While on the subject of wonderful handmade musical instruments, Max (and Audrey) aka farnea have been posting some fantastic creations to Flickr over the past few months. They recently cropped up on the Create Digital Music Flickr Pool.
DIY modular synth made putting together a lot of things I’ve built in the last times. There is a Weird Sound Generator, a Crackle Box, a random pattern generator, some filters (cutoff, square to sine), a gate controller, a Vactrol based controller, optical sensors and body contacts, mixing and power stuff.
Orange Commodore 64 Synth: A lovely, custom-painted “Modded C64 with SID2SID expansion and Prophet64 cartridge.”
The C64 also has a helpful discussion of paint. Music DIY extraordinaire Fibra advises:
Always apply at least one layer of plastic primer. Let it dries enough after each layer. Also apply at least 2-3 layers of paint. I also used spray canned paint (for cars) which is probably better than acrylic based.
Hmmm, I’ve got a few keyboards that could use a custom job. (“Pimp my Synth,” anyone?) Please don’t be shy about joining in on our Flickr group, by the way. It seems like it could be a great way not only to document impressive hardware DIY projects, but also custom software patches in Max/MSP and Reaktor, unusual clip configurations in Ableton Live, racks in Reason, musical scores, performances — all kinds of things.
Another nice example: choking sun’s very nice studio.
Now, some videos of the Sound Destruction Unit: