After a long break (nearly 10 years!), it seemed like a good time to dust off this blog and post some updates to recent projects I have been working on. The blog has a new name, Hand-Rolled Noise (it used to be called Build Music Things), and an updated website.

The STEIM Patterns+Pleasure Festival is approaching on the Sept. 26, 27 and 28. I can’t go this year, hope they run it next year. Patterns+Pleasure Festival Trailer from STEIM Amsterdam on Vimeo. Like the BEAM festival, there are workshop events which include building the STEIM CrackleBoard: STEIM CrackleBoard

I’ve built a music controller that senses hand movements, in a similar way to a Theremin, for an interactive musical installation dorkbot bristol is exhibiting at the BV Open Studios 2011 this October. I’m hoping that people will be able to have some fun playing with the sounds of some music sequences being synthesized on a Mac by moving their hands...

Last weekend was the dorkbot interactive musical installation at the BV Open Studios Weekend held in the Bristol Hackspace and the kitchen at BV Studios. The Theremin Style Music Controller was set up in the kitchen along with two installations made by other dorkbot members: Richard’s biscuit-tin rhythm copying drums and John’s Tilty music box. Other...

The Rockit kit arrived last week from HackMe Electronics. A few people have already built working kits, I’m looking forward to building and powering it up. There’s a fair bit of soldering in this kit, so those of us building a kit have our work cut out…

Gakken SX-150 synth, with MIDI interface circuit.  A Sparkfun AVR programmer was used to program the attiny2313 microcontroller used in the circuit. The Gakken SX-150 synth has a stylus which is touched on a continuous strip to control the pitch of the sound. It’s hard to play tuned notes using the stylus and so a MIDI interface for the SX-150 is...