Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from hotfi dot com. Hello again, everyone, and
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulettin. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor at how Stuff works dot com. Sitting across
Speaker 1: from me as always, senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there,
Speaker 1: that was very musical. Thank you. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about musical hecks today. So again we're in our series
Speaker 1: of episodes about using technology to do stuff what it
Speaker 1: was not meant to do, or or to to to
Speaker 1: manipulate it, change it, to tweak it in some way
Speaker 1: so that behaves in a new and exciting way. We
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about that sort of culture, that and
Speaker 1: the music culture and how those two overlap, because it
Speaker 1: turns out that a lot of people who have liked
Speaker 1: to hack physical as well as virtual types of stuff
Speaker 1: are also really into the music. That's true. Um, you
Speaker 1: had a lot of the uh. We we've kind of
Speaker 1: touched on this in the past, recorded in an episode
Speaker 1: in early two thousand and eleven about chip tunes. Yes,
Speaker 1: chip tunes being music that you generate from those old
Speaker 1: eight bit machines and earlier, but things like like the
Speaker 1: cover War sixty four and stuff. You take the the
Speaker 1: chips that were able to generate tones and you repurpose
Speaker 1: them so that you program news sorts of music that
Speaker 1: those devices were never necessarily meant to produce back in
Speaker 1: the day. But it does produce that very very distinctive
Speaker 1: sound that we associate with the early days of computing
Speaker 1: and video games. Yep, yep, it wasn't that. It wasn't
Speaker 1: that the episode where I embarrassed myself because I had
Speaker 1: prepped by uh, listening to bags of potato chips. You
Speaker 1: can't listen to just one, That's true. I didn't learn
Speaker 1: that much. But no, a lot of the people, UM
Speaker 1: we didn't really get into the technology behind that as much,
Speaker 1: because I mean, we did talk about how they they
Speaker 1: use UM video games in that case as electronic instruments,
Speaker 1: but we we didn't really talk as much about building
Speaker 1: about what you need to do to make that happen. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the people that that Jonathan sort of if
Speaker 1: you'l pardon the pon, tuned me into UM hacked an
Speaker 1: Atari undred. Yes, he made the Guitari tred Trix he's
Speaker 1: an Australian fellow. Yeah, he's a chip tune artist from Australia.
Speaker 1: And he took an Atari twenty hundred. Uh. He took
Speaker 1: some various electronics meant to manipulate the waveform of a
Speaker 1: sound once it's been produced. Uh. And then he creates
Speaker 1: some customized software to be able to create music using
Speaker 1: the Star. And it's not it's not creating music come
Speaker 1: completely improvisationally. There's some stuff that has to be prerecorded
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, predetermined, because he could not actually
Speaker 1: just produce any tone he wanted at any time he
Speaker 1: wanted right now. He knows how the these initial machines
Speaker 1: and we've talked about this too on a previous episode
Speaker 1: in which we were talking about the gaming hardware. UM
Speaker 1: those those early machines like the R had a library
Speaker 1: of sounds built in the machine. It was on a chip,
Speaker 1: hardwired hardwired into the chip. So um Ceatrix is familiar
Speaker 1: with the hardware. He knows what sounds are are available
Speaker 1: to him on this machine, the range of tones and volumes,
Speaker 1: and the different wave forms that the square wave UM
Speaker 1: and the different the different sounds that he can make.
Speaker 1: And so what he does is he uses a computer
Speaker 1: to write a background track basically using assembly code UM,
Speaker 1: which is a very low level programming language UM, and
Speaker 1: he's able to use He knows what their sounds are,
Speaker 1: and he writes the software and then he ends up
Speaker 1: burning a a rom to go into the cartridge slot
Speaker 1: on the Atari. So it's just like you were putting
Speaker 1: a video game. So like, let's say you want to
Speaker 1: play Pitfall and you put that into the By the way,
Speaker 1: Pitfall was an awesome game. It was a river Rate,
Speaker 1: another awesome game. But you put that into your you
Speaker 1: turn it on, and then it goes well. In this case,
Speaker 1: he was creating the equivalent of a music cartridge that
Speaker 1: you put in there, and what would happen is it
Speaker 1: would play this predetermined track, which he could then manipulate
Speaker 1: with the other electronics that he had built. And he
Speaker 1: built it on a platform that resembles this huge, clunky guitar.
Speaker 1: Right now, if if you're if you're familiar with something
Speaker 1: like Garage Band or some of these other UM basic
Speaker 1: music editing software programs, you're you're probably familiar with the
Speaker 1: idea of them saying okay, well, we've included a hundred
Speaker 1: clips and it'll be something really simple, basic percussion track
Speaker 1: or maybe a baseline that you can use as a
Speaker 1: baseline to write a piece of music over. And so
Speaker 1: that's what he's including there. He'll write a basic uh
Speaker 1: if you will, something something to build on, and he'll
Speaker 1: turn on the Atari machine and it starts playing that
Speaker 1: bass track on which he can improvise playing additional notes
Speaker 1: UM he uses. There's a UM joystick attached to this. UM.
Speaker 1: It looks very much like the third party joysticks that
Speaker 1: you used. Actually may very well be. I don't recognize
Speaker 1: that particular joystick, but it's got a couple of buttons
Speaker 1: on it and he can use that to switch between
Speaker 1: tracks on the on the cartridge UM. And it's also
Speaker 1: got some effects pedals. He uh, he actually used UM,
Speaker 1: I switched my notes here. Uh. He all he has
Speaker 1: an equalizer pedal built in. And these are the the
Speaker 1: stomp pedals to foot pedals that that a guitarist would use.
Speaker 1: UM that you see them switch on the floor right,
Speaker 1: So instead of stomping on it, he's actually built these
Speaker 1: into the neck of the so he's using his hand
Speaker 1: to change the pedals as opposed to his foot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are three there's an equalizer pedal or e Q.
Speaker 1: There's a flanger and a digital delay pedal which he
Speaker 1: uses with his hands. Uh, in addition to having the
Speaker 1: joystick and the attar, which is at the where you
Speaker 1: would find the body of the guitar. Right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: I say we listen to a short segment of of
Speaker 1: Sea Tricks playing his guitar twenty This is him playing
Speaker 1: at a live performance in Japan, and we're just gonna
Speaker 1: give you a short little snippet to kind of let
Speaker 1: you understand what it sounds like. Uh, if your ears
Speaker 1: are sensitive, I recommend lowering the volume of your listening device.
Speaker 1: Now I'm vamping a little bit so that you can
Speaker 1: do this because it is pretty loud. But here is
Speaker 1: an example of his live performance in front of a
Speaker 1: crowd in Japan. Yeah, that it's definitely some of the
Speaker 1: comments on his YouTube page or a little harsh. I
Speaker 1: agree that that's not necessarily everybody's style of music, but
Speaker 1: I do think that it's very very cool what he's
Speaker 1: done there. It's kind of a mix between electronica and industrial, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's got it's got a real crunchy kind
Speaker 1: of sound to it. There are other approaches to this
Speaker 1: musical hacking that are similar to that. There's a great
Speaker 1: term called circuit bending, which really seems to be prevalent
Speaker 1: in the UK more than in the United States. But
Speaker 1: it's the idea of using low voltage musical electronics uh
Speaker 1: that you would find in things ranging from basic video
Speaker 1: games to even electronics that you would find like in
Speaker 1: a children's toy like speaking Spell. Yeah and uh, and
Speaker 1: then you bend. Circuit bending means you are actually short
Speaker 1: circuiting the device and you're producing new sounds that the
Speaker 1: device was never meant to create. Yeah. A lot of
Speaker 1: people who do circuit bending will go to um uh
Speaker 1: places that offer like thrift stores where you'll find a
Speaker 1: lot of old toys and they'll go through and find
Speaker 1: and you can get that stuff for cheap at the
Speaker 1: thrift stores. Um Or they'll go to yard sales stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and a lot of cases there will be uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not either either not functioning quite right or
Speaker 1: you know, people will give it to you for a
Speaker 1: couple of bucks and it's easy for them to they'll
Speaker 1: they'll get several of them. In fact, I've seen the
Speaker 1: Speaking Spell is one of the most popular I think,
Speaker 1: or at least the ones I've seen most frequently mentioned,
Speaker 1: and they will either you know, they will short circuits
Speaker 1: something or will short circuit a couple of boards to
Speaker 1: get you know, they rewire some So it actually involves
Speaker 1: physically rewiring electronics. So there's often like a soldering iron
Speaker 1: is one of the basic tools in the toolkit for
Speaker 1: someone who wants to do this. It was kind of
Speaker 1: a trend that was um at least the whole circuit
Speaker 1: bender trend is is attributed to a fellow named Paul
Speaker 1: Norris who who found uh he actually used us speaking
Speaker 1: and spelling apparently according to the information I read from
Speaker 1: circuit benders dot co dot uk, uh it was it
Speaker 1: was quote a chance accident with an old speaking spell
Speaker 1: machine and a soldering iron. Hey you've got a soldering
Speaker 1: iron on my speaking spell you got speaking spell on
Speaker 1: my solder? Say and uh, but yeah, there's there's this
Speaker 1: interesting music that can be created from these electronics. And
Speaker 1: and in fact, the circuit benders website has a few
Speaker 1: different tracks that you can listen to. UM. So again,
Speaker 1: these two different approaches, it's trying to achieve that similar
Speaker 1: outcome using these electronics that were uh they had sound
Speaker 1: incorporated in them from the beginning. But in order to
Speaker 1: make music you are you're actually making it do something
Speaker 1: it wasn't intended to do. And in fact, They Might
Speaker 1: Be Giants did a rerecording of their incredible cover uh
Speaker 1: is Sten Bull, which is in fact a cover. Uh.
Speaker 1: They Might Be Giants made that famous back in their
Speaker 1: Flood album. That was a fantastic cover, one of the
Speaker 1: most popular songs when they play live. I've seen They
Speaker 1: Might Be Giants play live many many times. I'm a
Speaker 1: huge fan. Well, they did are. They covered it again.
Speaker 1: They did a new version of it where it was
Speaker 1: more of an electronica version and they use a speaking
Speaker 1: spell in that. In that version, if you listen to it,
Speaker 1: you can hear the different noises um and uh. It's
Speaker 1: really creative, a fantastic version, and I'm sure I'll linked
Speaker 1: to that. I've already linked to the video once on
Speaker 1: the tech Stuff Facebook page, but I won't hesitate to
Speaker 1: do it again because I love the band that much. Well,
Speaker 1: they're They're kind of funny too in a way, because
Speaker 1: if you know anything about the band, they started out
Speaker 1: as you know, just the two of them, John and
Speaker 1: John John and John um and then they added some dance. Yes,
Speaker 1: they did a whole band of dance yea. And then
Speaker 1: eventually one of the dance left and Marty came on.
Speaker 1: But yeah, when they when they first started, they were
Speaker 1: they used a lot of electronic instruments and loops and things, um,
Speaker 1: and then they, if you will, sort of went unplugged.
Speaker 1: They started using more guitars and and live drums rather
Speaker 1: than or acoustic drums rather than digital electronic drums, right,
Speaker 1: you know stuff, And that was sort of a shock
Speaker 1: for those of us were you know, fans before they
Speaker 1: used to it when it was just the two guys
Speaker 1: up on stage and then suddenly there were three other
Speaker 1: guys up there. But if you if you follow them,
Speaker 1: you've known uh for the last few years, they've started
Speaker 1: experimenting with little gadgets and gizmos and stuff and throwing
Speaker 1: things in. Uh. It's a lot of fun too. They
Speaker 1: did a cover of Chumba Onemba's tub Thumping. Yes they
Speaker 1: were the A V. Love and that that is phenomenal,
Speaker 1: what a wonderful, wonderful video. But they used they used
Speaker 1: devices like that as well. You know, they create some
Speaker 1: electronic music live in a in a big group of
Speaker 1: people who are all shouting the lyrics along and UH
Speaker 1: a joyous video. Absolutely love it. UM where we uh
Speaker 1: we can move on, moving on. UM actually sort of
Speaker 1: a hybrid instrument sort of came to me UM when
Speaker 1: I was looking at the guitar before even when when
Speaker 1: Jonathan showed me that he actually showed me before we
Speaker 1: had this idea for the podcast, just like, look at
Speaker 1: this thing, and I was and I was sort of
Speaker 1: fooling around with it, and I ran into UM. An
Speaker 1: instrument created by a very well reasonably famous hacker, Jerry Ellsworth. UM.
Speaker 1: She's very hacked UH popular and the hacking community, and
Speaker 1: she's also part of Valve Software, which gaming community knows
Speaker 1: very well. Um UH. Satrix has done stuff with other machines,
Speaker 1: not just the Atari. He's used UH, an Amiga, and
Speaker 1: game Boy, but he's also used the Commodore sixty four
Speaker 1: and UH as an interesting tie in UM. Jerry Ellsworth
Speaker 1: used a Commodore sixty four to make a a bass guitar,
Speaker 1: but unlike what Seatrix did, she actually used the neck
Speaker 1: and strings from the bass and uses the Commodore sixty
Speaker 1: four to UM interpret the strings basically used as the
Speaker 1: pickup for the bass. As most of you know, Chris
Speaker 1: and I do our research separately, so this is all
Speaker 1: new to me and my mind has just been blown. Yeah. Now, now,
Speaker 1: if you if you don't know anything about how an
Speaker 1: electric guitar works and a bassis a you know, electric
Speaker 1: bass is a bass guitar. Um. They they use the
Speaker 1: strings of a guitar. But you know, if you've ever
Speaker 1: been around on one that's not plugged in, the sounds
Speaker 1: it makes are pretty quiet. Um. You know, the the
Speaker 1: mechanics of the strings are pretty much the same as
Speaker 1: you'd see in an acoustic guitar. But when an electric
Speaker 1: guitar uses along the body are those those little uh
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're silver, sometimes they're darker. Uh. You'll see those
Speaker 1: little uh things that run exactly or not always exactly,
Speaker 1: but perpendicular to the way the strings move. Um. So
Speaker 1: they are on the body of the guitar. Sometimes they'll
Speaker 1: be one, sometimes they'll be two or three. Um. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I've seen I have friends who are musicians who hack
Speaker 1: their own guitars and will change out These are called pickups,
Speaker 1: And what these do is they basically interpret the sounds
Speaker 1: of they turn the the acoustic vibrations into electronic electric symbols, signals,
Speaker 1: signals differently different, Um, a little percussive memory there, right,
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, they turned them into electric signals which
Speaker 1: travel along the cable and into really now, they could
Speaker 1: be plugged directly into a computer, but traditionally they're plugged
Speaker 1: into an amplifier and that's how you can manipulate the signals. Well.
Speaker 1: Jerry Ellsworth has employed the use of a Commodore sixty
Speaker 1: four has done some hacking on the device itself to
Speaker 1: allow her to to use the Commodore sixty four as
Speaker 1: a effectively as the pickup for this electric bass and um,
Speaker 1: she that means she can use this to play you know. Basically,
Speaker 1: any bass guitarist could pick this device up and play
Speaker 1: a song on it, you know, in the traditional fashion
Speaker 1: and have it turn out as uh an eight bit sound.
Speaker 1: She can use um the device to play eight bit
Speaker 1: sounds or or something a little bit closer to the
Speaker 1: traditional electric bassed sound. Um. Some of the keys function
Speaker 1: um as a key tar. Um you know which is that? Uh,
Speaker 1: depending on how you look at it, really cool or
Speaker 1: really cheese e ugly cool, That's how I see it, Uh,
Speaker 1: where it was the body of the device was a keyboard,
Speaker 1: but there is a neck where you can manipulate the sounds.
Speaker 1: And this is what we're talking about. There is a
Speaker 1: professionally engineered, manufactured device where it is supposed to do
Speaker 1: all those things. Um, she sort of made her own
Speaker 1: uh bass guitar, um hacked keytar device and it's just
Speaker 1: very very cool. There are videos online you actually, uh,
Speaker 1: it's probably too much to do a clip of, but
Speaker 1: I would certainly encourage you to check out the videos
Speaker 1: of her playing this instrument, because, um, there's really a
Speaker 1: lot that that she did to make this work. Course,
Speaker 1: then again, she's known for building race car chassis when
Speaker 1: she was in her teens and twenties, so you figure
Speaker 1: she's probably pretty good at this. So I kind of
Speaker 1: hate her. Actually it's more envy than hate. Yes, I
Speaker 1: I envy her her ingenuity and skill. Oh absolutely, uh.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to talk a bit about there's actually
Speaker 1: a contest that I or a competition that I did
Speaker 1: not even know about until we started recording this. And
Speaker 1: my ignorance is something I'm kicking myself over because ignorance
Speaker 1: not so much bliss. In two thousand nine, Uh, there
Speaker 1: was the first Gunman Musical Instrument Competition, all right, So
Speaker 1: this was a competition for designers to create musical instruments
Speaker 1: using technology and interesting ways, and they would, uh, they
Speaker 1: would submit them to this competition and the winner of
Speaker 1: the competition would win a certain amount of money. That
Speaker 1: first year, it was a ten thousand dollar ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for all of the different prizes. In first place
Speaker 1: would take five thousand of that. So so two thousand
Speaker 1: nine was when they first had it. And you know
Speaker 1: where it's located down the street, down the freaking street
Speaker 1: over and Georgia Tech. So Georgia Tech. We're in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: We we are in Buckhead in Atlanta, which is so
Speaker 1: when we say down the street, it's actually a little
Speaker 1: further than just down the street. It's not like a
Speaker 1: block or two away, but it's easily Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like two train stops and we are next to
Speaker 1: a train station. So anyway, it's really really accessible from
Speaker 1: where we are and we have never been. We didn't
Speaker 1: even know it existed until today. And uh, the fact
Speaker 1: that this exists is now something that tells me I
Speaker 1: have to attend next year if I can uh if
Speaker 1: I if I've got that that day free So I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk a little bit about some of the
Speaker 1: devices that were submitted that first year. Yeah. Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: the nice thing is is that we can actually play
Speaker 1: a little bit of the music that these devices generated.
Speaker 1: Will have some clips as well. So the first one,
Speaker 1: the one that actually won the prize in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: was the Silent Drum, which was from a an inventor
Speaker 1: named Jamie Oliver, but not the Naked Chef, not that
Speaker 1: Jamie Oliver. Jamie Oliver. I have to say though, that
Speaker 1: the name of the instrument sort of reminds me of
Speaker 1: the title of a Mystery Science Theater three thousand video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: silent drum. Silent. It makes me think of what all
Speaker 1: people who live with a drummer wishes the drummer would
Speaker 1: own as a drummer. Yes, okay, so silent drum is. Well,
Speaker 1: they in the on the site they actually talk about
Speaker 1: it being a kind of like using shadow puppetry to
Speaker 1: create music. This really cool thing. Alright, So you've got
Speaker 1: this this device where you've got uh uh light that
Speaker 1: is projected from the bottom of the device up to
Speaker 1: the top. The top has a membrane across it that
Speaker 1: acts as that what would be the drumhead, but you're
Speaker 1: not striking it like a drum. Instead, you're pressing down
Speaker 1: on the membrane. You're creating a shadow. There's also a
Speaker 1: camera that detects where that shadow is. The cameras and
Speaker 1: signals to this processor that has specialized offtware on it,
Speaker 1: built by Oliver that interprets the shadow as a command
Speaker 1: to create a certain kind of sound. So depending on
Speaker 1: where in the membrane you touch, that's going to determine
Speaker 1: the sound that comes out, and how deep you go
Speaker 1: changes the quality of the sound, whether or not it's
Speaker 1: going to be allowed one versus a quiet one. And
Speaker 1: you can create this weird, weird soundscape this way. And
Speaker 1: we can actually play a little bit of that. So
Speaker 1: here is a short clip of Oliver demonstrating the silent drum,
Speaker 1: and if you get a chance to look at the
Speaker 1: YouTube video, I highly recommend it because he adds a
Speaker 1: lot of theatricality to his performance. So here we go. Now,
Speaker 1: that was what took home first prize that year, and
Speaker 1: there were many other uh uh submissions that you can
Speaker 1: look at, and I picked out a couple of others
Speaker 1: to talk about. Uh, some that we can listen to,
Speaker 1: not all of them. We don't have video our audio
Speaker 1: clips of all of them, but I can play some
Speaker 1: of the stuff. One of them is called the Guitar Bot,
Speaker 1: which took second place that year. I was developed by
Speaker 1: Eric Singer and UH. It proms guitar parts for the
Speaker 1: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. It's a robotic guitarist
Speaker 1: and uh he actually used four separate robots that each
Speaker 1: had a single string. Alright, so imagine think about like
Speaker 1: the four guitar next side by side, but there's no
Speaker 1: there's only one string on each one. And then instead
Speaker 1: of there being frets all the way down the neck
Speaker 1: of the guitar, there's only one frent. But the fret
Speaker 1: can move up and down the length of the string,
Speaker 1: so it changes the pitch of the note that that
Speaker 1: string produces because the fret itself relocates to make the
Speaker 1: string the right length to create the pitch you want.
Speaker 1: And then at the base of each string, there's a
Speaker 1: little circular drum that has on it four picks mounted
Speaker 1: to the drum. So when the drum turns, the pick
Speaker 1: picks the the string and you can turn the wheel
Speaker 1: a very specific number of times to to do the
Speaker 1: equivalent of finger picking really or you could turn it
Speaker 1: really quickly so that it's just playing faster than any
Speaker 1: human being, with the possible exception of certain members of
Speaker 1: Van Halen, could ever accomplish. And so, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to watch this work as well, because you
Speaker 1: actually see the frets going up and down those strings
Speaker 1: to generate the tunes that that you hear from it.
Speaker 1: And here is a short sample of the guitar bot
Speaker 1: that actually sort of reminds me if you've looked at it. Um.
Speaker 1: Uh the video company named Anna Music. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen those um They used to be advertised on on
Speaker 1: TV a lot. Basically they do UM three D videos
Speaker 1: of music and it's it's all MIDI type, you know,
Speaker 1: it's all C G I. But the UM the music
Speaker 1: is when you look at the video, it's created by
Speaker 1: these fantastic instruments, things that are are essentially robotic in character,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know they're playing these all sorts of
Speaker 1: otherworldly you know, they're playing themselves basically, And watching that
Speaker 1: just reminded me of one of the instruments. Uh. In
Speaker 1: there are actually probably several of the instruments, so which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. Yeah, there, there's so many that
Speaker 1: were submitted that year that I thought were really interesting
Speaker 1: to the submitted to the competition. Another one was well.
Speaker 1: Third place went to David Wessel, who was a Berkeley
Speaker 1: University professor, so a guy who knows what he's doing.
Speaker 1: And he had an instrument that he introduced called the slabs.
Speaker 1: So you know a lot of laptops have those have
Speaker 1: touch pads. He did what he did was he took
Speaker 1: a bunch of those touchpads, more than thirties I recall,
Speaker 1: and made an array of touch pads, and each touch
Speaker 1: pad was capable of producing certain tones based upon where
Speaker 1: your finger was on that on that touch pad and
Speaker 1: how much pressure you were putting on the touch pad. Interesting,
Speaker 1: and all of the information was fed through a device
Speaker 1: that was running the max Slash MSP audio program, and
Speaker 1: he would be able to create music by moving his
Speaker 1: fingers along these different touchpads and could create a pretty
Speaker 1: um sophisticated range of sounds. I mean, there were essentially
Speaker 1: nine channels for this device, so lots of lots of options.
Speaker 1: And uh and here's a little sample of the professor
Speaker 1: playing along on slabs. M m m mmmmm. Now that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool if you want something, if you want something
Speaker 1: that sounds a little more primitive. Here's another this this
Speaker 1: will be our final little sound clip, but here's one
Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about. A guy named Neil
Speaker 1: Feathers created an instrument called vibra wheels. Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: he creates the sound by rotating these discs that have
Speaker 1: within it some vibrating pellets. So the vibrating pellets are
Speaker 1: making this certain noise, and then by rotating it, you're
Speaker 1: creating this kind of Doppler effect. And by rotating a
Speaker 1: different speeds you can actually alter the pitch. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then there are batteries that are supplying the power and
Speaker 1: to create the music, you run it at different speeds uh,
Speaker 1: and it Uh they're going past guitar pickups, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, that's what that's why end up interpreting these
Speaker 1: vibrations and turning it into electric signals, which then can
Speaker 1: go to an amplifier, which then can send an amplified
Speaker 1: signal to speakers and then they get to hear them.
Speaker 1: And I can talk all about the physical abilities of sound,
Speaker 1: but we've done that in previous podcast. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: cover it, but anyway, so moving this around and around,
Speaker 1: you can make them go in and out of phase.
Speaker 1: These different rotating disks that have these vibrating pellets and
Speaker 1: batteries on them. Um, that's what creates the sound. And uh,
Speaker 1: they say that the the the inspiration for this instrument
Speaker 1: came from a motorcycle engine and I think you're gonna
Speaker 1: understand what they meant when you hear and on lead motorcycle.
Speaker 1: It's could you imagine? Um? Yeah. So actually, so that
Speaker 1: was a finalist for that first competition over at Georgia Tech,
Speaker 1: which has gone on every year since including there was
Speaker 1: one in as well, So hopefully in because we're recording
Speaker 1: this in twelve, hopefully I'll be able to attend that
Speaker 1: one and see these things in person, because I'm finding
Speaker 1: it really fascinating. There was another one that I don't
Speaker 1: have a sound clip for, but the idea was just
Speaker 1: so wild to me. Uh. Katherine stone Rich she created
Speaker 1: this device that used lasers, so you know I was
Speaker 1: gonna love it anyway, right, But they used lasers that
Speaker 1: would detect the texture of very is fabrics. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about the thread count or the thickness of that fabric,
Speaker 1: or even wherever the seams are in that fabric, and
Speaker 1: through the various changes in that detect it would send
Speaker 1: signals that would create music. So you would actually feed
Speaker 1: fabric through this machine and the output would be music.
Speaker 1: You could compose a symphony, essentially an electronic symphony, by
Speaker 1: weaving fabric and changing the pattern of the weave. That's unbelievable. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I think we're gonna end this podcast right here.
Speaker 1: One good pun just destroys the whole thing. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: just comes apart at the seams. I'm hurting and I
Speaker 1: need to seek medical attention. So oh man, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sew this up right now and we're going
Speaker 1: to finish this podcast. I think Jonathan's going to spindle me.
Speaker 1: There's that didn't even make sense. I'm gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: like the kind that goes on. Then you know what,
Speaker 1: after this, I'm gonna tell you a yarn that has
Speaker 1: been in the back of my mind for ages. Sorry
Speaker 1: I didn't that's a totally different thread. Sorry guys. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't mean to needle Chris in this way. See
Speaker 1: two can play at that game. Mr Palette, Okay, so
Speaker 1: we're wrapping this out. Honestly, UM, the realm of music
Speaker 1: and hacking is a rich one where there are incredible
Speaker 1: examples of ingenuity and musicality out there, some of which
Speaker 1: are higher on the ingenuity part and less on the musicality,
Speaker 1: but there's some there's some incredible examples of people really
Speaker 1: putting their minds to new ways to create music. And
Speaker 1: it's it blows my mind, uh as someone who appreciates music,
Speaker 1: but it is still very much a novice as far
Speaker 1: as making music, I find it amazing. Well, it's one
Speaker 1: thing to uh to have something like pro tools to
Speaker 1: record uh analog instruments or uh something like Sibelius to
Speaker 1: write scores on your on your computer. But UM, it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to see how people are taking other
Speaker 1: things and making music out of it. I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking along the lines of people like uh Ben
Speaker 1: burt over At introduct industrial light and magic, uh making
Speaker 1: sound effects out of found objects and things like that.
Speaker 1: It's just uh neat to see people making things make
Speaker 1: music you wouldn't ordinarily see. UM. So certainly not to
Speaker 1: denigrate the actual musical instruments, UM, and amazing software and
Speaker 1: hardware packages at these, but this is just kind of
Speaker 1: fun because it's going, Hey, I wonder what kind of
Speaker 1: sound that thing will make if I hit it? Yeah, which, uh,
Speaker 1: take me right back to my days in kindergarten. Yep.
Speaker 1: So there wasn't something. It was on one anyway, and
Speaker 1: we all learned those lessons. He asked. Let's wrap this up, guys.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions or future episodes of text stuff,
Speaker 1: I recommend you get in touch with us and let
Speaker 1: us know, because if you just shut them out the window,
Speaker 1: we may not hear you so soon. This an email.
Speaker 1: Are adjus is tech stuff at Discovery dot com or
Speaker 1: let us know on Facebook or Twitter. Our handle at
Speaker 1: both those locations is tech Stuff H. S. W and Chris,
Speaker 1: and I will tell to you again really soon. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit house
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you