You can get some very interesting sounds by plugging a cheap mic into a
guitar amp, turning on the distortion, then running a cord from the external
speaker jack on the guitar amp to the mic input on a stereo that has any
sort of karaoke options. Not sure if other equipment will get the same
results, but i used a cheap radio shack mic, fender champion 110 75 watt
amp, and an aiwa stereo system.
You can also get some interesting and very expressive sounds by tieing the
ends of guitar strings to some sort of solid object and playing it thusly.
There is guy here in baltimore named Niel Feather who makes some really
amazing instruments. He has this one that looks sort of like an electric
mandolin connected to an excersize bike. It's amazing. There was actually an
experimental instruments a couple days ago at the redroom (www.redroom.org)
that i would have loved to go to if i weren't moving in to my dorm. Oh well.
> on this note (so to speak), does anyone know where i might be able to find
> a cheap tone generator, or possibly something that creates random noise
for
> testing phone equipment, etc...if anything like that even exists?
One way to generate tones is to download some sort of wave editing software
(i use cool edit pro, i'm sure you could find it for free on an ftp search)
and zoom in as close as possible and loop it. You can change the tone by
making the section that you're looping larger and smaller. Programs like
that also have lots of interesting filters as well.
- nick
www.futard.com
