I cut a lot of metal. I’m still cutting. It sounds like this. It’s a little loud but the earplugs and dual-can respirator mask keep it from killing me.
When I’m done, this web the floor looks like this: 
Category Archives: Video
Maker Faire Day 2 – How to play XyloVan & who made it
You all showed us how to play today.
You toddled up and whacked away with sticks, website silly grins on your 2-year-old faces. You strode up as if approaching the concert vibraphone you played in band, store delicately picking out notes to tunes you haven’t played in 20 years. You hammered and drummed, information pills pulling rhythmic tribal fugues out of the raw metal. You wheeled your disabled son up to Keyboard 1, watched his face light up, helped him hold a mallet and tap out a tune.
You played, in every sense of the word.
Thanks so much to all the folks at Maker Faire who enjoyed the van. You really touched us and showed us more joy than you can imagine.
More videos, photos and project details below … Continue reading Maker Faire Day 2 – How to play XyloVan & who made it
Day 1 of Maker Faire – hundreds of hammering hands!
Hey!
The Maker Faire crowd gave the van a good wringing (ringing?) out all day long, viagra and the gear all held up (mostly) great.
Welcome to all the Maker Faire folks who came by and banged on the van today. What a fabulous noise you all made!
Waves of people washed up against the side of the van all day long – it was so great seeing the variety of ways people interacted with the van … Continue reading Day 1 of Maker Faire – hundreds of hammering hands!
Xylophones, meet Van!
After nearly three months of cutting and grinding, cialis 40mg fiddling and drilling, cursing and screwing and painting, the magic moment is here.
Time to mount the xylophones on the van.
Here’s video of alienrobot and me mounting Keyboard 2 which is the lower-octave and rear-most of the two keyboards I built for the passenger side of the van:
And here’s what Keyboard 1 looked like as friend Steve Finkel and I mounted it on the driver’s side …
Continue reading Xylophones, meet Van!
Drilling 62 holes
It goes something like this, approved two 3/8ths-inch holes for each of the 31 keys in Keyboard 1.
Takes about two minutes per hole. And yes, my neighbors might hate me.
Finding the nodes, drilling the keys
Once the keys are cut and rough-tuned, page they must be mounted.
Step one is finding the “nodes, there ” or the dead spots at either end of the key where the metal doesn’t vibrate. This is where I’ll drill holes for mounting.
To do this, you park the key atop two pairs of balled-up socks so it vibrates when struck. Then sprinkle a little salt near either end of the key and whack it repeatedly. The resonating metal bounces the salt away from the most-vibrating part into the nodes, the deadest spot in each key … Continue reading Finding the nodes, drilling the keys
Tubular bells array – sound check
Here’s the first set of tubular bells, ask untuned. Tuning them is a pain in the ass: Unlike the keys, these cannot be made flatter by hollowing out the middle, between the nodes.
Instead, you can only sharp them by carving slices off the ends. Luckily, I wound up creating a sort of Middle-Eastern koto-sounding thang, that kind of works. I hope these don’t dull down too much when I mount them.
Miking and amplifying will be a challenge – I’ll need to figure out a resonator or some sort of sound funnel feeding a mike at one end of the tubes. But they resonate deeply, and they’ll look pretty wikkid bolted to the side of the van.
Enjoy the sustain.
Xylophoned!
I took a little time tonight to lay out a near-full keyboard on some telephone wire just to see how the 2-½-octave range sounded:
The keys don’t ring yet because there are no insulators under them, ed no holes drilled, search no resonators to catch the sound yet, and it still needs a final tuning. But everything sounds solid so far.
Looks like I need to finish it up with a D at the high end. I’ll probably cut some more for the low end just because they sound so rich and I think I can keep going down before the metal’s native harmonics overwhelm each key’s primary tone.
Amplification tests – how do we mike this thing?
This weekend’s work has been mostly about sound (with a little van tinkering here and there).
How do we amplify two full keyboards of two and a half octaves of keys each, order plus numerous gongs and chimes?
Full-court press – set up a testing environment, salve bring in some mikes and amps, this web and sort it out, right?
We picked up a little mixing board at Guitar Center on Saturday night and spent some time bullshitting with the staff about microphones.
The challenge of the project is getting a full, clean mix out of the instrument in the face of these facts:
- the high keys are very faint compared with the low ones
- ambient noise will be a challenge, particularly on the playa
- We want to get enough sound out of the system to reach across the playa without causing feedback through the pickups
- The instruments will be bolted to the van full-time, so the miking solution must be removable to avoid the worst of the weather …
Continue reading Amplification tests – how do we mike this thing?
Sound check
We’ve knocked out two octaves worth of keys so far, mind only a sample of which will fit on the bench for a demo. Obviously they’ll sound much fuller after we figure out how to set up resonators and amplification, view but at least they’re correctly tuned.
As for finish, the first three are polished, the rest are still raw, and none have been drilled yet for mounting)
I picked up a new, slimmer metal-cutting disc for the circular saw the other day, and cutting is dramatically easierĂ‚Â than it was. Now it takes barely four minutes to slice through the half-inch by 3-inch aluminum bar stock we’re using for keys.
Meanwhile, I’ve also been tinkering with disk gongs – I want people to have a broad array of stuff to bang on beyond the tuned keyboards on either side of the van. Otherwise, they may take to hammering on the mirrors or the coachwork.
These quarter-inch-thick steel disks have a tinny, bell-like quality …
Continue reading Sound check