Homemade Synthesizer
KITCHEN MUSIC by Stephen J. Anderson
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36 
2. c0mmanderKeen 119 days ago
1# Sure do! This is "epic" indeed, albeit the overuse of the word, I totally agree for once 
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This gave me goosebumps. Just love the entire concept and the sound made was just awesome. Can listen do this melody all day long!
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I'm pretty sure this comment will be rated negative in a minute or two, but I'm afraid I have to say there is very little chance the thing is for real. Randomly soldering some wires in old stuff like a VCR is *not* going to result in a functional synthesizer.
The pickups in cups and glasses sensitive to moving your fingers around are higly unlikely.
Building a synth is hard enough as it is, let alone a polyphonic synth like shown here.
I call it 'fake'.
Prove me wrong.
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#8 It's complete bull shit , Random soldering to random old items complete nonsense and also it would never be a synth it would if it was real be a controller for some software/vst plugin synth other wise he would not even need a fucking laptop.
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I agree with #8 and #9. I doubted at 2:26 when he was using 2 fingers on one cup. Also, at the beginning he said that his system was using static electricity but tell me if I'm wrong but ceramic shouldn't be conductive to electricity...
Nice idea but my references remain Kraftwerk, Wendy CARLOS and Jean-Michel JARRE.
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#11 Static electricity permeates into anything natural or synthetic. Next time you break a ceramic coffee cup, take a small piece of that ceramic and tie a small string around it and then tape the string to an overhang of some type. Now go grab a regular balloon you can blow up, once balloon is filled with air, take it and start rubbing that balloon onto your hair shirt pants or w/e to build up a static charge. Now your piece of ceramic cup should be hanging by a line of string attached to something over-head so that it dangles. Once a static charge is strong enough on the balloon, carefully move the balloon to the piece of broken ceramic cup and tell me why the static electricity plays a direct role in that shard moving? After all, static doesn't effect things like "ceramic" right? static electricity will even bend the water coming out of a sink faucet in your kitchen... why would static electricity affect water molecules? oh wait, static affects EVERYTHING 
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#8. You are partly right, building a synth is very complex. But Let me assure you that was not a VCR. and i doubt he was just "randomly soldering wires" as you say. Electronic schematics are widely available on the net. dont get this confused with circuit bending. What you saw there was a sampler, a few audio interfaces an amp and quite possibly a multitrack recorder. However, Im still baffled with the mic/pick ups he used and would like to know how he did the track pad effect with the bowl.
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15. blue_alien 117 days ago
#11 Ceramic can be use as a semiconductor but not some random bowl you find in your kitchen. I think it's a fake, but nice idea though.
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#13 Ceramics at "normal" everyday temperatures are not conducting electricity. This is in fact one of the best insulators. To make it behave as a semiconductor (or supraconductor), you should cool it down to almost the Absolute Zero (-273.15°C or −459.67°F).
At this temperature, this guy couldn't even play a quarter of a note! 
1
17. shiverware 116 days ago
The video is awesome, but unfortunately a fake. However, before we found out, we created out own real mini version of the kitchen instrument. Check out how the real deal works in our video explanation: http://youtu.be/dLHrn5v772E
(120 votes)
+27
1. Geekster (moderator) 119 days ago
Does anyone remember Kraftwerk ?