sábado, 27 de diciembre de 2008

Is EH watching me?


On November 2008, Electro Harmonix introduced the "Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker" pedal (see the green big muff on the left in the picture above). When I saw it I was amazed to see how much it looks like my DIY Big Muff (see the big muff on the right in the same picture), but the similarities are not only on the looks (being honest, both my version and the new "green muff" do look a lot like the little big muff pi, with the Pi sign on the right of the bypass switch and the smaller than usual box), they also added the switch to bypass the tone control circuit, which I called "Tone Bypass" and they called ¨Tone Switch". Is EH reading my blog? if so... I want the old Electro Harmonix Mini Synthesizer back!!! not the bass and guitar micro synth, but the mini synthesizer keyboard. Keep up with the good job EH...

Here is also a picture I recently took a picture of both my DIY BMPs (the Mogwai and the normal BMP) which I forgot to post:

viernes, 26 de diciembre de 2008

Arduinome phase 1: getting the parts (II)

I just got my MAX7219 as a christmas present from Maxim. Remember it is this maxim, not this other one... I know the second one is more interesting and they also use sillicon, although in different ways.

The parts I am missing are:
- LEDs
- Diodes
- 74165
- 74164
- Resistor network
- Screws and nuts

Check out the whole Arduinome build log here.

sábado, 13 de diciembre de 2008

Bands that make you go CTRL+D: Saturday Night Villain


Saturday Night Villain seems to be a two man band, Logan Mannstrane and Lord Kickdrum. I found about them through the matrixsynth blog. As far as I know they only have one song made public. The song features synthetic voices made with "Linguatec Voice Reader". The player in their webpage repeats the song in a loop, so watch out cause you might end up listen to it over and over again for whole hour as it happened to me.

Check out other things that make you go: CTRL+D

miércoles, 10 de diciembre de 2008

Arduinome phase 1: getting the parts (I)

While in my US exile, I got today a parcel coming from Colorado. Here is the box:


Any guess of what could be inside?

well, it contains the first step for building an Arduinome, a monome based on the Arduino hardware.

Check it out:


If you recall my previous post about the arduinome, you might remember what I said, quote:

"I am not planning to buy the sparkfun buttonpads so the first step will be to find some cool buttons."

Well, I thought it was going to be easier to find some cool buttons to use or that I could make my own, but after a lot of research and considering that I was going to travel to the US before the end of the year, I decided to go for the real stuff and bought the sparkfun buttons. Doing business with Sparkfun is painless and their service and products are great. It is the third time I buy stuff from them and would probably continue doing so.

My other option for monome buttons was seeedstudio. I was considering these ones, but they are not that cheap after all and definitely not as cool as the sparkfun buttons. I might still be getting parts from seeedstudio, they got decent prices.

I have to decide now the color of the LEDs... white, red, green... hmmm.... so many options...

Check out the whole Arduinome build log here.

domingo, 7 de diciembre de 2008

Street Keytar Player

I am currently in the US, in california, and found this guy playing keytar in the streets. I originally thought it was a guitarist playing and was quite surprised when I saw a guy with a keytar.