Video link [blip.tv / Etsy]
The crazy gimmicks are fun, but what drives people to build or customize their own musical creations is ultimately the desire to make music. Etsy.com dispatched a lovely videographer to cover the most recent Handmade Music night, co-organized with us CDMers and Make Magazine. Check out the video for a glimpse of the broad range of work people are making, from instruments practical to zany, game systems to hacked commercial controllers to open source hardware to DIY creations.
My favorite quote comes from Brian Crabtree, co-creator of Monome, about what it’s all about:
“I think it shows people that, even when it’s a weird, abstract device, you can train yourself to become musical with almost anything.”
Featured in the video: Gian Pablo Villami and his scratch-built FireWire drive synth, Moldover and his hacked-up ReMOTE SL, Brian and Kelli and their Monome, Jay Smith of Livid and his Viditar, Peter Swimm and his Game Park Linux-based game system, and more.
This Thursday, we’ll be back in Brooklyn, so don’t be shy: stop by, and bring projects (finished or otherwise) if you want to share.
Video comes to us by way of DIY community Etsy’s new online magazine, The Storque:
Etsy Labs and Create Digital Music Night: Revisited [Details on the last event]
Handmade Music Night Has Returned! [Details on the next event; remember to rsvp@etsy.com]
The Etsy community offers lots of other great ideas and inspiration. You’ll see that, as we predicted, live DJs can help fuel long DIY sessions, and while it’s completely unrelated to music, I found the tour of Lotta Jansdotter’s home studio really eye-opening. As music lovers, we’re all looking for ways of fitting what we love into our life, whether it’s as a day job or in the evening hours. It’s great to see people making their passions work.
Speaking of creative passions, the image below comes from Etsian and digital artist John W. Golden.
