Bamanya Brian from Uganda wanted to explore modular synthesis – so he turned his electronics skills to making the instruments he needed himself. The gear is DIY; the resulting music is irresistible.
Brian is actually here in Berlin right now, playing tonight at HAU2 (if you’re at CTM Festival), and participating in our Musicmakers Hacklab Sunday at Radialsystem. That has me … quite busy, so I’ll resort to some copy-paste here, but of course Brian, you’re welcome to go on at length whenever you like! The Afrorack modular itself is in our rehearsal studio and its electronic grooving tones are interweaving with jams and collaborations in our group. In his solo work, Afrorack is making unique, homebrewed techno, but also more complex polyrhythmic compositions and ambient drones, too.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
