Geoff Smith introduces the Fluid Piano, a fully acoustic piano that can be retuned in realtime to allow microtonal performance. Each string can be raised or lowered by up to 2 semitones by moving a slider over the keyboard. The piano demonstrated in the video appears to have a somewhat unconventional tone, but that could be due to the camera microphone. Either way, it’s an intriguing instrument and a remarkable achievement.
Here’s another great YouTube find for sound geeks. The Alchemists of Sound is a documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which produced soundtracks for innumerable BBC productions during the 1960s, 70s and 80s and is most famous for the original Doctor Who theme.
The tape editing techniques demonstrated in this film should shame anyone who complains about limitations in Pro Tools…
The Alchemists of Sound 1/6:
Two recent BBC music documentaries have surfaced on YouTube. Both are excellent, so watch them while you can. You never know when they will be unceremoniously pulled due to rights issues, like the excellent Tom Dowd documentary that NerdSonic linked to a few months ago…
Krautrock is a history of the German avant-garde electronic music scene during the late 1960s and 1970s, including Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can, and Faust.
Synth Britannia picks up more or less where Krautrock leaves off, and covers British synth pop during the late 1970s and 1980s. Human League, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, and Pet Shop Boys are featured, among many others.
Jump to page 2 to watch Krautrock in its entirety, or page 3 to watch Synth Britannia.
This weekend, I started working with Nicolas Collins‘ excellent book Handmade Electronic Music (Routledge ISBN: 978-0-415-99873-4). One of the more intriguing projects in the book is an amazingly simple, inexpensive square wave oscillator based on a $0.75 74C14 CMOS Hex Inverter chip. In it’s most basic form, the circuit consists only of the 74C14, a capacitor, a resistor, a 9V battery clip and an output jack. Total cost: a few dollars and a few minutes of your time.
After experimenting for an hour or two, I modified the basic circuit with a potentiometer to control the oscillator frequency, a few extra resistors to limit the frequency range, and a momentary switch to control rhythm. Here is a video of me playing the resulting instrument. It’s rough, but fun…
Click here to watch this video on YouTube.
