Check this bitch ass loopercontrollerbassoondrummachine. It goes by the alias… the Eigenharp Alpha. Made by Eigenlabs. Basically it’s this high quality future instrument with 120 highly sensitive keys, 12 percussion keys, 2 strip controllers, a breath pipe and numerous pedal inputs. You can record loops, process some beats, flip through different scale patterns, layer sounds, basically whatever you want to do all while playing the damn thing live like a bassoon. I personally think it looks like it belongs in the Tatoonie Cantina Band.

Now, it requires a trusty mac to run with. Meaning your patch bank for the instrument is basically endless. It looks like there are also vendors that sell libraries of samples and sounds for the instrument too.

I can’t see this being worth the price, but it’s a good sign for new instruments to come. I hope this inspires someone down in their dark basement to start working on something great.

Now go getcher sweetie an Eigenharp Alpha. It’ll only set you back 4,000 Euro.

It’s cold! Blankets are warm. Wear a blanket!

This is a pretty cool little toy. It is called… Visual Acoustics.

Visuals Acoustics is a concept for interactive expression. A canvas to paint reactive music and vision as a real-time artistic performance. Brushes are painted across the screen, each consisting of an instrument and accompanying visual. The position of the mouse on the screen determines which instrumental note the brush paints onto the screen. Each brush stroke is triggered over time using a timer. The further the mouse is moved over time, the more strokes the brush paints. Layers of different brushes can be built up, resulting in a stunning performance of improvised musical vision. Each brush is variable, giving the ability to control the volume and rate at which the brush paints onto the screen.

Choose from the presets or make your own instrument combination. You can’t really do anything wrong here.

GO!

Plans to head to Arizona in 2010? Definitely make a pit-stop at this place. This is the The World’s First Global Musical Instrument Museum. They are set to have over 5,000 instruments gathered from all over the world… which is pretty freakin awesome. All sorts of world drums and noise makers to be seen. High quality audio and video recording services are available to keep records of performances held in the 320-seat auditorium. Nice!

Leafcutter John. Multimedia installations, DIY tin can instruments, strange experimental graphic notations, and new interactive sound art software. He is pushing the boundaries in his own creative little way.

You can download Leafcutter’s software, Forester at his website. The software takes a bank of sound clips and creates a forest of ‘trees’ from them. You can then wander around the forest discovering all these sound interactions. Pretty cool.

CLICK HERE!

Harry Partch fans? Get your virtual fix here. American Mavericks allows you to play a large number of Harry Partch’s unique handcrafted instruments… online. Just click or press the correct keys on your keyboard to make the instruments do their thing, all 27 of them. Have fun!

I’ve been a fan of Adachi Tomomi for a while now. I always follow the crazy shit he does with small choirs but I really dig his expertise in music related technology. And he’s all about DIY instruments. Here’s a clip of his Tomomin Synthesizer II. You can check YouTube for his other projects.

Tomomi even does vegetable instruments! (Tied in from the vegetable orchestra last week)

The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra is a group of fine men and women that perform music strictly on instruments made of fresh vegetables. But don’t think this is a musical-vegan shot at a protest on meat (none of the members are even vegetarians), they are actually really serious about what they do. Programs include jazz selections, rock, pop, contemporary classical-ensemble skits, noise, Beethoven…. really whatever. All of which are performed on instruments such as the Pepper Trumpet or the Cucumberphone.

In all there are twelve instrumentalists, two sound people, and a video artist currently in the orchestra. So check them out if they ever come near you. You even get a free meal- vegetable soup made from the carved out innards of the instruments used on stage.

Ever wondered how big the biggest and baddest musical instrument really is? Probably not, but here’s a neat project that lays inside Virginia’s Luray Caverns. This is the world’s largest organ. Built by LeIand W. Sprinkle, this organ covers an entire 3 1/2 acres of stalactites which resonate when tapped with rubber-tipped mallets. All notes are controlled by a four-manual console. Sprinkle has cleverly named his monstrosity, ‘The Great Stalacpipe Organ’.

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Diego Stocco is an Italian composer/sound artist living in Burbank, California and boy has he been swinging the hammer over the past few years.  He’s a head producer at Spectrasonics Software and responsible for many of the sounds included in the massive library of their virtual instrument, Omnisphere Power Synth.

Diego accomplishes such extraordinary sonic transformations by starting with the basics… ya gotta have something really great to record.  So Diego spends his hours building custom instruments such as “The Drying Rack“, the “Typosonic Machine“, and “The Burning Piano” – justly given names, we know.  Stocco then uses his genius in redesigning the sounds with all his gadgetry just so we can use the fruits of his labor to make some noise.  So make some noise.