Newest Dronitar

My latest Dronitar is a 3 stringed, 2-motored, piezo contact pickup’ed instrument made from plywood and a strip of hardwood from a doorframe!
The frets are positioned so that it can only play the same notes as a Tempered Hang, this was in the brief for the commission. This makes it very easy to play within a set scale and have each string/fret on the same scale. Making it hard to not play harmoniously! (no offense Rich!)

 

I’ll be at the London Mini Maker Faire!

I’m very excited to announce that I will be exhibiting some of my instruments at this years London Mink Maker Faire in Elephant and Castle!
The MAKE movement is something I’m very excited about and believe strongly in, I’m very honoured to be asked to be a part of it!
It is being held on Saturday 15th November at the London College of Communication.
I haven’t quite decided exactly what to bring along yet, but expect to see/hear/be able to play some of these:

Updates!

It’s been a while since an update so I’ll keep this brief.
  • In 12 days’ time I will be running an ultra-marathon, which is a ridiculous distance of 50k (2,343 Blue Whales, 555 football pitches, 2.3 Manhattan Islands, 1 Channel Tunnel) to raise money for children in Nepal through a charity I helped set up many moons ago.
The program provides therapy, through art, dance and music and play it helps disadvantaged and often traumatized children heal and reminds them how to be kids again. A large portion of the kids we look after have travelled over the Himalayas from Tibet in order to seek refuge.
As an added incentive to donate to my effort, I will be raffling off one of my creations to every donor, and will also build a unique and custom instrument for whoever donates the highest amount (currently at an incredible £150!)
To donate, please go here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TomFox
To find out more about the charity please go here: http://www.artrefuge.org.uk/
  • A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the London Hackspace for the Acoustic Hacskapce meetup. You can read a very flattering write up about the evening over here.
As a result of that evening, I will be doing a gig in Brick Lane in September, more details on that to follow!
  • I currently have 3 commissions on the go, which is brilliant, very much looking forward to sharing these creations with you.

A short film about my work by Dave from Daves Conservatoire!

The amazing David Rees has made a short film about me! He’s managed to make me sound coherent which is a testament to his excellent editing skills.

It also features my newest instrument which I still don’t have a name for.

His website is an amazing place to learn music and music theory for free. Definitely worth looking into if you’re wanting to teach yourself.

http://www.daveconservatoire.org/

Analogue Interference Synth

This instrument is a quick prototype that could lead to some much bigger ideas.
In a lot of my droning machines I need to place the motors as far from the pickups as possible to avoid interference/noise being generated from the moving parts. With this instrument I’ve used that noise/interference to my advantage to generate a dirty-synth sounding tiny machine.
Using a small variable resistor to control the speed of the motor you can get different pitches of noise/interference when that motor is next to a pickup. Add a simple switch and you can get results like this:
Very very basic stuff, it could be replicated using two motors sat next to each other too instead of the transformer I used as a pickup in the prototype.

Reverse Slide Can

For my 101st post I’m giving you another incredibly simple instrument that you could build yourself in a matter of minutes.
With just a stick/bolt/pole going through a can/pringle tube/anything you can use a small cupboard hinge as a bridge/whammy bar hybrid.
You could have it one stringed or just simply loop the same string around and have a 2-stringed version.
Play with the hinge to alter the pitch, pluck it or bow it, easy peasy!