The 2013 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition featured an array of new instruments that combine electronics, computers and sensors, often building on a base of a traditional acoustic instrument. The $10,000 competition had some prestigious judges this year, including Laurie Anderson, David Wessel, and electronic musician and sound designer Richard Devine.
Onyx Ashanti and his Beatjazz Exo-voice Prosthesis instrument
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Make any USB MIDI Device Wireless with Raspberry Pi
astlab has made a simple device that turns any USB MIDI device into a wireless (WiFi) device that also speaks OSC. They used a USB WiFi dongle to do the transmission. Their target device is aVMeter.
VMeter: USB MIDI Controller Touch Strip & Display
We’re making a new product called VMeter that’s a USB MIDI Controller Touch Strip and Display. It’s going to be sold through a new site: VMeter.net. In addition to a music controller, it has the potential to be used as a general purpose input touch strip and output meter display. It uses a USB HID interface (like a mouse or keyboard), making it relatively easy to interface with. We’ll be publishing both the protocol and computer-side source shortly. You could even use it with an arduino if you get a USB host shield. There are 8 capacitive touch sensors on the inside, and all the raw values are sent out, making it possible to do pressure sensing and even some limited multi-touch sensing.
Radio Shield Skips Commercials using RDS data
Here’s a quick demo of our new FM Radio Shield, featuring its ability to read the RDS text data off the radio stream and display it in the Arduino Serial Monitor.
The FM Shield also:
- digitally control station, volume
- read station strength to find good stations, or empty bands
- head phone amplifier, uses headphone wire as antenna
The FM Radio Shield is available for purchase.
Frac Rack Version of Voice of VC Saturn Filter
A Frac Rack version of our Filter kit is now available: Voice of Saturn Voltage Controlled Filter
The VoS Voltage Controlled Filter is based around a CEM3372 filter IC (4-pole resonant low-pass filter)–the same chips found in the filters of such analog classics as the Sequential Circuits Prophet 600, Prophet T8 and Oberheim Xpander. It features two inputs that are summed and then fed into the low-pass filter. The input and output volumes, cutoff frequency and resonance can all be controlled by VC (voltage control) or knobs.
Voice of Saturn workshop and performance at BentFest2010!
On Saturday April 24th Travis Thatcher will be conducting a workshop on simple DIY electronics for music and the construction of a Voice of Saturn Synth. See more info after the jump.
The workshop entry fee is $50 and includes a barebones Voice of Saturn synth kit, as well as some materials to test out a few of the basic circuits and principles that will be demonstrated. Get your tickets here. Later that evening, at 8:30PM Travis will be performing utilizing lots of Voice of Saturn modules and other circuit bent devices. The 2010 Bent Festival will take place at 81 Front Street in Dumbo, April 22-24. See the Bent Fest website for more information. The lineup is awesome this year. Be sure not to miss our friends from Austin, Bodytronix who put on one of the craziest live acid house sets all with home-made gear!
Stribe / Arduinome football cheer mix
Have to admit the song makes some good points… 🙂
Neon Voice of Saturn Family
Nate got the whole family of voice of saturns (synth, seq, modulator, filter) and decided to color them up. Here’s some musings from his lair.
Stribe Assembled Duos and Quads Now Available
Ready-to-play out of the box Stribe Duo and Quad assembled units are now available from thestribe kit page.
Robotic Marimba Player To Debut In Jazz Piece
in Friday’s Listening Machines concert. The robot generates music on the fly, and has a head that can bob with the beat to give cues to other players. The concert will also feature music generated by solving a rubik’s cube, other algorithmically generated accompaniment and a sound pool installation. 
