£50. I want one!

More details on the BugBrand Blog

“If HAL 9000 mated with R2-D2 and their electronic offspring was tutored by Kraftwerk it would probably end up something like the Bliptronic 5000 LED Synthesizer.” —Think Geek’s Crack Marketing Team

The Think Geek Bliptronic 5000 costs a mere $49 bucks and is available now. More information on the Think Geek Bliptronic 5000.

I want one of these! Anyone care to buy me one for Christmas?

Great programme overall, though of course there were a few "why did/didn't they include so-and-so?" type quibbles.

Friday, 21:00 on BBC Four

Kaossilator 9x5 Design: (right click on picture and save to your desktop)

Mini-KP 8x8 Design: (right click on picture and save to your desktop)

Both of the designs above can fit in either the Korg Kaossilator, or the Korg Mini-KP, but the 9x5 grid is designed for the Kaossilator because of the 45 possible symbols that show in the Kaossilators display, and the 8x8 grid is based on the display of the Mini-KP.

As someone has commented on this blog, there is a diagnostic mode that you can enter on the Kaossilator which shows a display like the Mini-KP, displaying 8x8. So some people might want to try out the 8x8 grid in their Kaossilator. There is a video that 3amsleep has done on Youtube showing how you can get into this diagnostic mode:

Here is how to make your own grid in picture instructions! What fun...

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Watch my video about taking it all apart:

Why have I done this?

Well although I found that I could play nice little melodies on the touch pad, when I tried to reproduce them it was very difficult because the touch pad is just a blank black shape with no reference points on it to tell you where the notes you selected were.

So I have designed a grid that I have printed onto clear plastic, which can fitted over the touch pad. With this fitted you can still play the Kaossilator in the same way as normal, but now you have points of reference on the touch pad, making it easier to recreate melodies and remember locations of particular notes.

The 9 by 5 grid I have used is based upon the fact that the Kaossilator display shows 9 different symbols when you move across the touch pad horizontally, and 5 different symbols when you move down the touch pad vertically, giving 45 possible symbols in the display. Within each square and between squares there are note variations, and this variation is dependant on the scale that you have selected withing the Kaossilator, so the grid should be seen as a way of remembering where notes you are playing are located, as opposed to a specific square for each note.

In order to fit one of these properly you will need to open up your Kaossilator and therefore invalidate the warranty. Alternatively if you do not want to open up your Kaossilator you can just cut your grid to fit the touch pad and sit it on top, but obviously it will not stay put and will slide about.

Properly fitting it is quite simple, but care should be taken not to damage the electronics inside the device. Below is a video showing how to fit it.

This modification can also be made to the Korg Mini-KP Kaoss Pad, and fitting it to the Mini-KP is exactly the same as fitting it to the Kaossilator.

All you need to do is save one of the designs above to your desktop, print it out, drag the image into an open word processing text document (I use OpenOffice), and print it onto a bit of transparency film. I use an old inkjet printer, and you can buy transparency film for inkjets and it works fine. If you make sure the printed side is faced down on the touch pad when you fit it this will also ensure that you don't rub off the design.

You will also have to trim a tiny bit off the bottom left hand corner (nearest the K) so that it does not get in the way of the Gate/Arp Type LED.

That's it basically. Let me know if you have any questions, suggestions or requests.

As you can probably tell I'm not a natural blogger, and I'm not sure I have the patience to get into this whole area of blog design, so this will have to do for now. I might add some stuff at another time.

Cheers, TJ