I just got back from an Oedipus-tastic trip with my dad a couple hours ago, and I’m still recovering from jet lag, so I’ll keep it short.

Plug in your headphones and listen to this (it won’t work without the headphones):

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I’ll explain more soon.

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)

Hoo boy, are you people who like loud, shrieking tones in for a treat.

For those of you who don’t like to frequent America’s science museums, the thing below is a Chladni plate, a vibrating plate that forms patterns of sand as the frequency changes. Youtube has about four or five billion videos of Chladni Plates if you want more.

Lots of new stuff and cool music coming out of Baltimore. Most of it covered in neon and glitter (sometimes neon glitter), some of it in the grand tradition of German Opera. Or more in the grand tradition of making something awesome with your friends. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Grundlehammer the latest production of The Baltimore Rock Opera Society (or BROS). I’ve been told the storyline plenty of times by now but I still don’t fully follow. I think the most important thing to know is that the the garage band has graduated, and it’s working on its arias.

Ken Stone offers the design and schematics for his version of a diy modular synth (aka “Catgirl Synth”).

Of interest is that much of what I build costs me very little. Panels are made from aluminium sheets that someone was throwing away. Many knobs came from a mixer that had been left out as rubbish. Many components are salvaged from old circuit boards, or taken from my substantial stock of old parts collected over the years. I enjoy recycling old parts. I enjoy the challenge of getting things going without having to go out to a shop to buy parts. Building a vintage synth using “vintage” components seems fitting.

So maybe this doesn’t sound like the sort of synthesiser you would want in your studio. Well, I’m not in a studio, nor do I ever expect I will find myself in one. I’m doing this for fun.

Be sure to check out the dozens of modules which could be repurposed for your own DIY instruments.

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.

This post is going to be about me.
I apologize for that in advance.
I am a Midwesterner, so it feels wrong.
But Nick said it was right.
So, I’m going to say that Nick trumps heritage.

This summer, I went on an epic road trip with Kara Oehler, Jesse Shapins, and James Burns. Our goal? To document as many streets named Main as possible for our MQ2 Mapping Main Street project.

Photo by Jesse Shapins

The idea behind it is to find out what the heck (see, I’m so Midwestern, I can’t even bring myself to write h-e-double hockey sticks) is on this street that’s been used by everyone from President Obama to Sinclair Lewis (the original Main Streeter) to Susan Stamberg at some point to describe, well, everyone.

So we clocked some 12-thousand odd miles in Kara and Jesse’s valiant little Subaru (it’s still running!) and hit Main Streets all over the place: New York City, New York; Chilhowie, Virginia; El Centro, California; Lewistown, Montana (you get the idea).

On Main Street, U.S.A:

• I was mistaken not once, but twice for being a prostitute.

• We found some serious gold prospectors.

• We were harassed by border patrol agents who probably thought we were drug runners.

• Kara tubed on a river that ran under a small town bar.

• We had too surprising experiences to list here.

But the real point of Mapping Main Street isn’t about me, it’s about everyone else (Whew! Back in that Midwestern selfless comfort zone). There are more than 10.466 streets named Main in the United States. So, the goal is to have everyone all over the country shooting pictures, recording stories, taking videos of Main Streets across the U.S. of A. If we tried to do it by ourselves, we’d have to be documenting non-stop for about 7 years. Besides a documentary party of four is fun, but a documentary party of millions is SUPER DUPER FUN!

Anyways, back to me. Recently, we made this video with the inestimable Sara Pellegrini.

The audio aired on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Our first Main Street radio story about the prostitutes and drug dealers on Chattanooga’s Main Street airs this weekend on NPR. There will be more, lots more. We are, to say the least, super psyched about it all.

And we’re even more psyched to have you join us in this Main Street documentary project.

Because it’s not about me.

It’s about you-you and Main Street.

(And now, the formal credits: Mapping Main Street is generously funded by MQ2, and initiative of AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio, Inc., with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The project also is supported with funds from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Mapping Main Street is created by Kara Oehler, Ann Heppermann, Jesse Shapins and James Burns with help from Josie Holtzman, Ian Gray and Sara Pellegrini.)

First, DJs replaced for real bands. Now DJs are being replaced by robot DJ flight cases like the one below. Next, dance parties will be beamed straight into your MIND, just like in that crappy Ralph Fiennes movie I never saw (I’m too lazy and don’t care enough to actually look it up).

Latest trend in Baltimore: making someone else do your work. Better known as the fine art of commissioning. There are a handful of artistic community organizer types in Charm City. Those crazy kids who go out and say: “Hey You! I’ve got this awesome idea! make it happen!”

Zach Kauffman is one of those crazy kids along with being an Assistant Editor at Splice Today, an online magazine in town. A few months ago he commissioned several of Baltimore’s better known “americana” musicians to cover old hymns and ballads. The resulting ‘album’ was called The Old Lonesome Sound. “Choosing the songs was originally a matter of copy right, we thought if they were public domain we’d be fine.” Said Kauffman. Kauffman is in the process of organizing another more modern compilation. The second collaboration will feature Baltimore musicians covering other Baltimore musicians. Charm City waits with baited breath.

Gotta love open source technology. The synth in the video can be built for $50 or so using the instructions by Tinker.it software

The ribbon the musician is playing with a stylus acts as a variable resistor; by making the connection at different points along the length of the conductive material, the resistance between the two connection points (one attached to one end of the ribbon, the other to the stylus) changes. The 4 analog dials and knobs shown in the back of the video (i.e. “potentiometers”) similarly work to change key resistance points in the electronics.