Hardware Hack Night: Audio Inspiration from Roland Founder Ikutaro Kakehashi
While nowadays in San Francisco it's fashionable to believe that tech companies should value the liberal arts, this wasn't the case when Roland founder and MIDI music inventor Ikutaro Kakehashi was a young orphan in Japan.
Rejected by engineering school because of his poor health and lacking any formal music education, he survived tuberculosis, his home bombing and great challenges to pursue his passion for music and create the musical synthesizers that would change the world forever!
From techno to hip hop, his inventions and products made musical compositions on electronics accessible to everyone.
As we saw in our Women Pioneers of Electronic music evenings on Mondays, electronic music equipment used to be large and difficult to access. Roland changed all that by making it small enough to carry around to street parties and home recording studios.
Also younger people may not realize it, but early electronic music in the United States was driven by African American underground music in Chicago and Detroit, and the Roland machines played a huge influence on the raves that would spread to Berlin and the rest of the world! (all hail Detroit techno!)
It's really wild to think that someone from that time could pursue music with such intensity and even engineering despite being rejected by formal schooling. Talk about the power of determination and self education!
The Egyptian Lover with a Roland (Guardian)
HACK ON ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING
○ Projects: can range from building course materials for teaching local kids electronics to a robotic arm that draws, to light projection art, to people building their own microchip boards! We provide the space, tools and peer learning – you bring your project and enthusiasm!
○ Group Sewing: Learn to do simple mending or get help with technical fabric and textile projects. In addition to regular machines our Sewing Lab features heavy-duty industrial sewing machines and sergers. Our in house sewing guru CC has worked for Academy or Art College, Tesla, SuitX, and Zipline and has vast sewing machine repair and maintenance experience; bring your own machine to tune up for tip-top operation and sew alongside others.
○ General Repair: Fix it Clinic’s weekly Oakland residency: bring your broken, non-functioning things – electronic gadgets, appliances, computers, toys, sewing machines, fabric items, etc.– for assessment, disassembly, and possible repair. We’ll provide workspace, specialty tools, and guidance to help you disassemble and troubleshoot your item. First-time repairers and “Fixing Families” are heartily invited. Learn more at https://www.fixitclinic.org/
https://sudoroom.org/wiki/HardwareHackNight