Category Archives: Other

Other

GetLoFi Shop Shipping Price Updates

Hello Friends,

There has been some updates to the GetLoFi.com/Shop with new items like Raspberry PI, Arduino UNO, cases, and parts. Our shipping rates have also changed, we now offer CHEAPER International First Class shipping. For example if you purchased just a single LTC kit it will cost only $10 to ship, instead of $17. New shipping software calculates exact shipping rates based on weight of your order and allows printing of First Class Customs forms.

United States Orders (  3 – 7 business days ): 
USPS First Class: $3.50 – $33.00
International Orders (  7 – 14 business days ):
Canada and Mexico – First Class Intl: $8-$33
Rest of the World – First Class Intl: $10-$40

 

Other

Donation to 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami

pikaremin.jpg (990 KB)

Its good to hear that our Japanese circuit bending friend Kaseo is OK. Not only that but he also wants to contribute in the relief effort by selling some of his circuit bent devices with proceeds donated to Red Cross in Japan. Please contact him at kaseo[AT]mac.com to arrange this transaction.

Above is a Pikatheremin for ¥ 5,000 (plus shipping cost) all of which will be donated.

Good Ideas, Loopers, Other, Recasing

Cool Mannequin Leg Maraca that Doesn’t Cost an Arm and …a Leg?

Leg Maraca

Interesting sounds can be created using a variety of sources if you have a looping pedal and pitch shifting ability. Richie Brown made a maraca out of a mannequin leg, currently for sale on eBay, and his video demonstrates just that. The leg is basically a shaker filled with various small objects and a piezo disk mic to turn the acoustic sounds into an electrical signal.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CLKh28t0Sk[/youtube]

Richie’s past and future projects include more mannequin recasings with conveniently placed touch contacts.

pileofparts.JPG

Touch Me – a public installation encourages spectators to interact with letters on a board by rubbing, poking, scratching, caressing, and knocking. These noises are picked up by the contact mics and fed into a looper as the day progressed.

touch_me.JPG

The Monster Box demonstrated below was made out of a Roll-Up Piano Keyboard.

monsterbox.JPG

monsterbox_inside_rollup_piano.JPG

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9c_8xOJ9c[/youtube]

And the Walking Song was recorded with contact mics taped to inner thighs and inner elbows  in hopes of being able to record a walking pattern. The song can is called HG Welles Walks and can be heard on his myspace page. Nice work, cool ideas!

walking-song.jpg

Hardware, Online Specials, Other, Websites

Deal of the Day-Arion Pedal Sales

Arion Delay

$19.99 or less for a limited time can get you any of these Arion pedals including Stereo Delay, Stereo Chorus, Stereo Phaser right now at Musicians Friend or Amazon. Plus is you use Paypal at MF the shipping is Free! Although there is some information on bending these pedals from what I gather the results are not spectacular. The SAD-3 however does not sound half bad on its own and it is based around an analog delay IC BBD MN3208. Certainly modding the BBD clock for slower speeds is not out of the question to extend the delay times, but any kind of a delay pedal usually makes even the simplest noisemaker sound good. Thanks to Chris for the info.

DIY Synth, Hardware, Other, Recasing

Relay Based sequencer V-Tech Computer

v-tech-circuitbentvtech-circuit_bent_relay_computer4_channel_relay

On the outside this VTech Computer looks like a mean glitching machine, however it is not. Instead the creator ( Zero Fidelity ) used the casing to house a 4017 based Relay switching sequencer. The steps can be adjusted from 2 to 10 beats and a clever 4 channel relay system allows for controlling the duration of the notes and not just the gate signal like most. Surprisingly the relays are very quet when it comes to switching on the audio from a guitar source, no pops. A great description of the process and reference links are located here. Thanks to SailorMouth for sending this in!

Other

Word Press Migration

Update: 8:12 AM 9/1/06

Sweetness! The RSS feed has picked back up and now in full force with the new software. Embedded MP3 player as well! Aside from a few little tweaks I think we are ready to blog!
Migration completed!

Update: 1:37 PM 8/31/06 Cheese and Crackers! I got my posts imported! What a hellish nightmare that was. For those looking to import their Blogger accounts to WordPress, take a note. Direct imports do not work for some odd reason if the publishing is done to an FTP site. I know it worked fine before in order versions of WordPress, but now it does not. Dispite being known as one of the WordPress Bugs in 2.0.3. The work around is to publish to a blogspot.com account and then to import. What a huge hassle. Took a few days to figure out. Oh well. Normal posting will resume soon, after the templates are tweaked. –CM

Other

Been too quiet lately

I really don’t know what the deal is but it seems like things slowed down a bit in the Circuit Bending world. The Benders group is hardly active and the tip emails have stopped coming in. Maybe everyone is just out enjoying their summer and not spending much time being a cooped up geek, I guess that’s good. I’m getting ready to build more devices however at the moment my project is crafting a wooden case for C64 with an LCD panel built-in. Results should be available soon.

Educational Video, Famous People using Bent Stuff, Other

Bruce Haack documentary for free!

For those who like free stuff, here is an interesting Bruce Haack “King Of Techno” Documentary available for free on video.google.com
Of course this is a clever Netflix marketing campaign along with a grass roots effort to raise the popularity of the google video which seems to be squashed by YouTube, but who cares its free. The documentary starts up with Bruce’s struggle and more less failure trying to make it in the mainstream before crossing over into the niche of children’s records. This worked out really well for him because it provided an outlet where the competition was really nonexistent and helped to build his catalog and fan base. The music on those records is by far more stimulating and engaging for young minds then anything popular music has to offer. The songs are angular with many unheard of sounds, but with great rhythm and structure. By the same token it is explicitly stated that Bruce was quite a peyote smoker and drinker in his day. Even though his music is extremely Psychedelic even by today’s standards, his musical abilities were developed since early childhood leading him to become a Piano improvisation virtuoso in the NYC Dance Studio circuit. None to less his electronic music is very messed up and trippy, no doubt appreciated by stoners world wide. It is always interesting to learn about the progression of musical genres in this case hip hop and electronica by watching and listening to the pioneers. The video made my evening go by fast and I want to thank Audio Mastermind for blogging about this.
*Update* Looks like the free ride is over. It is only the first 6 Minutes now. Sucks.

C64, DIY Synth, Other, PIC Microcontrollers

Prophet 64 MIDI interface Prototype

So far this interface does not look like much except for a large PIC protoboard with some serial and midi connections. However the sounds are very impressive, listen to sample 1 and sample 2. firestARTer has been hard at work on The Prophet 64 Cart interface promising to deliver full MIDI parameter knob tweakage and notes for complete SID control. The previous version of the Prophet 1.0 interface can be researched here which is a DIN-SYNC with MIDI start and stop. The Prophet64 group has been fairly active covering the new Prophet64 craze. People are going all out to mod their c64s with PSone LCD panels for ultimate portability. The manuals are still not done however older versions of the Free Prophet 64 can be downloaded from my local Mirror.