Our friend Brian aka Afrorack has kept up his must-see series of DIY video tutorials in his home Uganda. And as ever, he’s producing brilliant instruments and fantastic music on a budget, thanks to some serious ingenuity.
Let’s turn back the clock a bit first because I somehow missed one of the best videos he’s put out so far – so maybe so did you. He’s added jerrycan kick drums and shakers with rice, and it sounds fantastic.
Brian isn’t the first to try robotic / kinetic techno – see the Sonic Robots MR-808 by Moritz Simon Geist (vintage 2012 CDM, sorry for the broken Vimeo links) or his more recent album. The twist here is, apart from his own musical spin, Brian went the extra step and made his own solenoids:
In the latest episode, Brian represents east Africa with a video shot on-location, right on the longest river on the continent along the Nile. That’s a lot more fun than staying indoors. Here’s a nice MIDI-to-CV converter project idea, which is also a nice way to better understand these formats.
If the videos entertain you, the way to get deeper into trying this yourself – and to encourage more videos shot in nice spots – is to join on Patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/afrorack
For the MIDI-CV converter, though, he’s again using Arduino and posted the code – so if anybody here has ideas how to improve it or build on it, do share!
Previously: