Geek Projects Special: Music

Build it: Korg MS-20 Kit

■ Put back your saucepan drumkit and homemade maracas, because this is a serious DIY musical instrument. The Korg MS-20 Kit contains everything you need to make your own synth, plus it all just screws or fits together, so there’s no need to break out the soldering iron.

■ This isn’t some cheap, licensed re-issue either: the Korg engineers who worked on the original have made sure that, once assembled, the MS-20 Kit sounds exactly like the 1978 analogue synth it’s based on. Even the packaging and manual are the same as they were back then.

■ Early MS-20s were known for their distinctive distortion, while later ones had a different filter that mellowed the sound. The MS-20 Kit comes with both types of VCF circuit, so you can choose how you’d like it to sound. It’s just a case of moving a pin on one of the circuit boards.

■ OK, so the MS-20 Kit isn’t exactly the same as the original. There’s MIDI in and a USB connection, which means you can connect it to a computer and use a sequencer to play it. If you’d done that in 1978 your bandmates would’ve thought you were a time traveller.

Project #1 (medium): Loog Guitar

1. Build your guitar
The Loog might be a guitar aimed at kids, but that doesn’t mean it’s just a children’s guitar. It comes in bits but all you need to put it together is a Phillips screwdriver and about 15 minutes. With only half the strings of a normal guitar it’s supposed to make picking up the basics approximately half as difficult.

2. Size it up
Even though there are only three strings, the principles of playing it are no different to a full-size axe. The strings are tuned to the same notes as the first three on a six-string: G, B and E. That means you can use normal tablature to learn chords, and what you pick up can still be applied when you make the step up.

3. Here comes the hard part
The Loog has Guitar Hero-style coloured blobs on the neck to help position your fingers, plus there are seven video lessons available on the company’s website that take in the basic principles of playing it, stringing it and tuning it. If you’d rather not watch them in front of your PC you can pay US$9 to download them.

Project #2 (hard): Rocksmith 60-Day Challenge

1. The time has come
It was only a matter of time before somebody combined Guitar Hero with a fully-stringed axe – this is Rocksmith. It’s now available on Xbox One and PS4, with a special Real Tone USB cable that plugs into any standard electric guitar, or you can buy a bundle that includes an Epiphone Les Paul. Not bad for a computer game.

2. Got a spare 60 hours?
Rocksmith breaks down songs and separates out parts to make them easier to play. Like Guitar Hero, it knows when you hit the right note in time, so as you get better it throws tougher sequences at you. Ubisoft reckons it’ll take you from total n00b to bonafide guitarist in just two months, provided you put in a decent hour a day.

3. Tips and tricks
It might take you more than 60 days to get there but Rocksmith has plenty of techniques to keep you coming back when you’ve nailed the basics. Just because you can buzz your way through Blitzkrieg Bop doesn’t mean you can pull off hammer-ons, pinch harmonics and two-hand tapping. Those will take a bit more practice.

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Project #3 (hard): Make Music With Kinect

1. Time for a trip to the attic
Remember that Kinect sensor you’ve got buried away? Go and get it. You might not use it to play darts any more but you can use it to make sweet, sweet* music (*sweetness not guaranteed). Synapse (£free / synapsekinect.tumblr.com) is a piece of software that allows you to turn your Kinect into a kind of turbo-theremin.

2. Surrender to the music
Before you start making noises, you need to plug the Kinect into your computer, fire up Synapse and stand in front of the camera with your hands in the air and your elbows bent at right angles, a little like you’re surrendering to it at gunpoint. That’ll help the app lock on to your joints and bind a red skeleton graphic to your body.

3. Trigger-happy sounds
As well as Synapse, you’ll need Ableton Live, Quartz Composer or something else that can pick up Open Sound Control (OSC) events. There are pre-programmed movement triggers available to download from synapsekinect.tumblr.com to get you started with gestures, such as nodding your head to queue samples.

4. Now you’re a one-man band
After that, it’s a case of setting up your own triggers and sounds. You can map different movements to commands, filters and settings, so the height of your left arm could correspond to the volume of a sound, while its distance from your body could affect the filter applied. It’s a bit like being a musical marionette.

I Build… Modular Synths

Matthew Regula / truecolorofvenus.bandcamp.com

"I started building modular synths in the early 2000s as there were, and still are, very few manufacturers producing banana-jack-based modules. Bananas are a simpler, more robust connector than the popular mini-jack, and more often found on scientific test equipment. I quickly found that I preferred the gear I built myself to anything available, and now perform almost entirely on homemade kit.

I started by trying to sort through the piles of information that have accumulated on the internet. It can be a steep learning curve, and it can be quite intimidating seeing what others have done. Rather than waste too much time, I started with a very limited set of tools, a decent soldering station being key. Time proved that you can do almost anything with a concise setup.

I found very early on that, once I had determined the ergonomic layout of a module, I had no need for verbal references on the panel. As a result, all of my work has no labelling of any kind. I find it much easier to use the instruments without labels. While modular synths might resemble control panels in a nuclear power plant, I don’t think they should be approached that way. No other musical instrument is littered with these indicators.

The most extreme synth I’ve made is a 24-band vocoder. A kind fellow in Russia reverse-engineered a 1980s Soviet Bloc design for modern components and offered circuit boards for the project. Otherwise, I primarily make synths for people I know from the underground, experimental US music community.

For an absolute beginner, I’d suggest looking at Ray Wilson’s Music From Outer Space (MFOS) site. He offers a wide range of circuit designs and probably the best documentation available. It’s the closest thing to having someone holding your virtual hand as you go wading into what can be murky waters."

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