This is a project that will surely please guitarists, singers, or any other musicians that play on stage. Basically, you gut out a USB keyboard, keeping only the electronics and you build a pedal that you map to specific keys. This allows you to either scroll down a document (partitions, tablatures, lyrics, etc.) or even control a slide show or audio software.
![Canon D200 hotshoe GPS [link]](http://www.diyblog.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/d200-gps-2.jpg)
Great hack for Canon D200 owners: make a relatively cheap GPS that will transmit coordinates to the camera. Take a picture, and it gets stamped with the GPS coordinates. Not too shabby. I guess this would be great for traveling bloggers, photojournalists, or even artistic projects.
I love this: it’s cheap, effective and pretty simple to do. Basically, you take a 2$ Radio Shack piezoelectric transducer and use it as pickup. One thing bothers me a bit though: you need to drill a hole in the guitar to fit the jack. I’m quite sure there’s a way to go around this. And who cares, I don’t have a guitar ;)
I might build an acoustic bass out of scrap wood I have at home, and that sort of pickup would be perfect for it.
Check out these instructions on how to build your first synthesizer.
Granted, it’s not a Jupiter-8, but it’s fun to build, fun to play with, and cheap to build too. You can also bend it if you want to get even crazier sounds out of it. I built one myself last year, so I know what I’m talking about. I used the strip board layout and it worked out great. See it in the picture.
Build Your First Synthesizer [link]
First of all, what is Circuit Bending? Wikipedia defines it as follows:
Circuit bending is the creative short-circuiting of low voltage, battery-powered electronic devices such as guitar effects, children’s toys and small synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators. Emphasizing spontaneity and randomness, the techniques of circuit bending have been commonly associated with noise music, though many more conventional contemporary musicians and musical groups have been known to experiment with “bent” instruments.
Video Circuit Bending is taking video processing equipment, and modify it so that it yields unpredictible, yet interesting glitches.
This is a collection of projects, some of which have schematics. Some of the projects, you can build with very few basic parts, and some other require video equipment (some of which you can pick up for a few dollars at a garage sale or a flea market). Check it out!
