instrument-a-day 3: good old wooden whistleFebruary 3rd, 2012
Sometimes the old classics are the best.
all posts about sound sculpture and music
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instrument-a-day 1: westminster doorbellFebruary 1st, 2012
Day 1: the Westminster Doorbell, made of a couple of steel rods suspended over a guitar pickup. I’m learning how to get more overtones out of it, but I haven’t really figured it out yet.
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instrument-a-day starts tomorrow!January 31st, 2012
On February 1 I’m embarking on my yearly endeavor to make a new handmade instrument every single day of the month. This will be the fifth year I’ve done this — you can see the results of the previous years here or on flickr. As usual, I’m trying not to plan ahead at all – I have no idea what I’ll make tomorrow.
Here’s a video with highlights from several years of noisy noises:
28 noisy noises from ranjit on Vimeo.
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music box shantytown in NY TimesNovember 21st, 2011
Here’s a nice New York Times article about the big crazy sound sculpture shantytown I helped out with in New Orleans:
A Symphony of Floorboards, Pipes and Stairs
(My nightingale floors made it into the title! Whoo!)
“You’re going to have a house, and the house makes music. When you get here, you’ll figure it out.”
That is more or less accurate, as far as it goes, though it clearly falls short as a practical description. “The Music Box,” the project of which this tower is a part, is one of those things that requires a hyphen or a compound word to describe; Delaney Martin, its curator, calls it “a shantytown-sound laboratory.”
In more literal terms, it is a collection of tumbledown wooden and metal structures built on the site, and almost entirely from the remains of a late-18th-century Creole cottage that collapsed a couple of years ago here in the historic, bohemian Bywater neighborhood.
Each structure houses an instrument, or two or three. In some cases the structures are musical instruments themselves. There is the thatched-roof hut that is home to an elaborate arrangement of Balinese vibraphones, the shack with amplified floorboards, the rusty spiral staircase that is also a foot-operated pipe organ and the little glass house containing what looks like a giant, bell-lined hoop skirt. They are all clustered together on the narrow lot, like the stage set of a fairy tale that takes place in a junkyard.
Be sure to check out the slide show.
There’s also a brief video about the first performance. (You can hear my floorboards starting at 1:22 or so)
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the Music Box Orchestra, New OrleansNovember 20th, 2011
Here’s a teaser video of the New Orleans Airlift’s Music Box Orchestra, a big crazy sound art/architecture project I helped out with. My contribution was the squeaky moving floor, which you can see providing the bass line as the performance starts.
The Music Box – Oct 22 from TungstenMonkey on Vimeo.
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meet the JelTone!July 9th, 2011
Over at NYC Resistor, we put together a little team to enter the Jello Mold Competition at Gowanus Studio Space. The team members were me, Astrida Valigorsky, Mimi Hui, and Catarina Mota. After a false start or two, we ended up making a working toy piano out of jello (and some electronics). The Resistor JelTone tied for the Creativity Prize, and you can see it in the videos below.
That same weekend, I took some of my homemade instruments, including the 8-bit violin and a second JelTone (built in haste at the last possible minute), to the Solid Sound Music Festival for the CDM/Moog Handmade Lounge. After all my jello melted, on the second day of the festival I rebuilt the JelTone with fruit salad instead, and here it is:
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8-bit violin played by real fiddlers!April 17th, 2011
These guys at the Thingamajigs DIY Instruments Tailgate Party really know how to operate a pointy rectangular fiddle!
Thanks, CTP, for the videos.
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8-bit violin plansMarch 7th, 2011
Plans and instructions for the 8-bit violin are now on thingiverse!
thingiverse.com/thing:6912
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instrument-a-day 27: bent buddha box beatFebruary 28th, 2011
a little oscillator that triggers the box to switch to another chant over and over again.
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instrument-a-day 26: bent buddha boxFebruary 28th, 2011
Du Yun brought me this box from Shanghai, and I opened it up for a minor lobotomy.
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instrument-a-day 25: water bowlFebruary 27th, 2011
I always liked the sounds I got while washing big steel bowls.
Trivia: the musical instrument called the Waterphone does contain water, but is named for its inventor, Richard Waters.
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instrument-a-day 24: handmade electronic noiseFebruary 26th, 2011
squeaky exercises from the pages of the book "Handmade Electronic Music" by Nic Collins.
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instrument-a-day 23: mechanical synthesizerFebruary 23rd, 2011
This trick was used as far back as the 19th century to synthesize musical tones. The gears have 24, 27, 30, 32, 36, 40, 45, and 48 teeth, so the notes are all related by simple fractions – that makes this a just intonation scale rather than equal temperament.
There's plans and instructions on thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6662
