Throughout the years, OK Go have made a name for themselves through a series of extremely innovative yet low-budget music videos. As a result, it’s no surprise the band was selected as ambassadors for this year’s White House Maker Faire by President Obama himself. Embodying true Maker spirit, the alternative rock band decided to record the video for its latest hit “I […]
A Maker and modder by the name of Capricorn1 has added a rockin’ visual dimension to his already impressive musical skills by using a piano’s MIDI output to drive Edison bulbs. Capricorn1 hung the bulbs from a rod of electrical conduit pipe, while threading the wires to a DB25 connector. The lights were controlled by an Arduino Mega […]
This device reads tattoos and translates them into electronic sounds. Moscow-based artist Dmitry Morozov — commonly referred to as ::vtol:: — has created a unique sound controller to read musical scores implanted in tattoos. “This is a special instrument that combines [the] human body and [a] robotic system into a single entity that is designed to automate [the] creative process in an […]
If you frequent Bits & Pieces, you know that we love ourselves a good hacked musical devices. Whether it is a series of stepper motors belting our Guns N’ Roses or long outdated computer parts being repurposed into instruments, these techie tunes just warm our hacker hearts. Today, we have two more musical creations to add to our ever-growing […]
It seems as though Makers just love creating instruments out of aging computer parts! Jeremy Weatherford recently repurposed two stepper motors to play high-tech versions of some of the classics and you have to hear it to believe it! Inspired by similar Maker projects that he encountered on the web, Weatherford writes that he was was driven to create […]
Royal College of Art student Yen Chen Chang recently debuted the Knitgadget, a wearable glove that allows users to control various devices, musical or otherwise. As Engadget‘s Mariella Moon reports, the glove is comprised of conductive yarn that’s 80% polyester and 20% stainless steel (and 100% pure awesomeness). Chang knit and crocheted a series of objects that […]
In an attempt to create a complex musical instrument with inexpensive parts and a simple process, Maker JDeboi has developed one rockin’ device: the MaKey MaKey Monome! The Makey Makey, as you likely know, is a printed circuit complete with an ATMega32u4 MCU that runs an Arduino Leonardo bootloader. The MaKey MaKey has been on the scene since […]
Remember that irritating etching noise that aging floppies emitted when they would boot up? Maker Chris Fry has harnessed the sonic power of these old drives and turned them into some musical masterpieces. We have featured Chris Fry’s ATmega328-based work previously on Bits & Pieces, as his life-like recreation of the Flux Capacitor from “Back to […]
Created by the folks at New York-based design lab CRATED, the Sync shirt is described by its Makers as “an audio responsive VJ Shirt” that visually connects its wearer to the background music in a club. This visual connection is derived from an LED-embedded patch that is inserted into the front of the shirt, which pulses at varying degrees of […]
A group of Illinois-based Makers hailing from Makerspace Urbana have unveiled a way to take outdated technology and turn them into pieces of musical instruments. The Electric Waste Orchestra project strives to “manipulate the voltage flowing through circuit boards and use those signals to make music” out of components that would’ve otherwise ended up at the dump. As seen in the video below, the Makers recently […]
