Been very quiet of late..due to moving house, no internet access and all my kit being in boxes! Thanks to everyone who has shown an interest, commented and given me any support in 2008. 2009 should be good I have a 6 track ep hopefully going to be released in the first quarter with some freebie tracks and some videos as well. I'm also going get of my ass and try and find/create more live gigs so I can go freakout with my hardware. I've got some hardware projects ready and waiting for me to setup a workbench so I should be posting some new guides to modifying stuff as well.
Merry Xmas or whatever winter festiveness you celebrate.
I've posted a video made up of some of the audio recorded of my live set I did at the launch of Warm Data and a sample of the visuals I made to play randomly on the projection screens.
Audiowise I did the gig entirely on my circuitbent casio SA8, my DIY squarewave synth and my modified walkman with motors! I did, of course, use my favourite zoom palmtop effects boxes as well.( so you know this soundtrack isn't disco I'm guessing)
Visually I made these clips by placing or throwing things onto an old overhead projector and filming the results, interestingly most of the stuff in the video is stuff used to construct and or modify the audio instruments.
It feels odd to some to have such warm imagery set to such a dark theme, but I like that kind of juxtaposition. I like the way that things can sometimes appear as mindfully sequenced when they are in actual fact randomly placed.
Last weekend I finally got chance to finish building a MSA/R kit from Highly Liquid. This kit is a midi decoder and can covert midi note messages into the physical switching of a relay or switch. This means that anything that can be controlled by an off/on switch or button can essentially now be controlled by midi. In the video I have just hooked it up to 1 sound on a circuit bent drum toy but with the eight switches/channels there is a myriad of possibilities. I actually built this one for a friend and need to build my own but I already have numerous ideas of projects I could implement with this.
Last night saw my good mate Jetsetjim launch his new netlabel Warm Data and to celebrate a night was held with all the Warm Data artists performing (myself included). My set was a 45 minute film I made with a live soundtrack played on some homemade electronic gubbins (excerpt to be posted when I get chance).
Warm Data has 2 Ep's as its first releases- Data Patterns Volume I and Volume II available now with more releases to follow in the coming months.
Featurng on Data Patterns Volume I is my tune Star 56 (see separate blog post) which is great to get something of mine properly released. You can find out more about Warm Data, the artists and releases here... Warm Data (click different areas of the logo for different sections) or jump straight in to preview and purchase here Warm Data Shop
Indeed I am beginning to have a bit of a clearout! My first attempt at ebaying is one of my Amdek PCK100 percussion synths.
They're great, the one I am selling is completely unmodified but has a wide array of sounds and they are great for jamming and for inspiration. I'm selling it as I have another one that I did some modifications on and that one still does all the things this one does but more besides so this one is going to a new home.
I stuck a sample up for the auction on my zebox check it out if your interested. Amdeck PCK100 mp3
Been a while...been playing with a squarewave synth box I made a while ago based on a schematic from Nicholas Collins excellent book "Handmade Electronic Music". I made this track using just this synth and my zoom pfx9003 palmtop effects unit. BLACKBOX
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!
Many thanks to everyone who passed by the ADS room at Hendre's big party III on the 29th April, and in particular those who stayed to check out my set. I played some loud n glitchy raw techno using just the circuit bent qy10 and my bent 505
I had fun..getting the opportunity to jam loud with these machines is fantastic and I enjoyed the reactions that my set got... people dancing their asses off, people standing watching me thrust patch cords and press buttons, people having a quick look and then backing away looking concerned, people laughing their heads off. It was grand and I came away pleased with my set for once!
Really impressed with the visual setup as well, The midi from the 505 was piped into Dfektors laptop and was triggering random visuals that I had collected..The beauty of this is that they synchronise perfectly yet maintain a random factor. We also had a webcam hooked up to the system so every now and then the feed from this would appear instead of a clip..nice stuff... thanks Dfektor.
Only problem was I forgot to press record on my DAT machine! Ah well.... hohum
Hot from the presseshere is my latest creation a hacked QY10...first of all though I've goto come clean and say that most of the information I used to bend this came from the amazing Burnkit2600... a fantastic site everyone should spend some time at imho...
So..the picture shows...
1...The QY10 itself, its in its origainal case and sits atop a frame in the box to allow access to all the ins and outs..midi..phones..line out etc
2...12 point patch bay with connected to 12 pins of IC14 (the pins I used are; 27,36,46,29,39,43,31,44,32,41,45,40)
3...A little additional patchbay that is just 3 pairs of sockets each connected through a switch.. this means you can wire 2 or more points across to here and switch the effect/bend on and off.
4... A bend that I found that I liked but the pin involved caused crashes if connected to other points in the patchbay so I wired it standalone... the pins are 27 and 58.
5...This is straight from burnkit (THANKS GUYS) this is pin 14 connected to ground via a 100k potentiometer..this causes great detuning and sound swapping effects.
Thats it really..I rehoused it all in a wooden case with a lid and it remains very portable...I added a battery pack that sits outside the qy10 so that the batteries are readily accessable.
Anyhow here is a video just to show what this thing sounds like...this is all just messing about with the bends over 1 internal preset pattern...
I'm going to do a set with this midi synched to my bent tr505 and the 505 triggering the visuals at Hendre Hall in N. Wales on the 26th April 08...I'll get some samples of my set up after this.
My good man Dfektor arrived today armed with a laptop and a midi cable..Dfektor has kindly agreed to create a video system that is triggered by the midi out from my circuit bent 505. Today was a test day and below is a little video of the results
In my efforts to share more stuff I am now the proprietor of a very very low tech webpage..this means I can host my own files etc so no relying on filesharing sites that delete your files after 7 days...I "wrote" this entire masterpiece of a website on my aged yet still massively handy jornada680 pda... so here we are www.concretedog.co.uk
You may notice at the bottom of the downloads list is a folder "bwipthunkzap" this is a zip file of a few single hits taken from a circuit bent drumtoy...nasty nasty squarewave sounds!
Also I did a longer jam with the same drumtoy the results of which are here at my shiny zebox site
I've also stuck another video on vimeo...its an old one from the vaults again though
Made this video ages ago but never got round to posting it. Indeed haven't done much for a while. Kinda got going again as I did a Live gig with my circuit bent stuff a couple of weeks ago and it made me think I should share more stuff..video's from that night coming soon. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'm going to get some webspace sorted so I can host my own files for download then I'll do some more sample packs and stuff.
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