Guillermo Galindo plays the Maiz, his home-brewed synthesizer.
SAN MATEO, California — Sick of over-produced, souped-up, sample-heavy pop songs?
So is Oakland musician Guillermo Galindo, which is exactly why he built the Maiz, a makeshift synthesizer that creates simple sounds and records them.
"I wanted to create music that is based on physical sounds," said Galindo. "Not based on artificial effects."
Galindo repurposed household items like an old wine crate and deactivated credit cards to build the basic structure of the Maiz. A simple motor rigged to a motion sensor spins a disk on the device, which produces vibrations and tremors that are recorded and amplified by a computer.
Galindo loops those recordings and layers them with vocals to create warbling, ghostly-like tunes.
He’s currently working on a CD that he expects to put out later this year; listen to a short sample of his music in the video above.
Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
