well “potted” and have very different gauges of wire. Answers on a postcard please, or in the comments… UPDATE : […]

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…Fritz Lang’s Theremin Stand

November 6, 2011

(Sounds like something you’d find in Warehouse 13) For many weeks I’ve been trying to come up with a cabinet design for the vacuüm tube Theremin I built a while ago. I decided that the electronics were far too marvelous to hide away in the classic RCA “drinks cabinet” – and that something more radical […]

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Air Guitar? …meet Air Piano

November 5, 2011

My buddy John Claeys sent me a link to this video of the AirPiano device being demonstrated by Jo Hamilton. I’ve not been able to find out too much about the design or origins of the instrument. It seems to use optical proximity sensing to detect the player’s hands. A neat idea, and a slick […]

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Jarre demo’s “Mini” laser harp at Hamburg concert

November 4, 2011

Ricardo Melo just sent me a link to footage of Jarre’s recent gig in Hamburg. Looks like he’s added a mini laser harp to his rig. Looks like it uses a straight “interruption” trigger built into the frame. This kind is way easier to keep under control on stage.

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…fixing up a Roland Juno 60 synthesizer

September 18, 2011

A couple of years ago I bought a Roland Juno 60 from eBay. It was in “fairly good” condition but was very dirty and the faders did not work properly. There also seemed to be a sticky (beer?) substance on all the keys that was less than attractive. Additionally the programs weren’t being saved correctly […]

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At the Maker Faire in Detroit

July 31, 2011

Spending the weekend up at the Maker Faire in Detroit. Check out the Maker Faire Daily stream for more info. UPDATE : Just got back from the Faire – always a pleasure to go to these, and nice that they’re more local than San Francisco now… Wow lot’s of stuff to see and do. The […]

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Jarre at the royal wedding : 1, laser harp : 0

July 5, 2011

I got an email from Dan Wilson about the recent Jarre gig for the Monaco royal wedding. Looks like an excellent concert, although the laser harp had some issues – and JMJ didn’t look too happy about it. I found this video on Dailymotion (with apologies in advance for all the ads they make you […]

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