Frozen Rain Chain

My mom gave us a rain chain for Christmas. I hung it from one of the downspouts on the house recently. A few days later the temperature dropped again, and over the next few days it becamse quite thick with ice. There are photos of it in the photo gallery here.

Video of Monodeck II

Here’s a rather poorly shot video of Robert Henke playing his Monodeck II:

It’s too bad that the camera operator doesn’t figure out until the last minute that all he really needs to do is point the camera straight down at the thing, but still, it’s an exciting look at one of the most impressive DIY music electronics projects that I know of. Robert mentions on his site that there’s more video forthcoming.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Robert Henke is one of the founding, and now sole, members of the minimal-techno electronic music act Monolake. The other member was Gerhard Behles; Gerhard left Monolake to write Live, which has become an extremely successful digital-audio workstation application. Live is also my favorite host application for developing and testing Audio Damage plug-ins, and I listen to a fair amount of Monolake while doing so. The Monodeck II is a one-of-a-kind hardware control surface designed and built by Robert and some of his friends for doing live performances with Live. read more