This Sunday 3/16, noon to 4:30pm, the Coney Island Museum celebrates automatic music – organ grinders, player pianos, and more – at the Band Organ Rally. I’m building a brand new automatic instrument for the event, and bringing some older ones too. Sneak previews below.
something new
something old
Gonna have a party on Saturday March 1st to celebrate surviving the building of 29 instruments in 29 days! It’ll be 3-6pm (or so) in Long Island City, Queens, NYC – contact me for more info. There’ll be beer and snax and making noises. Bring your own noisemakers and/or ideas for noisemakers.
I’m going to continue with the instrument-building, making one every week forever. Or until I get tired of it. They’ll all be posted here.
I’m making a new musical instrument every day in February. On March 1st I think I’ll have to have either a concert or a bonfire. Follow my adventures at flickr or thing-a-day.com!
Some highlights so far: matchbox synthesizer, diet cocarina, rotten stick electric guitar. You can hear sound samples from all of them at their respective pages.
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My Parsons students are playing a concert on Sunday the 16th – it’s also their final exam. Please come out and support them!
It’ll be 4pm, Dec. 16th at The Openhouse at 201 Mulberry Street in SoHo, Manhattan – just south of Spring Street.
Here’s a preview of what some of the students are working on.
Mister Resistor Preview 1 from ranjit on Vimeo.
Create Digital Music, Etsy Labs and Make Magazine present
A Very Special Handmade Music Night
featuring Mister Resistor live in concert
Sunday December 16th, 2-5pm
at The Openhouse, 201 Mulberry St near Spring St in SoHo
$FREE
more info at misterresistor.com or createdigitalmusic.comBring your hand-carved ocarinas, homebrew synthesizers, circuit bent toys and tin can banjos to show and tell and jam.
At 4pm, enjoy the handmade sonic stylings of Mister Resistor- these Parsons students have spent the semester building and playing musical instruments made from cassette tape, microchips, oatmeal boxes, and much more.
To help newcomers learn how to make their own creations, Create Digital Music’s Peter Kirn will lead off with a workshop on musical electronics, with free kits from PAiA Corporation that uses pencil markings to produce circuits. (No soldering required, so total beginners can give it a try. Kits for the project are free, on a first-come, first-served basis.) Throughout the afternoon, New York’s top musical makers will meet and display their creations.
I was involved in a few events at the Festival of Music for People and Thingamajigs in Oakland, California:
Here’s LEV again, because one “Crazy” wasn’t enough.
Lev plays Patsy from ranjit on Vimeo.
Here’s LEV, my theremin-playing robot first seen at Artbots 2003, playing a familiar song with the help of the newly built thumpbot and an obsolete synthesizer.
Lev and Thumpbot play “Crazy” from ranjit on Vimeo.
(also on youtube)
They don’t play so well, but what do you expect from robots?
Etsy Labs, Create Digital Music, and Make Magazine have been holding a series of handmade music nights at Etsy’s Brooklyn headquarters, where people share the musical gadgets they’ve made. It’s just been featured in Time Out NY (scan). CDM’s got nice wrapups of the first (with video, including me!) and second events.
Here’s a video of the wind-up noisemaker I made for the second handmade music night:
Six keys, four springs, one knob from ranjit on Vimeo.
