Deviant Synth

Showed off at NAMM: video
More pics.

There’s your alternate controller for the month…..

From Dave Wright, of course.
Video here.

Plus: it’s digital but worth mentioning for its
huge DIY potential: the Roninsynth.

And here’s your first deviant synth for the new year:
a horribly-mangled Atari 400……

This guy took an ancient (1980 or so) paper-tape reader from a Heathkit computer and rewired it so it would control a simple oscillator bank made with 555 timer chips. Then he made punched tapes for it, by writing a QBASIC program. I’m afraid to ask how long it took him.

Nervous Squirrel strikes again.

Cock-a-doodle-doo.

He also made something called a “mucky sailor“.

Courtesy of Make magazine: a MeeBlip synth, built into a vintage cookbook.

It isn’t quite a synth, but I reckon it is as good as the other “steam powered synth” out there.

Sorry about the background noise. Video is here:

Steam powered music box

Ken (from cgs synth)

SubtleNoiseMaker Cacophonator II makes my guitaramp nervous

available here

A student project becomes an actual product for sale.
(As usual in this day and age, it’s USB only and works only with a computer.)

Bonus: Gizmodo’s coverage of it, with the usual smug, dismissive comments following.

Nick Collier has made a Flash animated version of his “Beast” synthesizer.
Try it–all you can make is glorious anarchy.

May I introduce, Hugh LeCaine.

Hugh LeCaine at the Electronic Sackbut

First, watch this awesome video on the legendary Electronic Sackbut :

Electronic Sackbut Video

(sorry don’t know how to embed video here…)

As I troll around for Hammond Solavoxes and Novachords for my own projects, I must state here that THE ELECTRONIC SACKBUT WAS THE FIRST VOLTAGE CONTROLLED SYNTHESIZER, not some univox organ a dude is selling on ebay, despite what the ebay page claims. Although the novachord, clavioline, ondioline, trautonium, are all beautiful, LeCaine made a synthesizer with voltage control of things like filters, VCAs and pitch before 1950!!!

This technical touch of voltage control allowed the integration of all sorts of nuanced control of the instrument without the need to discretely switch components in the circuit or contrive complicated mechanical variable capacitors and inductors (as used on some other instruments of the time ie, martenot’s string).

Gotta love the look, too.

Visit http://www.hughlecaine.com/en/ to see the many more interesting and trippy sound machines invented by this nuclear physicist.

Like the “Spectrogram”, which often controlled the “Oscillator Bank”. Here’s a picture of a spectrogram tape that LeCaine used to synthesize bird chirps:

Bird Chirp to be read by LeCaine "Spectrogram" and played by "Oscillator Bank"

And, yes, this was all done with tubes – what would you use in 1945?

He apparently pulled the voice board out of a perfectly good Moog Voyager,
installed it in a Modularworld case, and wired it up like a modular.
Am I missing something here?

well I stole this from Synthtopia but this site is overdue for a newpost

The work of Moritz Wolpert. More here.

First, Russian DIYer Dmitry Morozov, better known as vtol, has a website full of his colorful instruments. Nice panel art! He apparently makes limited issues of some of them for sale.

Then, Flickr user “jugger-naut” built a tube synthesizer in plug-in module form.

And Joe Paradiso built a hybrid synthesizer into a CAMAC crate, to be controlled by a PDP-11 minicomputer, in December 1979. Don’t throw it away, Joe, it’s a priceless historical artifact!

Mike Zee is a musician and prolific DIY builder in Poughkeepsie, NY. (That’s like saying Sean Connery is an “actor of some repute in Scotland”, I suppose.)

His main site for custom work is here. His cabinetwork is so beautiful, it will make you cry. Be warned, you will be exploring every link there. He has schematics of almost everything he’s built — clever designs, easy to reproduce.

He has a Soundclick page if you want to hear samples of his music. And he has a YouTube channel.

Seen on Matrix, with no information. It was, as it turns out, based on a Texas Instruments sound-effects IC (probably an SN76477). It appears to be built into an old tube tester cabinet. In case you didn’t know, Raes is a notorious Flemish artist, founder of the Logos Foundation—and dedicated nudist.
Here is a list of Raes’ DIY instruments.

The technology to do this has been readily available for at least 30 years. What gets me is that very few actual working musicians seem to be capable of doing a decent one-person-band. (She also appeared on Conan O’Brien last year.)

You won’t find more simpler obscure gadgets than the ones sold by Sonodrome. They even have PC software to go with their little bits of hardware. PC boards come in four colors. (And MAKE magazine’s market is selling the amplifier kit, along with the Atari Punk Console.) Enclosures are up to the builder. YouTube videos here.

Using two Wiimotes feeding a Macbook via Bluetooth, to trigger solenoid-played drums.
Jazari’s website, and a post on Engadget. (Yes, cowbell.)