The Anywhere Organ

New Pipes... Hopefully in time for Maker Faire

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:07:48 -0400

Momentous news! The new pipes have arrived!

The trumpet shaped one is a reed pipe, the others it is sitting atop are wood flutes. They’re two completely distinct sounds and flavors from the Diapasons the existing Anywhere Organ uses. I’m right now trying to find ways to mesh the three flavors together without getting entirely baroque with wires and switches and custom programs.

These nifty white things are magnetic organ valves. If you’d like to read some technical specs on them, you can do so here. They’re nearly the same ones as power the current AO, with only minor changes in their profile and power. They’re still just magnets that pull a little leather pad from the inlet of each pipe.

Although I don’t have any currently, when wood flutes get into the “utterly enormous” sizes, they tend to get called Bourdons, though I’m not entirely sure why.

pith: This weekend, AwesomeNYC trustees, grant recipients, and...

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:31:18 -0400

pith:

This weekend, AwesomeNYC trustees, grant recipients, and friends gathered for a picnic to celebrate and scheme. Funded projects in attendance were the Anywhere Organ, the Hip Hop Word Count, the Regret Project and Silent Lights.

The Anywhere Organ with Amanda Fucking Palmer!

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 10:35:20 -0400

As some of you may have already heard, the Anywhere Organ made an appearance at Amanda Fucking Palmer’s absolutely stellar Kickstarter Countdown Webcast Party!

During the final hours of her Kickstarter, from about 7pm to midnight on May 31st, Amanda Palmer and her band of merry men shut down an entire street in Brooklyn to throw an epic block-party to celebrate her record breaking million dollar fundraiser. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to haul out the Anywhere Organ and make music.

This made for the organ’s fourth public showing. Previously, I’ve been to the Lost Circus, Figment, and Maker Faire.

I was invited to present because the party’s organizer, Miss Scorpio, had hosted the Anywhere Organ a few times before. She put out the call for all things big, loud, captivating, and pretty. I brought my sculpture out in the hopes of fitting the bill.

Not all the pipes made it, only the smaller ones that I could lift by myself, (the biggest pipes are absurdly heavy and made of lead), but enough to make a sizeable instrument. So I took it down, hauled it all the way from Jersey to the top secret party site near Gowanus, and assembled the pieces like IKEA furniture that doesn’t deserve to be tossed into a wood shipper.

The very, very beginning of the webcast and the beginning of the crowd:

Amanda Fucking Palmer (who shall further be referred to as AFP for short) and her crew dressed up in vintage swimsuits, hauled in a giant fish-tank like enclosure, hired a disco worth of DJ’s, and launched a full scale assault on the audience using basically every sort of bewitching performer possible.

Here’s a chunk of Fuse.TV’s account of the evening:

Palmer presided over her carnivalesque cabaret with her usual mix of punkish spontaneity and exacting control. She was surrounded by ecstatic fans, her band, author husband Neil Gaiman, people dressed like pirates, a fashion designer, a porn star friend (Stoya, who formerly dated Marilyn Manson) and a webcam which live streamed the whole fete for fans at home to watch.

She briefly serenaded the crowd with her trusty ukulele, then spent the next six hours emceeing the event. She introduced the entire cast of her cabaret to the crowd, from an organ player to magicians, a belly dancer to fire twirlers, whose short performances punctuated the focal point of the bash, which was an on-camera tribute to every one of the 24,883 people who donated to Palmer’s Kickstarter fund.

Inside a makeshift structure built from rusty pipes and see-through plastic film (it resembled a human aquarium—check it out below), Palmer and co. gathered stacks of telephone books with the name of every donor written out on each Yellow Page. While songs like Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life” and the Beatles’ “Money (That’s What I Want)” blared in the background, Palmer, her band and a group of volunteers tore out the pages and plastered the donors’ names on the static-y plastic for the ever-present webcam to capture.

By the end of the night, the bubble/aquarium was so full of crumpled Yellow Pages that two kids successfully played hide-and-seek in the pile of donor names.

My part in the whole affair started modestly, set up so people could play The Anywhere Organ with a little breathing room away from the crowd as the main event gained momentum.

Later on towards the end of the night, though, the Organ was moved to center stage and things got considerably more sensational.

Being introduced to the crowd (note the laptop being held up for the webcast):

Saying hello to the internet. Hi internet!

AFP and The Grand Theft Orchestra fiddling with The Anywhere Organ:

I demonstrated the instrument for a bit, explaining what it was and how to play. After the preliminary introductions AFP and the Grand Theft Orchestra had at it.

And then, after a cute kid came out of the audience to try it..

I got to play one of my own songs!

It was really fun.

I had also near infinite help from Numidas Prasarn of Numi Empire. She helped set up, introduce people to the instrument, haul pipes, and was generally the awesomest thing imaginable. And thanks also to a friend of mine, W. Aaron Waychoff, a fabulous artist as well, who came in from Boston.

Click HERE for a complete three hour Livestream video of the AFP Countdown party. The Anywhere Organ starts at two hours and twenty minutes in.

Kickstarter Stuff & Things: Anywhere Organ t-shirts and engraved leather cuffs

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 11:28:55 -0400

Everyone who pledged $50 or more to the Anywhere Organ Kickstarter was sent either an exclusive steampunk story by G.D. Falksen (which I’ll cover in a future post) or a t-shirt screen-printed with the logo of the Anywhere Organ. $150 got you a laser engraved leather cuff with the same snazzy design as the tees.

Because I’ve illustrated a bunch of different logos over the years, I’ve built up a stupidly massive catalogue of design elements. So when it came to make the logo for the Anywhere Organ, I began by sifting through my library/pile, looking over all of the different things I’ve drawn, trying to get a feel for what an Anywhere Organ logo should look like. As a nod to the history of the instrument, I wanted the Anywhere Organ logo to seem a little old-fashioned, so I started putting together deco elements, things with some character and antique charm.

Once I decided on the underlying look of the design, the next step was figuring out how the pieces should fit together. This involved a lot of re-illustrating finicky details (like the angle of the shading on the pipes) and rearranging and replacing elements until everything resonated and it felt correct. Eventually the layout took shape, along with the larger context. This in-progress image shows some of the possibilities I explored while designing the final logo.

(You can also see a bit of the Anywhere Organ Pendant design in the upper left. I tend to try and keep related designs in the same document so I can keep them feeling consistent with one another.)

After the logo was finalized, I sent one of the finished image to be made into t-shirts. They were printed by an indie clothing printing company named Dogwig, the same establishment that screenprints the infamous Anonymous Bandanas for Sleek & Destroy.

The cuffs required a bit more work. I had to make certain the logo would scale well when etched into leather. This involved a little bit of tweaking and adjusting details. I also had to craft a pattern in Illustrator, like a sewing pattern, to determine the shape of the bracelet (not too far off from the techniques I used to make my Steampunk Goggles). The finished digital designs were then uploaded to Ponoko, a digital manufacturing site that prints 3D parts and laser-cuts designs into materials like leather, plastic, and felt. After about a month I recieved a batch of beautiful auburn leather pieces in the mail, all cut and etched, because this is the future and you can just do stuff like that now.

As soon the leather was delivered, I conditioned and oiled the cuffs, stitched them together, added the fastenings, and then mailed them off.

I’m really pleased with how both the t-shirts and the cuffs came out. It’s especially great to see them in the wild. If you’re one of the clever, discerning, and totally hot people with Anywhere Organ gear, I’d love if you’d send me a picture of yourself wearing it! I’d like to make a post showing everyone off.

I also have a few shirts remaining from the printing run. I might be bringing them along to the next spot I show off the Anywhere Organ.

Victory! And some other things.

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:45:07 -0400

The last time I posted to the tumblr, the Anywhere Organ Kickstarter still had four days to go. I’m thrilled to share, from the other side of November 14, 2011, that it was a wonderful success!

So I wanted to start with a huge thank you, from the top to the bottom of my mechanical heart, to the audience and everyone who donated. Not only did we reach our goal, it went over budget at the very last minute, so extra thanks to the person who tossed in the extra dollar that pushed it up from $3000 to $3001. You’re fantastic. And another massive thank you to everyone (like Kickstarter) who blogged about the project, adding to the momentum like little snowflakes building into an especially bad-ass avalanche.

Since then I’ve been busy making and sending out all of the rewards listed on the Kickstarter page:

These fanciful limited edition laser cut Anywhere Organ pendants from Sleek and Destroy.

An exclusive short story written by G.D. Falksen that I printed out, artificially aged, and then sealed into envelopes with a custom wax seal.

Anywhere Organ t-shirts, mad-scientist certified as A+ awesome.

Sexy laser engraved Anywhere Organ leather cuffs.

Super stylish 3D printed metal Pipe Organ themed bottle openers.

And, finally, a set of epic 3D printed bronze Anywhere Organ themed knuckle dusters!

(Expect a more in-depth post on the fabrication of these items later!)

Donating to the Kickstarter also added your name to the backers list on the blog, like so: THE ANYWHERE ORGAN BRILLIANT BACKERS LIST OF STIMULATING, DELICIOUS PEOPLE.

All the rewards have been sent out, so if you haven’t received yours yet, e-mail me and I’ll make sure that you get it ASAP.

Sending off a cornucopia of fabulous stuff isn’t the only thing I’ve been doing in the intervening months. I’ve also been spending your money! A chunk of change just went to purchasing a proper organ blower (silent, powerful, and easy to transport [almost entirely unlike a wolverine]) and two new sets of pipes. Once the pipes arrive in a short while, they will triple the Anywhere Organ’s prototype size. Plus I’ve been taking the Organ out on adventures with people like Amanda “Fucking” Palmer!

Stay tuned to read more about that, as well as posts about the blower, the new pipes, science, sound, the science of sound, and the what makes an organ pipe work.

The Anywhere Organ made it to the Kickstarter blog! I was...

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:59:55 -0500

The Anywhere Organ made it to the Kickstarter blog! I was interviewed about the project, my thoughts on organs, and some fun technical stuff. You should give it a look.

Also, there are only 4 days left to go to raise the last $1000 for my Kickstarter. Please give it a look.

I’ve just released the source for the Anywhere Organ up on...

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:43:53 -0400

I’ve just released the source for the Anywhere Organ up on Thingiverse. I’ll be making modifications and alterations to the files as time goes by, but I wanted to have it out in the public domain even if it does have a kink or two.

The release includes laser-ready DXF’s, basic instructions and notes, and a RAR of all the SolidWorks files used to design and build the final sculpture.

If you like the work that’s been going on here, please donate to the Anywhere Organ Kickstarter. There’s just over a week left to donate and I need your support.

Here’s the video pitch for my ongoing Kickstarter....

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:00:05 -0400

Here’s the video pitch for my ongoing Kickstarter. I’m trying to raise enough money to triple the size of the Anywhere Organ in the next 6 months. http://kck.st/anywhereorgan

I couldn’t have made the vid without @willowbl00 as camerahuman extraordinaire and the Livingston Lancer Robotics Team #3415 on the keys. You guys are astoundingly cool.

The Anywhere Organ playing Bach’s Prelude #2 I’ve...

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 20:49:00 -0400

The Anywhere Organ playing Bach’s Prelude #2

I’ve got everything working smoothly and sounding fantastic just in time for World Maker Faire, NYC. Check out the kickstarter and help me make this the most impossible, incredible, gigantic mobile pipe organ ever - http://kck.st/anywhereorgan

The Anywhere Organ is going to World Maker Faire, NYC! I’m...

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:42:10 -0400

The Anywhere Organ is going to World Maker Faire, NYC! I’m so excited to be bringing the organ to this enormous event. I’ve got it working better than ever before and even have it hooked up to a keyboard so anyone can give it a try.

I’m also going to be featuring some delightfully geeky MIDI tunes and there’s a chance some friends might drop by with their own electronic instruments for a jam session. Keep on the lookout.

With Figment just a few weeks in the past I thought it was time...

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 21:02:00 -0400

With Figment just a few weeks in the past I thought it was time to do a wrapup on where things have gone, how far I’ve come, and what’s left to do.

Check out Sxip Shirey’s kicstarter while you’re about things.

I used some CC video and audio for this update and want to thank the people who provided it. The additional footage and music were instrumental to this video, and it would have been complete without them.

Video: skyline timelapse - Chuck Heron

Video: car timelapse - Michael Aschauer

Music: “Time is Wasting” by White Life - Ehse Records

The Anywhere Organ premieres at Figment, NYC!

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 03:48:41 -0400

Wow, this has been a long haul. After a year of trial and error, mucking about, and experimentation the Anywhere Organ has finally arrived. It premiered at Figment, NYC which spanned the entirety of Governer’s Island.

This version, which features seven laser cut wind chests each containing seven pipes, is driven by a MIDI controller pumping out i/o signals to my bank of 49 organ valves. For a portion of the event it was getting those signals from an Arduino using a program developed by myself and Matt Mets (of Makerbot fame). Once it started to drizzle I brought everything indoors and broke out the laptop to do some looping and more extensive MIDI stuff.

It’s been a wild ride. Now, it’s time to recoup, regroup, and start building the project out. It still needs some tweaking and fiddling to survive the kind of environments I’m hoping to put it in eventually. However, I’m ecstatic to have it out in the world and not hanging around my head any more.

Check out some more photos of the Anywhere Organ at Figment on Flickr.

After a week spent in Providence, picking up laser cut parts and...

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 02:07:26 -0500

After a week spent in Providence, picking up laser cut parts and visiting the local hackers around there, I finally got back to the shop and put the first working version of the Anywhere Organ together. This box of pipes represents 1/7 of the final sculpture.

I’m using a J-Omega MTP8 to control the valves from a midi signal. I’ve also got a USB to MIDI converter running from my laptop.

The housing was cut from 3/4” plywood drawn from a configuration based Solidworks model. Setting up all the 3d models correctly has been the biggest effort, but I’m pretty confident all the work will pay off when I’m cutting seven of these buggers out all at once.

My theme music is from the album “Don’t Touch My Chiptune”

You can check out progress shots of the whole thing going together on Flickr

Things are starting to come together as I mock up all the...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:58:11 -0400

Things are starting to come together as I mock up all the components that are going into the Anywhere Organ. So far I’ve tested the magnetic valves that will control the wind going into each of the organ pipes, and have gotten my MIDI system to turn piano key strokes into on and off signals. Next comes more design, some CAD, and a few long nights spent researching parts on Mcmaster Carr.

A little bit about pipes

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 02:20:00 -0400

I spent the afternoon dimensioning my new set of pipes to start mocking them up in CAD. It was really interesting putting together the data and seeing such a clear trend emerge. See that pretty parabola in blue down there? That curve more or less represents the volume of the air column in each pipe as it goes up in pitch. The less space there is for the air to pass through the closer the pattern of interference of air knocking around inside and the pipe produces a higher frequency sound as a result.

Wikipedia, which is my source for sounding well informed, has this handy formula to offer:

Essentially it means that the pitch of a pipe (F) is equal to the speed of sound (V) over twice the pipe length (L). Let’s work this out.

A small C note should be 130.81hz in an ideal universe. From my chart the C I’ve got is 58.5 inches long or 4.875 feet. That means my frequency equals 1130 fps / 2(4.875) or 116hz. That’s quite a bit off. It seems like my pipes aren’t tuned to precise eight foot pitch. Somehow my C2 is somewhere between A2 and B2 on the concert pitch scale. Further investigation is necessary. I might have to make sure there are options to change the tuning of the instrument if it’s interacting with other instruments or recorded tracks. It should be a pretty simple MIDI transpose.

For the moment I’m simply stoked I have pipes to play with.

I’ve got my hands on a set of forty or so Diapason pipes....

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 01:29:00 -0400

I’ve got my hands on a set of forty or so Diapason pipes. Diapasons are responsible for generating the classic celestial mystical pipe organ noise. Mine range from ten inches all the way up to four feet. I’m soon going to be running some tests on them to determine how much airflow I need and mocking up early prototypes for my air chamber. You can catch all the details at http://anywhereorgan.tumblr.com

Shea Velloso shows me through the workings of his own personal...

Mon, 17 May 2010 23:11:42 -0400

Shea Velloso shows me through the workings of his own personal pipe organ over at United Methodist Church in Milltown, NJ.

I just got funding from the Awesome Foundation! They gave me...

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:09:00 -0500

I just got funding from the Awesome Foundation! They gave me $1000 in a brown paper bag to get cracking on the Anywhere Organ. W00t! The awesome foundation is composed of several groups of micro trustees across the country. Each trustee chips in to give out a thousand dollars each month to a different awesome project. They chose me as their March grant winner and I am incredibly honored.

Here’s the impromptu speech I gave upon receiving funding for the Anywhere Organ. I hope they get more submissions and more trustees and can keep expanding to other cities. They’re already in Providence, Boston, and NYC.

You can also check out photos from the foundation’s award party here.

Pipe organs are incredible, awesome instruments. One incredible...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:44:04 -0500

Pipe organs are incredible, awesome instruments. One incredible aspect that contributes to their awesomeness is their ability to play a space. Each space an organ resides in reacts differently, creating different tones, and essentially allowing room for an infinite variety of instruments. Unfortunately nearly every pipe organ in existence is bolted irrevocably into a wall staring longingly at fornications all day. This is why I’m creating the Anywhere Organ.

I’ve designed a system where each note, each pipe of a pipe organ is attached to a central air supply through a hose. The air to each organ pipe is controlled by a solenoid valve articulated through Arduino. I’m writing modules to take MIDI keyboard information and translate it to the valves. Each hose is independent making for an octopus like instrument where each separate pipe can be installed with care and consideration relative to the space. This means the instrument can be installed anywhere; a park, a fire escape, an abandoned warehouse, a secret underwater cave. The pipes can be distributed to take advantage each location’s specific character and personality. It also means that anyone can participate in the project and take a turn. I’d like to get people playing with the Anywhere Organ so they can see the effect space has on music and sound, so they have a public venue to fool around with music, and to have an opportunity to collaborate with other musical artists to create new sounds with it.

Churches are switching over to digital music. This means they’re saving the expense of cleaning, tuning, and clearing dead pigeons out of organ pipes. It’s sad to see such a cool instrument phased out for the sake of cost and convenience but it’s inevitable. This also means that there are entire registers of pipes for sale on Ebay for a song. I’m slowly buying these up. I’m also reaching out to the awesome music and hacking scene in Brooklyn to begin finding collaborators who want to help create new music with the system and help me find amazing venues to install the project in.