Preserving Music From Outer Space
A long-term labor of love, keeping Ray Wilson's work alive and accessible.
I found Music From Outer Space the way a lot of people did — looking for a way into building my own sound. The Weird Sound Generator was one of the first things I ever built. By the time I found Ray Wilson's work I learned he had passed away a couple of years earlier, in 2016. That hit harder than I expected for someone I'd never met. But his site was still there: still teaching, still funny, still generous.
Why I'm doing this
Here's the thing though — Ray's original site is genuinely hard to use. It leans on old frames and scripts that fight with screen readers, with zoom, and with phones. I have low vision myself, and I know exactly how it feels to want to read something — to really need the information in it — and be locked out by the way the page is built. And I know I'm not the only one. There are a lot of us.
So this is my long-term labor of love: to rebuild Ray's projects, one at a time, as plain, accessible web pages. Real headings you can navigate. Descriptions on every schematic and photo. Text that reflows, zooms, and reads aloud. His words kept exactly as he wrote them — jokes and all — just in a form more people can actually reach.
I like to think that if Ray had known how many disabled people wanted to read his words and couldn't, he would have wanted this too. A man who wrote a whole beginner project specifically so first-timers could succeed spent his life lowering the barrier and letting more people in. I'm just carrying that a little further, to a group he never got the chance to reach.
It's going to take a while
I'm rebuilding these in the order I finish them, and I'm not rushing. Gathering the text and images and carefully refactoring each build takes real time — there are the ones I've already completed, and the ones I still want to finish. It will be a long project. That's okay. Ray took his time making these things approachable; the least I can do is take mine.
If you're one of the people who could never get through the original — welcome. This is for you, and it's for Ray.
The projects
Rebuilt so far, with more on the way:
MFOS Weird Sound Generator Done
Ray's classic first-synth project — the full build, schematics, panel and case drawings, plus his troubleshooting guide and modifications.
MFOS Mini 3-In Mixer & 1W Amplifier Done
Ray's simple LM386 battery amp for showing off your synth at the coffee shop — three inputs, a wee one watt, both the Rev 02 and original Rev 0 boards.
MFOS Micro Sample & Hold Text pending
Ray's compact sample-and-hold with a built-in clock and a glide control, sized to add onto the Sound Lab Mini-Synth — schematic, board artwork, panel drawing, and his scope traces of the whole sampling process.
More MFOS builds
More of Ray's projects are being gathered and rebuilt, one at a time. They'll appear here as each one is finished.
For Ray. — Onion
All MFOS work © Ray Wilson / Music From Outer Space — musicfromouterspace.com. The projects, circuits, text and images are Ray's.
These pages are rebuilt and recoded by Mess O' Pedals to preserve Ray's work and keep it accessible. Only the HTML is mine. If Ray's family or the MFOS keepers would ever prefer any of this taken down, reach out and it's gone.