The Multi-Dronemachine

I made this one quite a while ago, but hadn’t got around to getting any decent photos of it yet. These are probably decent enough…
It uses bike brake cables as strings, has dual piezo and inductive pickups. It also has some springs and strimmer wire strings added to the block with the piezo in which gives it more potential for noise making.

Ignore the thumbnail, but the vast majority of this track was made using this one instrument and a loopstation:

London Arduino Day!

This Saturday I will be showcasing at London Arduino day with a bunch of other excellent peoples at my second home Machinesroom in Bethnal Green.
Exhibitors
> Curio: capacitative touch matrix instrument by Tim Yates
> Voice-controlled bubble-farting unicorn by CyberCitizens
> DIY instruments by Vulpestruments
> Arduino Flight Controllers (tricopter & quadcopter) by Martin Lindupp
> Stop the train game by Neil McGrath
> Hacked sound toys by Stamou Instruments> Robots and Lasers with Josh Elijah> Let’s Make Robots by Francisco Dominguez Roman
> “Fizzy Good” connected water pump> Ohbot: Arduino-based humanoid robot head to learn programming
Plus More!

Concert at the Royal College of Music

I am MASSIVELY excited to announce that I have been working with some great composers from the Royal College of Music to put together a concert using mostly my instruments!

Composers Christopher Schlechte-Bond and Nicholas Morrish Rarity present an extraordinary concert of works for an ensemble of newly invented string instruments created by sound artist Tom Fox, all of which are originally handcrafted from various materials found within the Royal College of Music.

I will be performing too.

The Hummingbird MKII, Manual Mode

The Hummingbird is usually controlled by Twitter, I fancied playing it myself so rigged up a simple switch mode using connector block and bike brake cable that runs to the other pin of each relay unit.
The noises are a result of electromagnetic interference from the motors creating a current in the pickup in the middle. The pickup is actually a transformer coil but as it uses the same principle of physics as a guitar pickup, it works just fine for noise creation. The different motors create a different tone of noise and when combined the tones mingle and mash and create slightly different tones. Also, as they all run from the same power source, as another motor is added to the circuit, it drains the other motors of current which slows them down slightly and alters their pitch.

 

 

 

 

Talk and mini-workshop

My next talk and workshop event will with the wonderful folks of Music Hackspace in my spiritual home of Limewharf in east London.
I’ll be giving a talk all about the theory and practise of DIY instrument building and where to source everything you’d need for cheap and interesting instrument building.
Afterwards there will be a chance to build things with the materials I’ve provided for a small fee.
More info etc here:

My Resonance FM Interview and performance

You can now listen to the whole show, which has some amazing tracks from other artists and makers here: