I first came across experimental musical instruments after seeing the EMI book "Gravikords, Whirlies, and Pyrophones" at the local book shop. Little did I know how much an affect on my life that book/CD would have. Having already been into unusual sounds and experimental music, logic only dictated that to further explore new sounds, new instruments would be needed. I first began by modifying toys in a process called circuit-bending. This later led on to electro-acoustic and acoustic creations.

ON THE BENCH_

ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC_

ELECTRONIC_

ACOUSTIC_

MAX/MSP_

DIGITECH WH4_

IN THE WORKS_

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ON THE BENCH

This section is for the instruments that are currently on my workbench.

Revamping my guitar pedal-board. Some more DIY stuff, some modding of pedals, some twists. Think of it like "dramatic irony" meets "theatre in the round" meets "The Lost Boys" minus Kiefer. Almost done. Here are a couple of photos for the time being. Here's a video of my modified Whammy pedal.

Here is a, as of yet, un-named instrument which is quite literally, 'on my ench'. It's going to have 12 strings (thick piano wire), a china cymbal in the middle as a 'third bridge', several guitar picksup, and a built in amplifier to use the instrument as a 'sympathetic resonance reverb' effect.

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ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC

Electro-acoustic instruments are what I'm now trying to focus on.

The Specto-Situationalist is one of my first 'from scratch' instruments. The 'Specto' is basically three stripped down guitars, that are staggered to facilitate percussive playing. To that end, it has been part of my drum setup for several years now. It's made from 3/4" furniture grade ply-wood, brass door handles, zither pins, and spare guitar pickups. The Specto is generally played with drumsticks, either by striking the strings, 'bowing' the strings, or 'fretting' the strings. The original design was alot more intricate. It was going to have all sorts of electronics inside of it, including a bent radioshack reverb, and other miscellaneous electronics, but routing out the body proved to be more difficult than was possible with the tools I had at the time. It originally had only the gold pickups on the right, but I added the second set of pickups in 2005. Click here for more detailed information on the tuning/playing of the Specto.

My Contact Mic Modified Drums were unfortunately sold when I moved to the UK. I have no surviving pictures or sounds from the kit, but I do plan on adding similar functionality to my current kit.

The original idea came from listening to The Bad Plus' studio version of 'Flim'. I thought the sounds were created by having contact mics on the drums. It turned out being studio trickery, but I had my seedling idea. I decided to modify the snare drum, and floor tom (at the time used two toms).I purchased several sizes of piezo film from EMI and began experimenting. I settled on the 3" film, which I centered inside the shells, for maximum wood resonance. I wired the piezo elements to an on/off switch before going to a 1/4" output jack. The first build, being completely unshielded, was unusably noisy. After crudely shielding everything with foil, and metal sheeting, the noise level became acceptable. I knew that the piezo's would need a preamp to get the widest frequency response. I built a mint-box piezo buffer, but I never did figure out a solution for mounting it on the drum.

I plan on doing a couple of things differently when I modify my drums again. I will still use the 3" piezo elements from EMI, but I will shield everything much better. I will also forgo the internal on/off switch, to only have to drill one hole per drum. I will probably also build a 'breakout' box that both drums would feed into, housing the on/off switches, piezo buffers, and some simple gate/distortion/effects.

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ELECTRONIC

The bulk of this section shows the origins of my instrument building: circuit-bending. There are also several instruments that I built, but did not design, those are designated accordingly.

The Rollz5, an organic drum machine designed by Peter Blasser. I finishally got around to finishing it and it's amazing. I'm going to build another one into it and add volume controls to the 386-based amps I built into it.

Click here to see a video of it.

The Yamaha DD-7 is probably the bent toy that I use the most. It was purchased specifically to be a bent addition to my acoustic drumset, but has become part of my 'main' travel setup of DD-7/SK-10/Melodica. The DD-7 has several relatively useful drum sounds and rhythms. The bends add different distortions, stutters, and overall glitches. It can also be pushed into chaotic pseudo-randomness very easily by applying several bends at once. The section on the top left controls a series of filters that are applied to whatever is happening at the time. The switches on the bottom left produce drones, one of a perma-stuttering bass drum, one of a stuttering "one" count-off.

The MakeNoise is a Casio SA-2 that's been bent, gutted, trimmed, and squozen into a watch case, with the trigger built into an altoids tin. The switch on the right is the on/off switch, the red button is a soft-reset button for the glitch. The pot is the amount of juice being sent through the bend. The altoids tin houses the glitch button. It has a 1/4" jack on the back as the output. It's alot harder to push the SA-2 into glitchville without having sound happening already, but if you tune the pot right, and use a controlled stomp, you can get sounds fairly regularly. It sounds just like a bent SA-2.

The Casio SA-2 was one of my first bends ever. The original one I modified got gutted and turned into the MakeNoise. This is a second, cleaner one. I used higher quality switches/pots, as well as streamlining the bends I had built into it. There are two glitch buttons with pots, a reset, and three body contacts that produce theremin-like tones while making the SA-2's tones move in a step-wise manner. The glitches produce anything from white-noise, to acid-jazz. A beautifully unpredictable instrument. I only wish it was louder.

The Casio SK-10. This was the fastest bend I've ever done. I originally modified it for Gilbert Kong, then guitarist in failure, arc of beauty to use. I literally opened the toy, found five bend points, marked it, drilled it, wired it, and that was it. My wife, Angela, painted it. I later added a speaker on/off switch to stop it from feedbacking when plugged into a loud sound system. The sounds it produces are somewhat atmospheric, typical of Casio SK keyboards. There is one bend that makes each key produce a rhythmic pulse of whatever note is played. It makes for very nice rhythm/textures when you play several notes at once.

			The Casio SK-5 is my go-to atmospheric keyboard. I modified this in a similar fashion to the SK-10, very quickly/casually. You can get lost in the soundscapes it creates for hours. Unlike the SK-1, the SK-5 also has real drum sounds(as apposed to the 'blips' of the SK-1), and stores the samples while powered off.

			The Casio SK-1 is probably my biggest bending flop. I tried to copy Reed Ghazala's SK-1 as described in his EMI article. To say it sounds horrible is an overstatement, as it still produces some interesting sounds. I just expected it to be my 'ultimate' keyboard, and this it is not.

		The Demon Keys sounds way cooler than it looks. It was made at the peak of my crackle paint days, hence the paint job. It produces strings of chance music similar to that of the SA-2, but draws from a completely different palette. Other than that it doesn't sound interesting. I've mainly used this for recordings.

			The Morphiums are also from my early bending days. The industrial looking one is a body contact controlled animal/train sample bank. The space looking one is a boring piano sounds toy. I had planned to build several bongo toys into it, but I couldn't figure out how to wire up several toys to the same power supply.

			The Speak & Spell toys are staples of the circuit-bending worktable. They are interesting the first couple of times you hear them,. Other than, perhaps the loop function, these are unusably boring. I had a Talking Teacher that broke down, that produced similar text-based sounds, but in a more interesting way.

I own a few 4ms pedals including the noise-swash, triwave picogenerator, and atoner. All of which were designed by Dann Green of 4ms/commonsound. The swash and triwave were built by Mike Both and modified by me. The atoner I built from scratch and sent to Dann Green for tweaking. I also own a custom made mixer/control station built by Mike Both. All of these pedals sound insane/great, and I owe alot of my interest in electronics to Dann Green's designs/approach.

The Fourses, and Fyrall are truly amazing, and inspiring instruments designed by Peter Blasser. The Fourses/Fyrall were purchased as kits, and built by me and my wife, Angela, respectively. I later modified them to have 1/4" inputs built in, and plan on building in an 8-step sequencer as well. They produce chaotic, evolving, organic synthy sounds. They are so open ended they are difficult to describe. I also own a Sidrassi Organ, and Cocolase, both designed and built by Peter.

			Old Mr.Grassi is one of Peter's Paper Circuits. After building it, I spent some time tweaking the 'hairy capacitors', and eventually added some circuit-bent connections as well. The Grassi can churn out filthy bass jargblings all day long.

Here is my full Ciat-Lonbarde Family Shot after recieving the Radio Zither, which you can see a video for here. So many amazing instruments collected over so many years. Peter Blasser does amazing work.

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ACOUSTIC

Up to this point, all of the acoustic instruments I've made revolve around the drums which, although there are some non percussive acoustic instruments on the horizon.

I first got the idea to make a hand-made cymbal from seeing an article on Steve Hubback in an american drum magazine. I bought his book 'Fire and Steel' and, after reading it, decided that I wanted to try making my own cymbal. In the book he mentions 316L Stainless Steel being his metal of choice, so I decided to start there. I purchased a couple of ball peen hammers, one heavy, one light. The lighter one is what I mainly made the cymbal with, as you have much more control over it. For my anvil, I used two large tree trunks, a round one for most of the work, and an irregularly shaped one for the bell/edge work. It took several months of casual/weekend work to get something that remotely looked like a cymbal. Once I was satisfied (read: could do no more) I heated the cymbal with a hand torch. This was quite ineffective, and is responsible for the uneven color the cymbal now has. I plan on finishing the cymbal properly. I'm trying to find a metalwork shop that has a lathe and would allow me use of it to remove some mass from the cymbal. After that, and probably before as well, the cymbal will be rehammered into a more even shape. The cymbal currently sounds like a very, very dry ride, combined with gongy overtones. It sounds very interesting with a contact mic on it.

I hand-made some friction mallets to expand my drumstick collection. A friction mallet is a super-ball epoxied onto the end of a flexible stick. When dragged across a surface, such as a drum head, it can coax long sustained sounds out of it. For the handles I used hacksaw blades, which I ground the teeth off of. I wrapped the lower half with twine, and epoxied it in place. The hacksaw blades can be both flexible, or stable, depending on how you hold them.

Drum set potlids, and reworked cymbal bell. The potlids were found at a local Goodwill. The handles were unscrewed, and the holes were enlarged to allow drum set mounting. The cymbal bell is an old broken cymbal, that was trimmed, and bent into its current shape. The pot lids offer clear, fairly dry pitches with moderate sustain, and the bell offers trashy , clangy nonsense.

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MAX/MSP

I've owned MaxMSP for years, but only recently did I learn enough to actually make my own patches.

The Random Buffer Playback patch is a little experiment I did with a core poly object I got from the MaxMSP Mailing List. It plays back four individually controllable sections of a sample buffer. It also has extensive randomization(including sample selection from a given folder) and has Wiimote control features(only the buttons).

-externals used(optional): aka.wiiremote by Masayuki Akamatsu
-download Max patch and instructions

The "No-input Mixer" Max patch is a recreation of the self-routed mixer + effects setup I've used several times. Since it was created in a computer, a couple of things are different. For one, there is actually some "input" as there are no imperfections in a digital loop, which is needed for feedback to get started. I created an 'unplugged cable' sample loop that can spark the feedback loops, for authenticity. Secondly, there is an incredible amount of control, not possible in an analog version.
The interface was built to resemble the Korg MicroKontrol, without using external graphics files. Everything is mapped to the MicroKontrol, but manual and automatic control is possible without a MIDI controller.
The sounds this patch can produce are really impressive. I've listened to it for several hours, with slow random settings, and it constantly suprises me.

-download Max patch and instructions

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DIGITECH WH4 MODIFICATION

After giving up on trying to buy an original Digitech WH-1, I decided to buy a current model WH-4 instead. Liking the sounds of it, but not the terrible bypass it had, I wondered if it could be modified to true-bypass like the older, and rarer WH-1. After opening it up, things looked promising. I set out to make it happen.

I ordered parts to true-bypass it, and to add a momentary switch, since I was using it for short hits most of the time. The modification was alot easier than I had anticipated, although it did take me several hours, which including all the necessary circuit tracing. Knowing what to do, I'm sure the mod can happen in less than an hour.

Here is a complete photo walk-through, guide, and explination, including sound/video clips.

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IN THE WORKS

This section shows what some upcoming instruments are. Including original sketches, if any.

Schoenhut 379 Toy Piano modification. It was shortly after purchasing a Rhodes Mark II, that I came across toy pianos. It occurred to me, that since they operate on similar principles (hammers striking metal tines) that I could modify a toy piano into a mini-rhodes! I've ordered the toy piano, and once I get it I will experiment with different pickup types. The final idea is to have the 379 modded with pickups for the tines, foldable legs, and perhaps a built in 386-based amplifier for on-the-go electro-acoustic playing.

The Walkman Mellotron is an idea that is still a whiles away from materializing. The basic gist is to have a gutted toy keyboard house two walkmen. The keyboard itself would be modified to be a series of resistors increasing in resistance, so that when you depress a key, you reduce the current going to the walkman motor by a controllable amount. In this way you could play a melody by precisely slowing down/speeding up the walkman tape. The second walkman would be for drones/rhythms.

Towards the end of FAoB I came up with the idea for a Sound Sculpture Performance System. It was essentially a modular framework that would allow the use of numerous sculpture materials, while simultaneously allowing a variety of sounds to be drawn from them. So there would be two aspects to it. The first would be responsible for holding a variety of sculpting materials, primarily metal rods. The second part would be the electronics. Built in would be contact mics/preamps, some brass pins for connecting the ciat-lonbarde electronics, or other circuit-bent type electronics, as well as a few other things. All of which would be wired into a built in mixer, which would have further internal feedback options available. Some prototyping would have to be done before embarking on building anything that complex/modular.

The Bug is an idea I got from the EMI book, "Gravikords, Whirlies, and Pyrophones". It is an electro-acoustic, all-in-one type of instrument, with an assortment of objects feeding several contact mics. Although the idea is not an original on, I have made several sketches over the years trying to come up with a version of the instrument that suits my tastes/needs.