Organic Instruments release Ukulele  Organic Instruments have added another instrument to their growing software collection, this time carefully sampling a ukulele.

French startup ten ten finds viral success and controversy in reinventing walkie-talkiesLess than one year after its iOS launch, French startup ten ten has gone viral with a walkie talkie app that allows teens to send voice messages to their close friends — even when their phone is locked. 
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US Navy launches ‘PARANOID’ blockchain security tech to private sectorThe government seeks a collaboration to research and develop the technology further.

Songwriter Profile with the Amazing Peter RaffoulPeter Raffoul’s destiny was almost inevitable, but he took his time deciding to pursue music professionally. With father Jody Raffoul and older brother Billy both well-established musicians, Raffoul loved the idea of performing but wanted to be certain it was what he wanted before jumping in. Growing up around great songwriters, with evidence of success watching his dad and brother in the business, Raffoul says he feels very fortunate to have had a great roadmap and solid support.

First dabbling with drums at age 11, Raffoul’s parents split when he was a teenager and he inherited a garden shed (originally an art studio), where he first began playing the keyboard. Creating licks and melody lines, he admits, “I never knew less than I did then. I was just playing little chords and had no idea what I wanted anything to sound like.”

Writing his music at night also started as a teen. “I think it's harder to ignore whatever it is that you're going through at night. I got into this rhythm where it feels better to go on spurts of inspiration.” Starting with basic piano lessons to learn some chords, he added guitar over the last five years (which he plays upside down as a leftie, insisting on playing a right-handed guitar like older brother Billy).

In retrospect, Raffoul recognizes that he had always been paying attention and was intrigued in the evolution of songs and artists. Taking time to study songwriting structure, Raffoul remains mindful of the creative process, sharing that when you hear a great song that you wish you had written, it often comes down to a simple concept or just two chords. “They sang it just like it was, and it's heart,” he says. “Self-expression in a very simple way usually wins the day.”

While he starts with the melody and chord structure, his writing process is constantly changing. “There’s peaks and valleys when things feel like they're being forced, but I've gotten a lot out of just doing it as I feel it,” admits Raffoul. He recommends recording ideas as memos on your phone. Starting with a small melody or lick, Raffoul sings nonsense sounds over chords to see what lands.

“When I’m humming a melody long enough, or wake up the next day and still remember it, that's cool. I don’t get precious about things. If you latch on to every single thing, you'll beat it into the ground and feel less enthusiastic because you put too much value on something too soon.” Great music happens for Raffoul when he finds himself hearing a song as a listener, not a critic or musician, being captivated by the feeling throughout, rather than pulled into the song’s process or structure.

Starting out playing three 40-minute sets of covers a night before adding in originals, Raffoul says that his momentum to date has come down to the very blue-collar ‘you get out of what you put into it’ attitude handed down from his dad. “

Every day, week, and month, rent's due on this stuff,” he says. “You have to be doing the work. If you don't love it at face value, don't still feel like you're enjoying it when playing, you have to get back to that. That's the only real center of it. Everything else is borrowed, not guaranteed.” Even if you get signed to a label, Raffoul says not to expect to be taken care of, or buy into false confidence: “It all comes from you.”

Surprised at the catharsis and intrigue that his more intimate, emotional songs have garnered (“Don’t Hold On” and “For You”), Raffoul says, “I get to be myself at such a raw level and get to share, unfiltered. The worst thing that can happen is people won't listen, but the best is you can make somebody feel like you're with them when you play.”

2022’s Songs From House In Blue has a follow-up in the works, slated for release later this year. Catch Peter Raffoul at his CMW show, June 4 at Rivoli. Tickets at ticketweb.ca.

Contact Valle Music Management, andrew@vallemusicmgmt.com; 

Experience Peter Raffoul at peterraffoul.comThe post Songwriter Profile with the Amazing Peter Raffoul first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Make a Super Cute LiDAR Measurement ModuleThis ultra-cute tiny LiDAR rangefinder project by [gokux] can be thought of as a love letter to the incredible resources and components hobbyists and hackers of all types have access to nowadays. In fact, it all stemmed from coming across a miniscule half-inch 64×32 OLED display module that was simply too slick to pass up.
USB connector for charging on the bottom, hole for distance sensor out the top.
To use it, one simply powers it on and the display will read out the distance in millimeters. The VL53L0X time-of-flight sensor inside works by sending out a laser pulse and measuring how long it takes for the pulse to bounce back. We hope you’re curious about what such a sensor looks like on the inside, because here’s a nifty teardown of these fantastic devices. The device can technically measure distances of up to 2 m, but [gokux] says accuracy drops off after 1 m.
The main components besides the OLED display and VL53L0X sensor are an ESP32-C3 board (which handily integrates battery charging circuitry), 3D-printed enclosure, tiny rechargeable battery, and power switch. The whole thing is under one cubic inch. Not bad, and it even makes a passable keychain. Parts list, code, and 3D model files, including STEP format, are all available if you’d like to spend an afternoon making your own.

2024 Business Card Challenge: Snakes On a Business CardOnce [Lambert the Maker] saw the Arduboy, he knew the thing was ripe for remixing into a business card with an 8×8 LED matrix instead of an OLED screen. [Lambert] already has a PCB business card for work, but it looks like it doesn’t do anything. So this Snake-playing card is for their personal information.
The brains of this operation is an STM32F0, which required a bit of finesse when it came to programming the LEDs. According to the datasheet, the max current through a given GPIO pin is 30 mA. The LEDs are running at 20 mA through the limiting resistor, so the code only turns on one LED at a time and makes sure the previous one is off first. The whole screen is updated every 125 ms, and persistence of vision takes care of making the animation look right.
In the short videos after the break, you’ll see a preview followed by brief videos on versions one and two. The prototype was built in 2020, when the board house only offered green PCBs with their assembly service. Fast forward to 2024, when the board house is now offering colors other than green.
Version two is actually thinner than a credit card, and features tiny buttons instead of cap-sense pads for input. [Lambert] also added a floating ADC pin that acts as a random number generator, placing the apple in a new location every time the game is powered on.

Getting It Done: Last Week in D.I.Y. & Indie MusicThis week, our tips and advice for independent, do-it-yourselfers covered how to book bigger and better gigs, crucial Spotify stats, and more.....
The post Getting It Done: Last Week in D.I.Y. & Indie Music appeared first on Hypebot.

REWIND: The new music industry’s last week in reviewIt was a busy week by any definition, and the music industry was no exception. Live Nation filed a class action lawsuit, Ticketmaster was hacked, and more.
The post REWIND: The new music industry’s last week in review appeared first on Hypebot.

Dekoni Audio recreate Audeze Vegan earpads Dekoni Audio have recreated the popular Vegan earpads that have been out of production for nearly a decade.

Ether ETFs expected in June, CZ leaves Binance France, and other news: Hodler’s Digest, May 26 – June 1Analysts predict ETH ETF’s launch for June, Bitcoin dips as Mt. Gox wallets move, and Binance France changes ownership.

Fisker collapsed under the weight of its founder’s promisesWelcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Over the past eight years, famed vehicle designer Henrik Fisker suggested his EV startup would deliver on a lot of promises, but none came true. As Fisker looks for an […]
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Signing Story with the Amazing Logan LynnDate Signed: August 18, 2021

Label: Kill Rock Stars

Type of Music: Indie punk

Legal: Kill Rock Stars LLC

Publicity: Sarah Avrin of Charm School Media - sarah.avrin@charmschoolmedia.com

Web: loganlynnmusic.com 

A&R: Slim Moon

Why on earth would Logan Lynn, a newcomer who developed a strong buzz in artist-friendly Portland — home to the Decemberists, Chromatics and loads more bands — relocate to Boise, where Built to Spill is the only group to have achieved at least some national recognition? The answer may surprise you, because it wasn’t just for a paycheck.

Lynn, a self-described “Queer indie punk,” noted the cost of living is cheaper in Boise and that competition for time slots in a city oversaturated with aspiring artists isn’t as fierce.

“I wanted to get away from the loudness and the wildness,” said Lynn, a 40-something artist who already has 10 studio records to his name. “I [may have] overcorrected, but… the music scene here is really hungry [for new talent], and there’s a strong youth culture too.”

Lynn added that his affection for Treefort Music Fest, Idaho’s hippest annual music festival, also caught his fancy. As it so happens, KRS has a ubiquitous presence at the five-day event every year.

Of all the factors that went into Lynn’s decision-making when looking for a new label, finding one with a long track record of supporting gay artists was of the utmost importance.

After the multifaceted Lynn directed and released a 2018 movie called Nothing’s Ever Wrong, he became a target of homophobic harassment. Even though it was only a short film, Lynn and co-star Jay Mohr appearing nude in Nothing’s Ever Wrong, spurred him to fight even harder for gay rights.

Lynn doesn’t know of any label that champions gay artists more than KRS. He’s not sure when he’ll release his first release for the label and the follow-up to 2022’s New Money. In fact, it’s not his top priority, as he continues to get settled in to a new city and record label.

“The people who founded [KRS] are queer, but to become an explicitly gay label… and to have a team that believes in me and actually tries to help [its roster of musicians] is radical. Joining Kill Rock Stars absolutely changed my life.” The post Signing Story with the Amazing Logan Lynn first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

An Ingenious Blu-Ray Mini-Disk Player[befi] brings us a project as impressive as it is reminiscent of older times, a Blu-Ray mini disk player. Easily fitting inside a pocket like a 8 cm CD player would, this is a labour of love and, thanks to [befi]’s skills both in electronics and in using a dremel tool.
A BluRay drive was taken apart, for a start, and a lot of case parts were cut off; somehow, [befi] made it fit within an exceptionally tiny footprint, getting new structural parts printed instead, to a new size. The space savings let him put a fully custom F1C100S-powered board with a number of unique features, from a USB-SATA chip to talk to the BluRay drive, to USB pathway control for making sure the player can do USB gadget mode when desired.
There’s an OLED screen on the side, buttons for controlling the playback, power and battery management – this player is built to a high standard, ready for day-to-day use as your companion, in the world where leaving your smartphone as uninvolved in your life as possible is a surprisingly wise decision. As a fun aside, did you know that while 8 cm CDs and DVDs existed, 8 cm BluRay drives never made it to market? If you’re wondering how is it that [befi] has disks to play in this device, yes, he’s used a dremel here too.
Everything is open-sourced – 3D print files, the F1C100S board, and the Buildroot distribution complete with all the custom software used. If you want to build such a player, and we wouldn’t be surprised if you were, there’s more than enough resources for you to go off. And, if you’re thinking of building something else in a similar way, the Buildroot image will be hugely helpful.
Want some entertainment instead? Watch the video embedded below, the build journey is full of things you never knew you wanted to learn. This player is definitely a shining star on the dark path that is Blu-Ray, given that our most popular articles on Blu-Ray are about its problems.

Take Control of MS Flight Sim With Your SmartphoneAnyone with more than a passing interest in flight simulators will eventually want to upgrade their experience with a HOTAS (Hands On Throttle-And-Stick) setup that has buttons and switches for controlling your virtual aircraft’s assorted systems, which are well supported by games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS). But a traditional HOTAS system can be a bit of an investment, so you might want to thank [Vaibhav Sharma] for the virtualHOTAS project that brings a configurable HOTAS interface to your phone — just in time to try out that Dune expansion for MSFS.
The phone’s orientation sensors are used as a joystick, and on the screen, there’s both sliders and buttons you can use as in-game controls. On the back-end there’s a Python program on the computer which exposes a webserver that the phone connects to, translating sensor and press data without the need for an app. This works wonderfully in MSFS, as [Vaibhav] shows us in the video below. What’s more, if you get tired of the touchscreen-and-accelerometer controls, you can even connect a generic smartphone-designed game controller platform, to have its commands and movements be translated to your PC too!
All the code is open source, and with the way this project operates, it will likely work as a general-purpose interface for other projects of yours. Whether you might want to build an accessibility controller from its codebase, use it for your robot platform, maybe simply repurpose this project for any other game, [Vaibhav]’s creation is yet another reminder that we’re carrying a sensor-packed platform, and it might just help you build a peripheral you didn’t know you needed.
Don’t have a phone handy? Perhaps an Xbox controller could work with just a few 3D printed upgrades, or you could stock up on buttons and build your own joystick from scratch. Oh, and keeping HOTAS principles in mind can be pretty helpful — you might get to redesign the venerable computer mouse, for instance!

Reason 13 open beta now live Reason Studios are inviting users to sign up for access to the open beta of Reason 13.