rarebeasts

Apart from creating and selling things on Etsy I also contribute articles to a magazine called Make, often writing how-to articles about products from my Etsy store. Because I work from home it allows me time to look after my two kids (we get to make lots of cool projects) and I also play in a band called CupAndBow that makes music using the instruments that I create and build.

I've always liked music and electronics so I find my inspiration from marrying those two interests. I find that many mass produced electronic instruments are too complicated with menu systems forcing you to reach for the instructions every time you want to play, so I wanted to design simple instruments that do one simple task, that anyone could pickup and start playing.

I find inspiration from many places but I do have to give credit to those old electronics kits you could buy, that taught you the basics of electronics. Credit also goes to great sites like makezine.com and instructables.com that have an amazing community of creative people contributing to them.

I've been tinkering and pulling things apart since I was very little but I've only really been designing original instruments since I made a piece for my daughter's 1st birthday called the R-Tronic, it was a simple step sequencer that uses shapes to put sounds into a sequence that makes up a little song.

Sometimes a new design will come from a need to make a certain sound or find a new way to play an instrument, for example my Wicks Looper allows you puts sounds into a loop using a rotary control rather then a sequence of button presses. But sometimes its just a matter of playing around with new circuits and finding that crazy sound completely by accident.

I hope in the future I'll still be making new instrument designs and I hope to expand my production of electronics kits that will teach a new generation about how to make their own products and have fun making music with electronics at the same time.