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Ziv bar Ilan, founder/designer of Zoybar, has created a “modular hardware platform” for creating custom electric instruments and effects. The fruits of these labors: an insane cross-breeding experiment combining a Korg KAOSS Pad KP3 with an electric guitar. The results look like something the evil supergeek in an 80s movie would play. “So, Todd, you think you and your puny Goody and the Goody Two-Shoes can defeat me, Brad, in the Battle of the Bands Saturday? Ha! You haven’t seen my secret weapon, the Kaossitar. My band, The Black Death, will be unbeatable – and the babilicious Mindy is totally mine! Now, where’d I put my Power Glove…”
Okay, getting a bit off-topic here. The big news is, Zoybar is a whole platform for creating your own superguitars. Here’s what the creator had to tell CDM about his vision – and there’s yet another contest in it, too:
Zoybar is a modular hardware platform for creating custom electric string instruments and effects.
The basic Zoybar kits enable you to assemble a variety of electric string instruments that could be mounted with different sound effects.You can learn more about the project at my blog post http://www.zoybar.net/profiles/blogs/from-the-begining
I was inspired [by] the open source movement. In the virtual world of software production, every individual programmer can be a powerful autonomous production unit (provided with a web connection and a computer) whereas in the physical world materials, energy, production lines, storage and marketing takes much more time, money and risks to become a reality.
The Zoybar components provide research and development tools as a sustainable, playable prototype platform.
The same modular parts can be assembled as different instruments, can be change during the performance and also be mounted with numerous special effects, just by adding and changing their position across the profile groves.
My vision is to found an open music instruments hardware community. Every new effect or feature that would be created by an independent developer could become relevant to the whole Zoybar users and community.
Almost any application can be easily attached to the Zoybar platform, just by adding and changing its position across the profile groves with common bolts and screws.
One last thing – we are giving Three First Edition Zoybar Hardware Kits.
The project is scheduled to be launched at December 2008 with a contest for music instruments and sound effect developers. Entrants shall submit a video clip performance of their new instrument to demonstrate its musicality, design, and engineering features. Performances may include new self made sound effects, synthesizer or electronic instruments.
Three First Edition Zoybar Hardware Kits will be given to the three videos with the highest number of views received through the video interaction at Zoybar.net.
http://www.zoybar.net/contest
So, modular builders, let us know what you make of the site, and if there’s useful stuff there for you. We’ll be watching.