You’ll have to join the 1stfans membership program to play the game, but it’s a worthy cause! And I’ll post the results of the game at the end of the month.

* the band may actually contain some vertebrates

The project continues, with 263 fresh & all-organic images so far.

screenshot from clickblog.it

* evil monkey is on loan from the Coney Island Museum. I’ve wired him for midi control.

ON THURSDAY night, April 2, the Nutmeg Orchestrette– my little robot ensemble– will be performing as part of the NYC Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, along with a bunch of other excellent performers including R. Luke Dubois, Jane Rigler, and more! That’ll be at 11PM at Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street in Dumbo, Brooklyn; admission is $10, or maybe $5. If you haven’t been to Galapagos since they moved, it’s a great space! The Festival is also putting on an excellent series of free concerts all weekend at the Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan– check out the full schedule at their web site.

NYCEMF: http://www.nycemf.org/
Galapagos: http://www.galapagosartspace.com/

ON SUNDAY afternoon, April 5th, Nick Yulman and I will be previewing our new electromechanical music installation in the lobby of the Coney Island Museum, right across from the intoxicating Freak Bar and the tantalizing Freak Show! I say “previewing” because we’re going to keep on adding to it as long as the museum lets us. (I’m working on a tiny pipe organ for June!) On Sunday you can see and hear a newborn sound sculpture, entangling the Nutmeg Orchestrette and more in its 24-volt tentacles. Sunday is also the museum’s annual Band Organ Rally, so you may also see some antique player pianos and barrel organs brought out by collectors. It’s a day of mechanical music, all for free! The Band Organ Rally will take place noon to 4:30 on Sunday the 5th, but the bar, sideshow, and museum are open every weekend and will probably soon be open all week for the summer.

Coney Island Freakshow and Museum: http://www.coneyisland.com/
Pictures of the Nutmeg Orchestrette at last year’s Band Organ Rally:
http://www.moonmilk.com/milky/projects/sound-sculpture/coney/

ALSO COMING UP in June, the Figment Festival returns to Governors Island June 12-14. I’ve participated in each of the previous festivals, and it was a blast! Please consider proposing an installation or event or party or performance of your own! More information:
http://figmentnyc.org/2009/2009-event/

LAST MONTH I spent the whole month making a new handmade musical instrument every day, the second year in a row I’ve ruined February that way. It was a challenge, a learning experience, and an excuse to make lots of noise. I capped off the month with a performance with my friends in the experimental band The Glass Bees. Somehow, National Public Radio got interested in the project, and they recorded a nice little segment about it, which was broadcast on Weekend All Things Considered on March 7th. You can hear the whole show or just this segment at the links below, and the Glass Bees’ site has sound and video of the entire performance! Many thanks to Bethany Ryker, who found a spot for us in her weekly series of experimental, avant-garde, and sometimes just plain weird music, at Barbes in Brooklyn.

The Glass Bees, with video and music: http://glassbees.com/
Segment on NPR, with photos and transcript:
http://www-cdn.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101542817
Entire program on NPR:
http://www-cdn.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2&prgDate=3-7-2009
Barbes: http://barbesbrooklyn.com/

AND FINALLY, here’s a video of my dog trapped under the bedsheets. With an original soundtrack! http://www.flickr.com/photos/ranjit/3373880713/

– Ranjit

Here’s some excerpts from the show– thanks to bee Chris for editing and naming the songs!

You may be able to catch an interview and some more from the show on NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered this Saturday or Sunday. [Update: the interview aired on March 7th and can be read & heard on NPR's site.]

photo: me and two bees with our granny-carts full of junkstruments!

Years ago I was in a gallery show with Mineko Grimmer, who makes sound sculptures of pebbles frozen in ice. As the ice melts, the pebbles drop into a pool or a wooden lattice and make irregular sounds.

I made my own version entirely out of things from my junk drawer: marbles, squashed pennies, old keys and dog tags, and some acorns I was saving in a tiny jar. What does it sound like? I won’t find out until the weather warms up.

Many thanks to Thing-a-Day for inspiring the instrument-a-day project for the second year in a row!

This one didn’t really work out. It was supposed to be a sequel to last year’s automatic tension guitar, but it doesn’t work or sound nearly as good. I’m experimenting with cheap substitutes for the little clapper solenoids I used last year, which are now really hard to find, but so far the results are bad.

And it’s not even automatic! I didn’t get around to rigging up a computer interface, so I’m playing it with the funny little wooden keyboard you can see at the upper right. It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad27-autobass.mp3)

Very very tiny. I clamped it in steel pliers so I could use a magnetic pickup to record the sound it made. Slowed down by a factor of eight (down three octaves), it sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad26-tinytuningfork.mp3)

I’m performing at Barbes in Park Slope, Brooklyn this Wednesday (March 4th) at 8pm. Come at 7 and mess around with homemade instruments – bring your own if you like! I’ll be joined by The Glass Bees.

It sounds like this. (Video here.)
Download audio file (iad25-mudflail.mp3)

It’s a familiar tune played upside-down and backwards, and then just backwards, and then upside-down and backwards again. Over and over, forever.

It sounds like this. (Video here)
Download audio file (iad24-mobius.mp3)

A drum, some antique wind-up motors (from the Aladdin Toy Motors company of Brooklyn!), and leftover wood from the laser whistles combine to give you a simulation of the sound of a peaceful sunday morning in New York City. It sounds like this. (Video here)
Download audio file (iad23-sundaysim.mp3)

Tower of pot & pan lids wired to an old floor lamp. Yes, I buy my cookware according to its sound; don’t you?

It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad22-circulonelan.mp3)

Good old-fashioned circuit-bending with a baby-rattling device I found in the trash and slightly modified. Magnetic pickup and contact microphone pick up sound in two different ways.

It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad21-babyshaker.mp3)

Spring, clamp, bamboo skewer, and piezo contact microphone. Finger pressure on the skewer changes the tone. It goes sproooooinnnnnnng!
Download audio file (iad20-springsproing.mp3)

Fruit crate, found twigs, hardware, piezoelectric disc, sewing needle, hot glue, and "Walk This Way" by RUN-D.M.C.

I don’t have a record player, so it was time to make one out of whatever I had lying around. It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad19-gardengramophone.mp3)

And on Wednesday March 4th, 8pm, I’ll be performing with some of these and other homemade instruments at Barbes in Brooklyn — I’ll be joined by friends, probably including the Glass Bees <http://glassbees.com/> to buzz and sputter for the night. If you’re in the NYC area, please join us! Come an hour or two early and we’ll be doing an informal handmade instrument workshop. (Please me know if you think you’ll be coming.)

In early April, Nick and Aaron and I hope to unveil our sound sculpture for the lobby of the Coney Island Museum. If all goes well, the piece will continue to grow after the opening, as we add more and more mechanical instruments to it until it takes over most of the museum. More details next month! <http://www.coneyisland.com/museum.shtml>

As poet Elizabeth Alexander recited during the recent inaugural address:

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

Keep making noise!

- ranjit

A strong magnet distorts the sound of a music box by warping the tines. It’s recorded through a hand-wound magnetic pickup, and it sounds like this. (There’s no processing added to the sound except for noise reduction.)
Download audio file (iad18-bentmusicbox.mp3)

Thanks to k for the music box!

1/8" steel rod, found wood, hand-wound magnetic pickup, played through a cheap battery-powered amplifier for a bit of that KONONO N°1 sound. Inspired by the chimes made by Nathan Davis for Phyllis Chen (but not made with nearly as much skill or artistry). It’s played with drumsticks.

The steel chimes sound like this (warning: loud! but for best results you should turn it up even louder.)
Download audio file (iad17-steelchimes.mp3)

Another way to use up waste bamboo that was too split up for a wind instrument. Though a real shishi odoshi (deer scarer) would use good bamboo and make a much nicer sound. The sticks are gathered from the park; the pivot is steel rod through an aluminum tube (leftover from the slide guitar).

It sounds like this. (video here)
Download audio file (iad16-shishiodoshi.mp3)

This length of bamboo was going to be a clarinet until it split all down its length, so I took some leftover bits of wire and aluminum tubing and a guitar string from the servo guitar and made this. The shape makes it almost impossible to hold and play at the same time, but eventually it sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad15-leftoversguitar.mp3)

The open tube shape gives a tiny bit of acoustic amplification out the ends, but it’s still not very loud.

A particularly ugly instrument today – a prototype, made mostly of hotglue, for an automatic slide guitar. It’s playing a test pattern which sounds like this.

The park near my house is a collection point for old christmas trees to be recycled. Someone dumped a bunch of bamboo in the pile (christmas bamboo?) so I grabbed a stalk and let it dry for a month. This bamboo really wants to split – in fact, I can hear the flute spontaneously disintegrating in the other room.

This is a Native-American-style flute (two chambers, with an external air passage connecting the two) made with guidance from Sammy Tedder’s page.

It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad13-bambooflute.mp3)

Two music boxes, alternating notes. Can you recognize either of the tunes?

It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad12-twinbox.mp3)

Clay pots, wood, brass, and hardware. (The flower pots had a previous life as companions to Trumpet Marine!)

It’s a very windy day today so I wanted to make a windchime. Sorry about the sound quality, but, well, it’s windy. You can hear birds singing and other people’s windchimes in the background. It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad11-windchime.mp3)

I wanted to play with some of the leftover wood from the laser whistles, so I stuck a contact microphone to it, strummed it with a guitar pick, and bowed it. The strumming was pretty dumb but the bowing is at least a little bit interesting. It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad10-bowedscrapwood.mp3)

While walking the dog I found a slab of marble in a heap of renovation trash. So of course I took it home and made a gong. Beaten with one wooden drumstick and one plastic-tipped drumstick, it sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad9-marblegong.mp3)

I assembled six more whistles from the pieces I laser-cut yesterday. Six more to go — you can probably guess where this is going. (One of these eight is a prototype that’s not going to be part of the final set.)

They sound like this.
Download audio file (iad8-morewhistles.mp3)

Laser-cut basswood and wood glue. I took a laser cutter class today at NYC Resistor and decided to make whistles based on the classic design of organ pipes. If you have a laser cutter of your own, you can download the plans here.

The wood’s not polished or stained, just burned a nice brown around the edges by the laser. It smells terrible.

I made two sizes of whistle; they sound like this.
Download audio file (iad7-laserwhistles.mp3)

Buddha Box, wire, brass, and conductive foam.

The Buddha Box is a little electronic gadget that plays any of 12 chants over and over again. I wired it up with a brass tablet and drumstick so I can play it like a drum– each hit switches to a new chant. (A little bit of conductive foam on the end of the drumstick muffles the tapping sound.)

It sounds like this.
Download audio file (iad6-buddhabonk.mp3)

Not enough time today to build a harpsichord or a kazoo or something, so in honor of the solution today of the Mystery of the Syrup Smell of New York, I took a jar of fenugreek seeds and played along with a famous movie scene. The results sounded like this.
Download audio file (iad5-zorba.mp3)

p.s. I cooked potatoes with fenugreek a few days ago. Delicious!

Made from a piece of dried up seaweed from a California beach, the mouthpiece from a junked clarinet or something, and a reed cut from the lid of a takeout food container. It sounds like this. (My fingers can only reach two sound holes, so I can only get three notes until I get more practice with breath and lip pressure on the reed.)
Download audio file (iad4-kelphorn.mp3)

Noisemakers that can be cut and folded from a thin sheet of stiff plastic. This is a variation on the drinking straw double reed. They sound like this.
Download audio file (iad3-foldable-squawkers.mp3)

The plastic I used is Avery 11900 Insertable Dividers (this also works great in a Craft-Robo!) To make your own: cut a rectangle about 1.5 by 3 inches. Fold in thirds the long way to make a little burrito, and crease the folds. Cut one end to a blunt-ended triangle as in the photo. Unroll the burrito, cut off the outermost triangle, and re-fold. Squish it between your fingers a bit so that it bulges a little, put the pointy end inside your lips and blow. With some practice you can get a horrible squawk out of it.

Motor, battery, bead garland, and drum.

I made a failed whistle, followed by a squawky plastic double reed which didn’t seem worth calling an instrument-of-the-day. Then I bumped a bead garland off of the sewing table, and as it slowly drizzled over the edge, I had the idea for the rain simulator. It sounds like this. Video here.

Download audio file (iad2-rainsim.mp3)

Monofilament, wooden scraps and dowels, and staples.

It sounds something like this.
Download audio file (iad1-crapharp.mp3)

I’m going to do it again next month, and I’d like to encourage you to consider participating in thing-a-day too. You don’t have to sign up and post on thing-a-day.com, but last year I found that it was a good motivator and fun to trade comments with other participants, and I met some great people through thing-a-day too. If you go for it, whether on thing-a-day or on your own blog, please let me know, especially if you go for a sound & music theme.

I’m hoping to be able to put on a little concert with handmade instruments after the month is up– it’ll probably be March 4th in Brooklyn, so save the date if you can and I’ll have more details soon.

Other stuff:

My composition “Storyteller” for mechanical instruments will be performed– by mechanical instruments– at the NYC Electro-Acoustic Music Festival in early April. <http://www.nycemf.org/>

Last November I was unexpectedly invited to show some of my music machines at Youtube Live in San Francisco. It was a whirlwind of noise and motion and I’ll try to post some photos sometime soon.

Finally, I’m very excited to be working with Nick Yulman <http://nysoundworks.org/ on a permanent installation for the lobby of the newly-renovated Coney Island Museum! <http://www.coneyisland.com/> It’ll be a sound sculpture / music machine with a sideshow spirit. We hope to reveal it in the Spring!

Here’s benbot!

Hello all! Here’s another noisy update. Quick version: come to the DUMBO Art Festival this weekend, and sign up for the next junk guitar workshop October 14!

Happy news – Walter Kitundu, a musician, photographer, and builder of unique musical instruments, has been awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. As a photographer and instrument-maker myself, I call this a good precedent! I got the chance to work with Walter Kitundu during my residency at the Exploratorium this Spring– his work is amazing.

As for me — my apartment is full of fumes because I’ve been painting stuff for my installation at this weekend’s DUMBO Art Festival in Brooklyn. The installation is named Ignatz (after Krazy Kat’s lover-nemesis); you’ll find it in the water directly under the Manhattan Bridge; and it’s all about bricks. Please come– there’s lots of great stuff going on at the festival! I’m gonna go see the dance group Kunst-Stoff at 9pm Friday at the Dumbo Dance Festival.

My junk guitar workshop at Etsy Labs in July went well — it sold out, people had fun, and you can see and hear the results in this video! So we’re doing it again on October 14th! Please spread the word to people who might be interested. You can sign up here.

Governors Island is still open and free to visit every weekend for another month or so, and you can see some of my photos of the Figment Festival in the Voyeur Photo Show in Governors Island’s Building 14– weekends until Oct 12. The free artist-built mini-golf course is still open too!

On November 15th, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore is holding a day long Music and the Brain Salon, and they’ve asked me to put on a family workshop on homemade musical instruments. It’ll be fun and noisy!

My favorite weirdo arts group, Flux Factory, is holding a fund-raising auction on December 5th, and I’ve contributed a painting to the auction. Flux Factory is losing their building in Queens and looking for a new home, so save up all your money and spend it on art for a good cause! I’ve been involved with Flux Factory for less than three years but in that time they’ve mixed me up in all sorts of crazy projects and even taken me to Budapest! Please tell all your rich friends about them.

As always, if you want to stop receiving these emails, just drop me a line or visit moonmilk.com and click the mailing list link. Or you can get all your friends to sign up at that same link! And please let me know what you’re up to…

–Ranjit

Links for those of you who like your email in plain-text form:

Walter Kitundu – http://www.kitundu.com/

Kitundu’s page at MacArthur Foundation – http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.4537271/

DUMBO Art Festival – http://www.dumboartfestival.org//2008_festival.html

DUMBO Dance Festival – http://www.whitewavedance.com/#S26

Video of July’s junk guitar workshop – http://vimeo.com/1451693

Sign up for the October 14th junk guitar workshop – http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=14660045

Visiting Governors Island – http://www.govisland.com/Visit_the_Island/directions.asp

Voyeur Photo Exhibit – http://www.figmentnyc.org/2008/projects/voyeur.html

American Visionary Art Museum – http://avam.org/

Flux Factory – http://www.fluxfactory.org

Flux Factory projects I’ve been involved in -

* http://www.fluxfactory.org/everything-must-go/

* http://www.fluxfactory.org/response-to-tatlins-monument-to-the-third-international-conceived-in-the-mood-of-ambivalence/

* http://www.fluxfactory.org/works-on-paper/

* http://www.fluxfactory.org/fluxbox

* http://www.fluxfactory.org/sziget

Hello! Thanks to everyone who came out to the Figment Festival last month. Here’s some of my photos from the festival, and lots more at figmentnyc.org. I was happy that my little sound sculpture on the waterfront actually survived two thunderstorms and three days of salty waves!

It’s hot and sticky in New York, and that means it’s time to make electric guitars out of garbage. I’ll be teaching a workshop at Etsy Labs in Brooklyn on the evening of Wednesday July 30th in which we’ll wind our own guitar pickups and build junk guitars. If you’re interested, please sign up at etsylabs.etsy.com — space is limited. (See and hear some junk guitars over at moonmilk.com)

Coming up in a few months, I’ll have an installation in the 12th Annual DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival, September 26–28. My piece will be literally right under the Manhattan Bridge, at the little beach that’s mostly made of old bricks, and it’ll be kind of silly. Its name is Ignatz.

Next week I’ll be speaking at the Sketching in Hardware conference at the Rhode Island School of Design. Got any Providence restaurant recommendations?

More stuff you should see! My friend Jiyoun Lee, an amazing painter and illustrator, is in a group show opening tomorrow night (7/18, 7-9PM) at APW gallery, 195 Chrystie Street Suite 200. The show runs through the 26th. And Raylene Gorum’s showing her tape paintings of London, San Francisco, and New York on August 8th and 9th at Shetler Studios, details here.

I’m still scouting around for a December exhibition space for my Parsons students’ work, so please email me if you have any suggestions.

– Ranjit

Plenty of art and performances at the DUMBO Art Festival all weekend. You really should go!

p.s. consider subscribing to the moonmilk mailing list for announcements of stuff like this.

“Most of the people I’ve talked to, I’ve asked who had inspired them,” he said. “Who were you reading when you decided to start blogging? To a certain point that becomes a harder and harder thing the further back you go. For instance, Justin Hall started his site in January 1994, before most of us had heard of the web. I asked him, ‘Well, you’re one of the first bloggers, was there anyone out there who you were getting inspiration from?’ And he pointed me to this other guy named Ranjit Bhatnagar who was keeping a site at moonmilk.com in 1993. And, sure enough, it was a reverse chronological list of stuff he found on the web.”

– Simon Owens interviews Scott Rosenberg for PBS. Rosenberg is working on a book-length history of blogging.

15 years, wow. And I’ve been photoblogging since ‘94. No wonder I’m tired. Check out a retrospective of moonmilk over the years here.