Hackszine.com: Music Archives

Archive: Music

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September 26, 2008

Zoom H2 microphone modification

Berto Aussems wrote in again with another modification to the Zoom H2 recorder:

Listening to soundrecordings made in the 360 degree surround pattern mode of the Zoom H2, I found out that the directional sensitivity is bad. Even the stereo recording sounds mono. The front/back channel separation is the same story. So I had to turn the microphones in 4 times 90 degree. With 2 crossed disk's on top of the H2, the directional resolution is now much better. Maybe there are other ways to get better results; this is one. I hope to have some discussion with other H2 owners about this theme.

I'm not sure how much further you can push the recording quality of this little field recorder, but it's promising to see the results of warrantee voiding efforts like these.

Zoom H2 Microphone's Modification

Previously:
Zoom H2 line input hack - make a 4 channel field recorder

September 15, 2008

Zoom H2 line input hack - make a 4 channel field recorder

Berto Aussems wrote in from the Netherlends to tell us about his hack which replaces the microphones in the Zoom H2 recorder with 4 line inputs, perfect for 4 channel field recording. The Zoom H2 has gotten a lot of glowing reviews in its standard form, but converting it for line input gives you the flexibility to use external mics and direct input sources for a higher quality recording.

The Zoom H2 is a popular portable soundrecorder. It records HQ audio on the 4 build-in microphones on 4 tracks. This hack makes it possible to switch over to 4 self made line inputs on the back of the device. With a few electronic parts for about 10 USD people can make a 4 channel fieldrecorder.

This 3 minute instruction video shows the way you can make yourself a 4 track field recorder. I don't say its easy....but it can be done in an evening. Now I can record 4 channels from my computer audio interface when the softsynth is running.

This is a pretty affordable modification and the device itself is just short of $200. It might be just the solution for a decent 4 track recorder on a budget, whether you're recording your garage band, environmental sounds, or interviews.

Zoom H2 modification; now with 4 line inputs!

August 13, 2008

Korg Kaossilator 4-bar loop hack

I apologize if this is a bit of a niche hack, but I've had my eye on Korg's little pocket synthesizer and then David Battino showed off some impressive audio samples on the digital media blog that he was able to create with a hidden Kaossilator feature:

What loosened my credit card was a secret hack Korg revealed during fact-check: If you power up the Kaossilator while holding down the Tap and Loop Rec buttons, the loop memory doubles from two bars to four. That may not sound like much, but it gives you time to set up tension and release; I find four-bar loops just breathe better.

The tweak disables the undo functionality and trades it for double the loop length. A fair trade, I think.

I noticed we're running a little low on music-related hacks lately. If you've got anything you'd like to share with the rest of the class, please send it in!

Korg Kaossilator 4-Bar Loop Hack

July 31, 2008

Buzz Kill - stopping iPhone GSM speaker noise

Every GSM cellphone user is familiar with the annoying Bzzzhtzttt noises that tend to emanate from random electronics anywhere you take your device. The iPhone is no exception, but the problem is exacerbated since most people have it sitting on their desk with a speaker close by playing music at reasonable amplification. It sucks.

Mac Life has a solution that may work for you. Just yank the ferrite beads from an old usb cable—they are inside the plastic bulge near one end of most cables—and place them around or taped in-line with your speaker cable. There are a few stories of success with this method, and nobody has mentioned an impact on audio quality, so it's a cheap fix that's worth a shot.

iPhone Buzz Kill

July 3, 2008

Make a record player out of LEGO

A paper cup, a sewing needle, and a simple LEGO Mindstorms robot make for a nice little record player. This might be a fun project to work on with the kids this 4th of July weekend. You know they've been wondering about the boxes of vinyl frisbees in the basement. Aside from anything else they might be learning, it's a good opportunity to slip in some information about how music used to be groovy.

NXT Record Player Instructions

June 8, 2008

Star Wars music played by a floppy drive

I can't find any documentation for this, nor can I help posting it.

I assume it's a hardware hack that manually controls the floppy drive's stepper motor, but it'd make my day if this was done in software using standard I/O requests. Either way, the 3.5 inch FDD finally serves an important function again.

Star Wars Floppy Disk

June 2, 2008

Wii Guitar Hero guitar as a real musical instrument

I've been trying to get better at Guitar Hero and I'm bothered by the fact that you dump so much time into learning a basically useless combination of finger twiddling tactics. At least with DDR you get some exercise, and other video games let you drive fast or kill things. Of course, I say this only because I completely fail at Guitar Hero and I'm jealous of everyone who was born with the appropriate twiddling genes that let you get past the easy level. Back to my point, though, wouldn't it be great if those gaming hours could be spent actually learning to play an instrument?

Josh Breckman posted the above video to Youtube a while ago and has gained quite a bit of notoriety for his hack that turns the Wii Guitar Hero controller into a real instrument. You don't play it like a legit guitar, of course, but by adjusting the tilt of the guitar and flexing the whammy bar, the 5 buttons can be used to toggle a variety of notes and effects.

Anyway, it turns out we get all 5 button states (obviously), up strokes and down strokes (separately), and 11 degrees of movement of the whammy bar.
I took this info and fed it into my handy synthesizer as I played and turned it into a sort of instrument. My keyboard has a pretty decent electric guitar sound, so it sounded sort of realistic. I used the wiimote's orientation and the whammy bar to add different "note banks" to let me play more than 5 notes.

I assume this is using a custom GlovePIE script to funnel commands to the software that's controlling the synth, but I don't really know much more about it than that. Josh says he'll be posting a tutorial soon. Until then, I'll be stabbing buttons while colored dots fly at me in three dimensions.

Wii Guitar Hero Synth Hack

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.

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