Low noise of late

Just picked up this lovely old decibel gauge...although i'm not that into steampunk I am a sucker for an old gauge. It also indicates my output of late....zero.... Actually I have been working on a few tracks but they are hopefully for an album release later this year so I am not sharing them yet. A lot of my studio corner (my pile of stuff- studio is overselling it a bit!) Is also going into storage as I build an attic over a large room we have....this means not having a place to play and also having a LOT of diy to do. At the end of it all however I should have a very small triangular attic space all of my very own...yay.

DIY Kalimba

I had a go at making an electric Kalimba or thumb piano yesterday, using a few street sweeper bristles (yep that's right the bristles that fall off a street sweeping machine..also useful for making a bogata rake ;) ) and an electricians chockblock connector. Add to this a piece of wood a clamp and a peizo pickup and away you go.

I like how this design could allow you to tune the kalimba to different scales by moving the bristles to different lengths before clamping in the chockblock. I will definitely build a better version.

Here's a little recording made with my micro br...I didn't use headphones and so realised to late that I'd recorded with reverb.

Kalimba1 by concretedog

Sampling delight

I still love the fact that sampling can take a beautiful yet monophonic instrument and render it polyphonic.

A young tinkerers first solder!

A proud day for my daughter aged 4 years and 1 week she used her own soldering iron under supervision to construct her first circuit, a yellow led that lights up. She was really pleased and was very sensible with the iron and solder.

I'll get her started on those PCB's I've got that need filling next! :)

The 1000 hits of BLARP

BLARP Finished from concretedog on Vimeo.

It's a proud day for me..the video above is the first of my videos to go above the 1000 viewing mark. Many thanks if you have had a look. I reckon its because Getlofi, Matrixsynth and Palm Sounds featured it, thanks guys.

If you want to check out my other video offerings here's the link

Palm Sounds is 5 years old

The mighty mighty Palm Sounds is 5 years old this month and has been celebrating with many promo codes and special offers for mobile music making applications, as well as looking back across the five years of posts. I've been a daily reader of Palm Sounds for most of that five years so as a tribute to Palm Sounds I thought I'd take a picture of just some of my mobile music devices. The majority of these Palm Sounds posts got me interested in. Palm Sounds continues to post all relevant information and reviews etc across the spectrum of mobile sound creation and recording etc, in fact I reckon if you have an old smartphone, pda or an early laptop (let alone a gameboy, iphone, Android, tablet etc) a quick search of Palm Sounds will reveal a way to make music on it.

Palm sounds has been tremendously supportive of myself and has posted many many bits of concretedog news/posts generating loads of traffic for me here for which I thank Palm Sounds heartily.

Happy Birthday Palm Sounds, heres to the next five years!

(PS..many extra geek credits if you can name all the devices in the image correctly!)

New Warm Data Compilation Albums

Warm Data have released 2 retrospective compilation albums featuring a heady blend from the Warm Data roster of artists...including track on each volume for yours truly.

They are released via the Warm Data bandcamp outlet and are priced at £3.33 per 14 track volume. On the links below you can stream the entire albums for free however and if you haven't checked out any of the Warm Data offerings these compilations give the perfect flavour of the grand selection of sonic treats available.

Check them out if you can

http://warmdata.bandcamp.com/album/data-recovery-vol-i
http://warmdata.bandcamp.com/album/data-recovery-vol-ii