As I said before, I love the sound of the obsolete Marxophone, but they're expensive on ebay. I made this guitar-marxophone with hex nuts glued to street-sweeper bristles stapled to a chunk of wood. The marxotar straps to the guitar's tailpiece and strap button with zipties, and can be attached and removed without any damage to the guitar.
Despite my unpracticed fumbling with the guitar marxophone and Open D tuning, I think this thing has a lot of promise. Hey manufacturers! You can have the idea, but I want credit and some free product! (Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if someone else has already had the same idea.)
Good old Flux Factory is having a show called Housebroken to inaugurate their new home in Long Island City. They invited artists to come in and mess with the space. I grabbed a few sacks of dishes and cookware from their kitchen, engraved them with various texts and images, and gave them back. They’ll be eating off this “installation” for years – or at least months, until it’s all broken.
Housebroken opens this Friday at 8pm – go!
Here’s some pictures of bits of my contribution. More at flickr.
I stuck a microphone inside the bass end of my accordion, where the vent is, so I could amplify its breathing and creaking.
I first played mute accordion with the glass bees. Speaking of whom, I'll be playing with them on March 3rd at Barbes!
Who needs an EBow when you can have an EGurdy? The spinning disc is coated with rosin to bow the guitar strings, kinda like the wheel inside a hurdy gurdy.
I had a 20 by 1.5 inch slab of oak, so I designed an ocarina that could be assembled from cross-sections that would fit on it. I cut the parts on the laser cutter, glued them together, and it still didn't work until I took Bre's suggestion and coated the entire thing with glue to plug up any tiny holes.
If you have access to a laser cutter, you can get the plans and assembly instructions from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1816
It's a bunch of bottlecaps on a string. It sounds ok, looks pretty (I love the colors), and smells like a party!
p.s. I'll be performing with many of these instruments at Barbes in Brooklyn, Wednesday March 3rd, along with Chris Williams and thing-a-dayer Jason Das, who are the Glass Bees!
Some aluminum bars from another project, string, rubber bands, and a fruit basket I found in the trash. I didn’t tune the bars, just picked my favorites from the pile.
Since my first horn was a failure, I tried again, this time in acrylic, with a narrower tube and larger holes. But it still doesn’t work as anything but a kazoo. Third try soon!
“bass” because it makes a low note and because it’s made of basswood. The reed is cut from the plastic lid of a takeout soup container. The thing only makes one note – I put in some random finger holes but they make no difference! I suspect the horn is way too wide for its length– I’ll try to make a skinnier one soon.
My Fun with Coils workshop at NYC Resistor is coming up – Saturday Feb. 13th from 4-6pm. Mess around with coils to make custom instrument pickups, junkbox loudspeakers, secret transmitters, and more! You can sign up on eventbrite.
Warning: include(/home/ranjit/moonmilk.com/pb/wp-style.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/moonmilk/moonmilk.com/pb/wp-content/themes/blix-091/footer.php on line 12
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/ranjit/moonmilk.com/pb/wp-style.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/php5/lib/pear') in /home/moonmilk/moonmilk.com/pb/wp-content/themes/blix-091/footer.php on line 12
