Hackszine.com: Music Archives

Archive: Music

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March 29, 2008

Little drummer bot

Yellow Drum Machine is a tiny musical robot who's sole purpose in simulife is to motor around looking for suitable surfaces to drum a beat on.

Notice how the robot first plays on the object it finds (or is forced to find by the angry cameraman), plays a small beat, and records the beat it plays on it. Then this recorded beat is played again, and it starts to play on the object (an belt tracks and everything else it has),and also playing this sampled beat :)
...

Why? Well.. I was sitting thinking what I should do for my next robot, what it should do.. Listening to music.. making a rythm with some robot-parts.. Thought; "Hey, I will make a robot that drives around and plays on stuff"

It's a pretty simple robot, which could make this a fun little weekend project. The main components are a Picaxe brain, an ultrasonic rangefinder for position sensing, and 6 gear motors for moving and drumming. It's funny how the simple addition of a speaker and drum kit transforms a simple obstacle avoider into a soul machine.

Yellow Drum Machine

March 28, 2008

Design Coding: web standards rap

Next time you're trying to explain the importance of web standards in modern web design and development, just let this video do the talking for you.

The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper) is back with another marketing rap. This time he describes how web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site.

I know this isn't the usual fare here, but I feel I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't include it in our compendium of all things hack.

March 27, 2008

Shredz64: Guitar Hero for C64

Toni Westbrook authored a new C64 game called Shredz64, bringing the best game of all time to the best computing platform of all time:

You can use the real Guitar Hero controller using the PSX64 PS2-to-DB9 converter which Toni also created. This takes the game controller input and maps it to the appropriate up, down, left, right and potentiometer lines for the Commodore.

Shredz64 uses the internal SID audio processor to play any of your favorite SID tunes. In addition to the built-in songs, you can import new SID files and even create new levels by editing note tracks (using the game controller, naturally).

I'm speechless.

Shredz64

February 5, 2008

Wii Drum Kit

The Wii Drum Kit is another great example of a tangible user interface made possible with the Wiimote. The latest version adds support for the Nunchuck, so you can use both hands to play your virtual drum kit. This one is a Windows application, and source is available at the This is Not a Label blog.

The Wiimote + Nunchuck combination seems like the perfect interface for an air drum. Different gestures are used to trigger a specific drum, so the high hat is a flick to the side, the snare is a forward hit, etc. There's no kick pedal, of course, but the fist stamping motion that's used is a reasonable alternative.

Wii Drum Kit - Link
Control Your Applications With a Wiimote - Link

January 24, 2008

PocketGuitar and BeatPhone: the iPhone rocks

Download PocketGuitar and you'll be able to rock a virtual guitar or bass on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Get a friend to load up the BeatPhone drum sequencer and you can get the virtual band back together.

You've got to appreciate the $400 mp3 consumer being converted into a music creation device.

I was peeking at the source tree for PocketGuitar and the sample data is composed of normal WAV files, one for each string. You can simply replace these with your own note recordings to give your iPhone its own unique effects.

PocketGuitar: Virtual Guitar for iPhone and iPod touch - Link
BeatPhone: The beatbox for the iPhone - Link

December 4, 2007

Open source MIDI keyboard

Here's a guide for creating a MIDI keyboard from a cheapo toy keyboard.

This project details the steps to build your own Open Source (musical) keyboard which connects to a computer via USB and sends MIDI signals. This is achieved using an AN2131 development board. The AN2131 is now discontinued, so development boards can be bought cheaply on eBay. Alternatively you could use another USB microcontroller, if you are able to port the firmware. You could also hack any EZ-USB based device, of which there are many.

The walkthrough also covers interfacing your open source midi keyboard with Linux using the Bristol synth emulator. Pretty neat stuff.

How to Build an Open Source MIDI Keyboard - Link

October 21, 2007

DSMidiWifi - Nintendo DS wireless MIDI controller

The DS Music Interface (DSMI) is a collection of tools that will allow you to use one or more DS devices as wireless MIDI controllers. Using the touchpad on your DS, you can control a MIDI capable music instrument or MIDI-driven visualization software. Using DSMI, the DS can also receive MIDI events. This can be used to drive the built-in Gameboy sound generator, or as control input in your homebrew applications.

The Nintendo DS hardware offers a variety of possibilities for creating music as well as interacting with music. TheRain first had the idea of using the DS as a MIDI controller and created the DSMIDI, a DS cartridge that adds a standard MIDI port to the DS that can be used by homebrew DS software.
But since making a DSMIDI requires soldering skills and is rather dangerous, we came up with another idea: Using the DS as a wireless MIDI controller. The MIDI signals are sent to the computer via Wifi, and a server program forwards them to MIDI applications.

Later, support for natrium42's, DSerial was added, enabling MIDI input and output via standard oldskool MIDI cables.

The project's primary applications are a touchscreen-based keyboard and a 2d "Kaos" pad. These are built using the included libdsmi library, which you can use to add MIDI controller or MIDI client capabilities to your own homebrew DS apps.

Wireless and wired MIDI for the Nintendo DS - Link

October 16, 2007

HOWTO - browse the Zune in Windows Explorer

Here's a decent screencast that shows you step by step how to alter a few registry settings so that your Zune will show up in Windows just like a normal external USB drive.

Step 1. Make sure your Zune is not plugged in and your Zune software isn't running.
Step 2.
Open up regedit by going to the start menu and selecting "run". Type regedit and hit "OK"

Step 3.
Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\ Enum\USB\

Step 4.
Right Click on the USB folder and select Find
Search for "PortableDeviceNameSpace". This should be contained in the Vid_####&Pid_####\########_-_########_-_ ########_-_########\Device Parameters within the above ...\USB\ The ##'s listed here will be numbers and letters specific to your Zune

Step 5.

Change the following values:
• EnableLegacySupport to 1
• PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0
• ShowInShell to 1

It's explained in more detail at the end of the video, but for some people the user will get a device locked error when trying to drag files to or from the device. Starting up the Zune software and syncing a large file, then killing the process from the task manager mid-sync will trick the Zune into thinking it's unlocked and allow you to access it from explorer.

October 13, 2007

HOWTO - stream music from your iPhone in Ubuntu

Listening to music on your Linux desktop doesn't mean having to duplicate all your audio onto your local harddrive. By streaming your music over WiFi from the iPhone or iPod Touch, you can keep your music portable.

Using two programs called FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) and sshfs we can mount the iPhone filesystem in Linux, then configure ssh key pairs so we can connect without needing to sudo or login as root every time we want to sync the phone, then we'll install beta versions of Libgpod and Rythmbox to end up with something insanely great.

We've talked about the sshfs FUSE filesystem before, but this is a pretty cool application for it. You're basically turning your iPhone into a wireless harddisk. Unlike a normal portable drive, you can access it from multiple machines at the same time. This allows a couple people to listen to different tunes off the same iPhone library simultaneously.

How To: Stream Music From The iPhone In Ubuntu - Link

October 2, 2007

Pizza box digital DJ scratch pad

I'm not entirely down with the greasy desktop pizza box aesthetic, but here's a really easy way to make an artificial turntable input for your favorite DJ software. All you need is a pizza box, a laser mouse, some tape and a couple minutes.

A lot of DJ applications have a function that will let you manipulate a virtual turntable or scrub an audio track using a mouse. Flip a laser mouse upside down, position a rotating surface above it, and you can control the mouse input with a more familiar turntable-like interface. If you like the idea, it wouldn't be very difficult to ditch the pizza box and work this concept into a real turntable deck.

How To Make Your Own Scratchpad - [via] Link

September 28, 2007

Atari Punk Console - weekend electronics project

The Atari Punk Console is a simple electronic music circuit that you can easily put together in a weekend. The original concept was created by Forrest M. Mims III, writer of Getting Started in Electronics. At it's simplest it's just a 556 dual timer IC, a couple potentiometers, and a few capacitors and resistors. Hack together a slick enclosure, though, and you've got a beautiful little gizmo that pumps out sick square wave goodness.

GetLoFi has a few good links to schematics, sample audio, and enclosure ideas. Forrest himself even checked in and commented that you can use things like photoresistors or other sensors in place of the potentiometers to have the audio output controlled by the device's environment.

What are you waiting for? Go make an APC and send me a link to your project.

Atari Punk Console schematics - Link
Forrest Mims - Link, Books

June 4, 2007

Stream music to your Airport Express from Linux

It's still Alpha, but raop_play is an Airport Express client player that will allow you to send audio files, including http streams, to your Airport Express.

Better yet, there's an ALSA driver included with the package, which will make your Airport Express look just like a second audio output device. Once that's set up, you can just configure your preferred music applications to send audio straight to the ALSA raop device. How cool is that?

Apple Airport Express Client Player - Link

Related:
Stream Music to Airport Express Without iTunes - Link

April 7, 2007

Upgrade Your iPod's Drive and Firmware for FLAC Playback

Rockbox is an alternative (open source) firmware that will run on many iPods. One of its cooler features is that it supports several audio codecs such as OGG, AC3 and everyone's favorite lossless codec, FLAC.

What's also interesting about Rockbox--and this is slightly less talked about--is that it handles gapless playback really nicely. Instead of pausing or fading between songs, Rockbox will start the next song immediately after the previous one ended. This is great for playing back audio taken from electronica and live/concert CDs that blend one track straight into the next.

My friend Justin went about upgrading his 4th gen iPod to use Rockbox the other day and he ended up upgrading his iPod's hard disk and battery as well, in order to accommodate playback for all the larger FLAC files he's been encoding. Thankfully, he put together a nice little howto which documents the whole process, including the tinfoiling of his new drive (above photo), which eliminated an EMI issue that he encountered with the new disk.

Resources:

April 4, 2007

Ripping Vinyl with GNU/Linux

It's time consuming, but with the right process you can transform your vinyl collection into digital audio for archiving, sharing and playing on portable devices.

To make the most of your ripped analogs, you'll need to go a little further than just recording the audio with your sound card. There's the whole process of normalizing and splitting tracks into seperate files, of course, but it's also not a bad idea to make multiple encodings so you can have both mp3 playback and a lossless archival copy. Then there's file naming and ID3 tags to think about...

Luckily, you can do all of the above with free software. There are even tools to make the tagging and naming step as simple as possible. Now, there's still work involved, but think how slick you'll look when you're lugging an iPod instead of that other portable audio device.

Ripping Vinyl with GNU/Linux -Link.

March 24, 2007

Control Your Applications With a Wiimote

Chris Brentano sent us a tip for the Wii Loop Machine, a wickedly awesome music loop playing application that uses the Wii Remote as it's interface. As Chris puts it, "This looks like it could take laptop music battles to another level, or just make people look funny doing it. Either way, it looks super fun."

There are a couple of libraries available that will allow you to incorporate the Wiimote into your application. The Wii Loop Machine uses the Max/MSP plugin aka.wiiremote. If you're building some sort of music composing or performance system, it's worth a look.

Or you can read in the Wii Remote's raw sensor data and do whatever you like with it in your own applications. For general Wii input in OS X, Windows and Linux, check out the Wii Remote drivers list on the WiiLi Wiki. DarwiinRemote seems to be the predominant driver for OS X and GlovePIE offers similar functionality for Windows . There are a number of drivers for Linux, including a Perl driver!

It's really impressive, the cool things hackers are putting together with this device. If you've got a cool homebrew Wii project you'd like to share, just send us a tip or tell us about it in the comments!