Science fair, party, variety show - Handmade Music celebrates unusual DIY creations in music, with people who make their own tools to make their own music.

This month, Galapagos Art Space means a stage, a bar, and a huge lineup of free music:

* ELECTRO-COUNTRY + unusual instruments with the Owen Lake band, covering honky-tonk country classics on synths and electronics and showing off Jeff Snyder’s original Manta touch instrument

* AUGMENTED SEWING MACHINE + ENSEMBLE with monome and other creations, featuring Lara Grant (sewing machine) + Matt Ganucheau + Peter Kirn

* AUDIOVISUAL HYPER-TRUMPET the TOOB, an expressive digital instrument

…plus surprises, hands-on with lots of inventions, plenty of makers and technologists to meet and buy beers in exchange for tips, crafters, inventors, and more.

Hosted by createdigitalmusic.com, the craft marketplace and community Etsy, the DIY bible Make Magazine, and the trend-setters of XLR8R Magazine

For the full lineup: here.

[image: Wearable sonic dress with felted patch cords - patch cord by Sarah and Lara Grant]

The party celebrates the people making original tools to make original music, this one another grab bag of unusual inventive sonic technologies. Such as:

GREAT TIGER is an electro rock duo from Brooklyn. They get the party started with the help of The Box, a homemade MIDI controller made out of arcade buttons. Taking inspiration from Daft Punk to Deep Purple, GREAT TIGER fuses themselves into your brain with the help of bright lasers and poison-gas fog machines.

SARAH AND LARA GRANT, two sisters who specialize in blending textiles and technology, offer a wearable music instrument with a performance by a dancer. Their felted sound garment which turns the body into a sound emitting interface.

…and, as always, some surprises.

Makers, you’re free to bring projects - working or not - to share, troubleshoot, and play! Power / PA / projector available; bring your own cables and (if you can) extra speakers.

RSVP handmade@3rdward.com

For complete details please visit http://www.3rdward.com/handmade-music/

From Andre Michelle: After uploading it on my laboratory the run began. I am counting more than 250.000 impressions, endless feedback, suggestions and even videos on Youtube. I will definitely put the sequencer in our AudioTool. But don’t expect an update before autumn. We are trying to make 1.0 a serious music application with sequencing, automation, modulation, audio-tracks, synthesizers and what not. So there is no time to enhance this little toy. But I have added at least Clipboard support to let you save your pattern to sequence of numbers. Unfortunately the audio output is very glitchy when the context-menu is running.

Also check out the Hobnox Audiotool. You can produce your own electronic music in your browser with the Hobnox Audiotool. Choose your set-up, add, remove and arrange the devices you need and record your track to the ‚myFiles’ section of your Hobnox account. From there, publish and share. The first step towards timeline & sequencer, saving arrangements & remixing tracks is done!

This is what Alan Ross did with the Hobnox Audio tool.

Physically, the UPIC is a digitising tablet linked to a computer, which has a vector display. Its functionality is similar to that of the later Fairlight CMI, in that the user draws waveforms and volume envelopes on the tablet, which are rendered by the computer. Once the waveforms have been stored, the user can compose with them by drawing “compositions” on the tablet, with the X-axis representing cumulative duration, and the Y-axis representing pitch. The compositions can be stretched in duration from a few seconds to an hour. They can also be transposed, reversed, inverted, and subject to a number of algorithmic transformations. The system allows for real time performance by moving the stylus across the tablet.

The UPIC system has subsequently been expanded to allow for digitally sampled waveforms as source material, rather than purely synthesised tones. In 2005, Mode Records of New York released a 2-CD compilation of works composed with the UPIC, entitled Xenakis, UPIC, Continuum, [1] which provides an overview of the machine’s sonic possibilities.

Mask/Mirror (M/M) is a sampler-based software tool created using Max/MSP that processes recordings of spoken language in real time. In performance, the composer uses samples of his own voice to create an ambiguous situation of being interrupted by himself all the time and of having to resort to all possible resources to keep making sense. The sampler follows both sound and meaning criteria in sorting, organizing and processing samples and formulating utterances.

Bosetti has performed more than 40 shows with M/M in Europe and the United States. Performances often build up to collective and interactive events where the audience gets actively engaged. This instrument has also been featured on radio shows, like a phone-in performance for Kunstradio.at and a live interview on WMFU. Bosetti also plans to explore the therapeutic use of this instrument with people with speech disorders like aphasia.

M/M has been made possible by taking immersive Max/MSP certification classes at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center in NYC with interactive media artist/instructor Matthew Ostrowski. Additional work was done in collaboration with STEIM in Amsterdam.

Allesandro Bosetti was born in Milan, Italy in 1973. A composer and sound artist, he works on the musicality of spoken words and unusual aspects of spoken communication. He has produced text-sound compositions featured in live performances, radio broadcastings and published recordings. His work straddles the line between sound anthropology and composition, often including translation and misunderstanding in the creative process. Field research and interviews often build the basis for his abstract compositions along with electro-acoustic and acoustic collages, relational strategies, trained and untrained instrumental practices, vocal explorations and digital manipulations. Since he’s curious about differences, he travels. Since 2006 he has lived and worked in West Africa, China, Taiwan, Holland, Scandinavia, United States, Germany and Italy. Presently he is working and living between Berlin (D), Milano (I) and Baltimore (USA).

The Bit Blob is a digital noise maker that’s controlled by connecting its contacts together, allowing you to bend your way through unlimited sonic madness. You can also connect LEDs, audio outputs, or other Bit Blobs between control pins!

Comes with hookup wires, output jacks and LEDs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfVO0-JKouY

Thanks to Bleep Labs

Ever wonder what your “music personality” is like? Signal Patterns is offering an online test that plays a variety of music clips and asks the listener to rate how much they like “this type of music.”

The test takes about five minutes, after which your musical personality will be profiled using 14 attributes, the sites in an equalizer-like format. You can share your results and compare them against friends who have also taken the test by linking Signal Patterns to profiles on Facebook, Flickr, imeem, Last.fm and MySpace. For more, click here

Furthermore, you can view sound waves, sonify existing images, train for audiovisual synesthesia, perform on-line composing, make visual sound animations and create spectrograms (sonograms, sonagrams).

The vOICe mapping: vertical positions of points in a visual sound are represented by pitch, while horizontal positions are represented by left-to-right scanning and corresponding stereo panning. Brightness is represented by loudness. In this manner, pixels become… voicels!

More here.

Sound Microscope is a simple interactive web application designed by Jason Freeman and Mark Godfrey for exploring the inner lives of sounds. A pan-and-zoom interface (similar to online map services) isolates small fragments of a sound file in time and frequency space, bringing structural subtleties and hidden details to the aural foreground. It is intended to help students (or anyone!) learn about the visual representation of a sound and its frequency components while encouraging them to listen in new ways and from new perspectives.

Come mingle with the artist, listen to his brief and entertaining lecture-demonstration exposing innovative yet simple ideas for a music involving interactivity and audience participation, and be among the first to experience Sound Microphone, an on-line sound tool that will live permanently on our website as an interactive piece and a tool for the exploration of sound in education.

ISAW’s programs are possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. ISAW’s programs are sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Technical assistance is funded in part by a grant from the Southern Arts Federation in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council.

South Florida Composers Alliance is registered with the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services under registration #CH25629, renewable March 13, 2009, to solicit contributions as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) sound arts organization.

A copy of the official registration and financial information may be obtained from the Division of Consumer Services by calling toll-free (800) 435-7352 within the State of Florida. Registration does not imply endorsement, approval, or recommendation by The State.

Takuro will introduce the general history of STEIM, from its start in the late 60s as a collective of composers, improvisors and musicians to a research lab, artist in residence and venue for adventurous live electronic arts. Later he will demo his own performance set up consisting of a turntable, dj mixer, self-built USB controller and Max/MSP. Crossfader-triggered sampler “cut n play” and right-hand usb interface “audile” are some of the unique modules that he has designed to seamlessly integrate live sampling into the flow of turntable performance.

BIO
dj sniff (Takuro Mizuta Lippit) believes in the instrumental autonomy of the turntable and the musicianship of the DJ. He is a turntable musician working in the field of improvised and experimental music. His music focuses on the live reconstruction and narratization of the phonographically amplified - the music, the sound, the technology and the past. To achieve this, he uses a unique setup consisting of hand-made hardware interfaces and a custom Max/MSP software along with one turntable and DJ mixer. He is also a concert/event curator for electronic music and a researcher of music technology.

While studying Art History and Philosophy in Tokyo, he was active as a DJ in the underground electronic music scene and formed a collective called smashTV productions which organized genre-mixing events such as anti-Gravity and bistro-Smash!. In 2002, he moved to New York to pursue graduate studies in computer music and physical computing at NYU’s ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program).

Since 2005 he has been involved with STEIM’s (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music, Amsterdam) R&D lab and is currently its Artistic Director.

dj sniff regularly performs with computer musician Yutaka Makino as Audile and with saxophonist Keir Neuringer.