Here is an interesting video I found on Retrothing.com featuring the great sound designer and composer, Diego Stocco. Check out the TypoSonic – a custom built musical typewriter. Diego says, “I made this instrument by taking apart parts of an old typewriter and then adding a new mechanism, bass strings and mechanics and a sound board.” The thing sounds simply amazing and we wanted to share it with you.
Originally posted on Retrothing.com
Bio on Diego Stocco
Diego Stocco was born in Rovigo, Italy in 1976. He discovered music at the age of 6 when his parents, hoping to calm him down, gave him his first electronic keyboard. That might have backfired!
Diego is a sound designer, composer and performer that creates eclectic musical experiences with custom built instruments and experimental recording techniques. Diego loves discovering hidden sounds from organic sources, objects and materials, his unorthodox musical curiosity allows him to produce music with sounds never heard before.
Diego has found several ways to channel his unique approach into the music universe. As a key Producer for Spectrasonics, he’s one of the principal creative sound designers for the multi Award winning virtual instruments AtmosphereTM, StylusTM RMX and the new Power Synth Omnisphere®. For this epic project, he built several custom instruments and created playable sounds out of ordinary objects like light bulbs, pieces of furnitures, a washing machine, a clothes drying rack, a typewriter, and many others imaginative contraptions.
Diego created for Epic Score/APM the first 3 volumes of the”Epic Textures” series, which have been licensed for numerous marketing campaigns including film trailers like “Terminator : Salvation”, “2012”, “Eagle Eye”, “The Uninvited”, “Lady in the Water”, videogame trailers like “Justice League Heroes”, “Soulcalibur IV”, “MK vs DC, “Call of Duty, World at War”, TV shows like “Dexter”, “Daily Show”, “Cold Case” and many other promos.
His exploration for new sounds doesn’t stop there, he created music by sound designing his own piano performances for the album “Cold Cornflakes, Suite for Unprepared Piano” and extracted evocative sounds from sources like sand for his work “Music From Sand”. Diego created “Music from a Tree” and “Music from a Bonsai” where he played organic sounding compositions out of actual trees, and compositions performed with his own custom built instruments like “Experibass” and “Bassoforte”.
Diego Stocco and his Experibass
Diego also collaborated with legendary producer and songwriter Patrick Leonard. DTS wanted them to create the first musical project mixed with Neo:X, their new 11.1 surround sound system.
Diego was able to bring his vision for music and sounds also into films, tv shows and video games. He collaborate with Composer Paul Haslinger on films “Into the Blue”, “Crank”, “Takers, and with Emmy® Award winning Composer Trevor Morris for Showtimes’ “The Tudors” and CBS’ “Moonlight”. He created the score for High Voltage Software’s “The Conduit”, a futuristic FPS for the Nintendo Wii distributed by SEGA. Also for this soundtrack, he shaped intense sonic experiences by building and playing new unusual instruments.
Thanks to his Experibass, Diego attracted the attention of Oscar® Winner Composer Hans Zimmer. Hans really loved the pounding tonal grooves and aggressive depth of the basses Diego was playing on the Experibass and wanted him to be one of the soloists on the score of Guy Ritchie’s film “Sherlock Holmes”. Again, with his Experibass, Diego participated as featured solo performers in Jesper Kyd’s score for Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, the highly successful franchise from Ubisoft.
Diego is now creating more imaginary sounds and music for films, tv, trailers and other projects.
The Synthesizer Book 