Build your own Stylophone, be slightly more like David Bowie
By Nilay Patel 
posted Feb 4th 2008 1:42PM
posted Feb 4th 2008 1:42PM
[Via MAKE]
posted Feb 4th 2008 1:42PM
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The school network is restricting me from watching!:(
Maybe it's because you should be learning ;)
learnin' is for chumps, like reeding and riteing.....
you could always go around the block...it isnt THAT hard.
Little fat man who sold his soul,
Little fat man who sold his dream...
He sold his soul for a sylophone...
...and this is what then came...
I see what you did there! Best Extras reference ever.
You don't NEED a synth. You could just make an ultra-simple squarewave oscillator and make the traces connect different capacitors for pitch control. You just need to know yer maths to git-r-accomplished.
Sigh.... Gail.
Oh, where was I?
Oh yeah... While seeing how to build this is cool, I would have to say that any musician that does this needs a pimp slap. Bowie's the innovator. It's his toy. If you pick it up, you're a poser and a copycat following a greater man.
Make your own damn instrument and be unique.
I suggest something you can play with your nipples. That might be cool.
ZeroCorpse, please chill out.
If you listen to any band that uses guitar, bass, drums, vocals, or keyboards you shouldn't be talking.
No, I agree with Zero here. I'm in the underground music scene, and while my band plays with the usual rigs, I am friends with a few souls who go out there and try to be innovative in the spirit of Bowie and those that came after him. For them, using HIS toy would be entirely unthinkable. They are busy building and designing and/or altering their own instruments. I mean, if you want to build something like Bowie's Stylophone just for fun, great, but I don't think anyone who's seriously trying to make music and be innovative in a DIY sense is going to gain anything from this.
Holy crap.... You DO realize that David Bowie didn't make it, right? Brian Jarvis created it. David Bowie went out and bought the freakin' thing - guess that makes him a poser in your eyes, no? Bowie's innovation was in the music - maybe your band should be concentrating on that rather than being inspired by a misconception about good ol' Bowie over here.
PS - Referring to your musician friends as "souls" does not give you innovative underground musician scene points. In the future, please refer to them as "cool cats" - that gives you at least 4 points.
Hold on, it was Rolf Harris that used it first. Does that mean that he's the real innovator and Bowie is just a copycat?
"If you pick it up, you're a poser" -- Or else you just like how it sounds. Not everything needs to be innovative; otherwise, we'd all be experimenting with, say, 71-tone scales. Maybe someone who wants to sound like Bowie, but say different things. Or maybe someone heard what Bowie did with it and realized they could get a completely different sound out of it.
I still have my old Dubreq Stylophone! That thing sounded like crap and ate 9V batteries for breakfast, but it was fun. They used to be quite popular in the UK back in the '70s.
Oh wow! I checked out the video, and Bowie uses the same Stylophone I have! Cool! Might be worth something on ebay :)
I bought a Stylophone off eBay a couple of years ago. What load of old shit.
Gimme Hands!
The Elektor magazine published a 'chorosynth', in the 80's. It's a souped up version of a stylophone.
I found a scan of the French magazine pages here: http://yusynth.net/archives/index.html . Search for 'chorosynth' on the page.