Music
5 incredible instruments built at Buzz Jam
Part jam session, part hackathon, it’s the networking event that’s connecting musicians with coders to design the music tools of the future.
What will music sound like in the future? It’s an open-ended question, but if anyone knows the answer, it’s probably the people behind Buzz Jam. Founded a couple of years ago by the professional network Young Guns, it’s a pioneering networking event and ideas factory run out of Red Bull Studios London that pairs up musicians with coders to invent brand new musical instruments that look like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
“It's the first hack event where artists and coders have directly collaborated,” says Buzz Jam founder Sam Potts. “We wanted to challenge the notion that coding was geeks standing in front of computers looking at 1s and 0s when in fact there's a whole generation of computer programmers doing really creative things with code. When a writer or musician sits in front of a blank page and starts writing music or lyrics, it's pretty much the same thing as when a coder sits in front of a blank screen with a blinking cursor and starts writing code. Buzz Jam is about fusing those two artforms together and exploring what can come out.”
Read on as Sam walks us through some of the amazing instruments that have come out of Buzz Jam so far.
1. TATTOO PERFORMANCE CONTROLLER
Played by: Nimmo
The band Nimmo worked with coder Adam John Williams, who painted tattoos onto their arms using a conductive paint. The paint was responsive to touch, and connected to a computer, meaning they could control what was on the computer by touching their arms in a different way… you could trigger or control synths, or samples, or whatever you need. It’s a biohack, basically – essentially it’s about making the human arm into an instrument. To my knowledge this is the first time music has been made in that way.
2. THE SAMPLE SHIRT
Played by: Tom Walker
Tom worked with coder Brandon Hawkes to make this shirt, which is essentially a wearable synth. Pads were sewn onto a shirt using conductive thread, which Tom could then use to manipulate sounds on a computer by touching different parts of the shirt. You could assign pretty much any electronic instrument to it – a MIDI piano, a drum machine, whatever you wanted.
3. THE BLADE
Them & Us play Blade, a chiptune keytar
© Jack Henry Bridgland
Played by: Them & Us
This was built at Buzz Jam 2015 by three coders, Sam Wray, Sidd Vadgama and Greig Stewart. It was essentially a double-headed keytar powered by two Nintendo Game Boys. It had a sort of chiptune-y '80s sound, and it looked incredible, all covered in multicoloured lights.
4. THE LOOSE LOOP
Played by: My Panda Shall Fly
This was an app made for iPhone – it was basically a random generative looper, meaning Suren could run certain sounds and signals from his live show through it and then mess around with them, meaning they come out in a different way every time. It differs from some other stuff at Buzz Jam in that it’s portable, totally handheld. I know he’s played out with it since.
5. VIOLET'S VISUAL ORCHESTRATOR
Violet's Visual Orchestrator
© Buzz Jam
Played by: Violet Skies
This was made by We Make Awesome Shit – they're our tech partners in Buzz Jam, they're basically an agency of developers and hackers, and they're probably the best in the business. This one was made with a hacked Xbox Connect sensor, one of the ones that sits on top of the TV. Violet is quite an ethereal artist, quite floaty, and she would move around on stage making gestures which were then translated into music.
Follow Buzz Jam on Twitter at @buzzjam
Check out more great premieres, stories and videos at RedBull.com/Music
Like Red Bull Music on Facebook and follow Red Bull UK on Twitter at @RedBullUK