Thursday 19 June 2008

STAR 56 and a Circuit Bent Casio SA8

Have uploaded a tune to my bare and baren zebox site called STAR 56 Its like a crazy scifi horror soundtrack or something...not for the faint hearted. The sounds for this are all from my Circuit bent Casio SA8 recorded into my zoom ps02 and then then tidied and sequenced in reaper and I also used a couple of my own VST's.



My SA8 is a fun device I built it a while ago and have sampled it quite a bit. Its definately random and it is difficult to use as it tends to jump about volumewise and keeps breaking into wierd versions of happy birthday that are really annoying! But it has some great sounds especially with the added ghetto style LFO. The LFO is made from a 555 based timer schematic I found here.
The SA8 is a slightly tricky one to bend as it has the solder side of the pcb directly under the keyboard so you have limited room unless you ditch the keys as I've done! If you rip the keyboard out and then put it all back together you should be able to see the 3 IC's that I have attached bends to. See the photo's below (if you click on them they appear full size in a new window) and also my scan of my notes showing which points I have used. If anyone wants any more info or help deciphering my cryptic notes feel free to get in touch.





Thats it really, apart from to say that somebody posted that my work looked really "clean" on circuitbenders forum...I guess this one redresses the balance a little!