Been away...but still soldered

Spent some time camping but lest anyone think that stops me hacking stuff, this post is to dispell that notion once and for all!

I'm still pouring any rare free time into building a noisy modular "synth" using basic logic devices and whilst on hols I built the above board up which is a couple of oscillators built on a cd40106 IC. I also built up a pseudo ring modulator based on the cd4011 IC. (I may geotag where all the bits of this are built...here's where these modules where put together)



These modules are now part of the growing collection of stuff making up my ghetto modular...of which I'll post an update soon. Last image is of my camping mixing/recording setup...the little mixer is great, built like a tank and powered of a single pp3, I bought it as faulty of ebay for £4.50 posted and the fault was the battery clip had snapped so an easy fix.



And here are the fruits of this little test field recording...pretty noisy as per usual!

Ghetto Sequencer

4 step sequencer with vactrol VCO from concretedog on Vimeo.

So any free time this weekend has been spent creating this..Here we have a 4 step sequencer built from a 30p cd4017 chip and based on this schematic the clock input (tempo control) is provided by an oscillator built on a cd40106. At the moment its controlling a ghetto style VCO (the lower smaller circuit board) which is another oscillator built on a 40106 but being controlled by a hand hack vactrol, basically a light dependant resistor stuck to an led covered in copious amounts of gaffa tape!( I was going to use heatshrink as it is more lightproof but I didn't have any wide enough.) I've kept the different boards separate and have used an old IDE connector with its pins soldered into groups to act as a patch area....this is useful as I plan to build a few different modules and a few more VCO designs and this can serve as a test environment...before ultimately building a bigger sequencer (there's 10 steps available on each 4017!)

I'll post more as I add to it.
(BTW the audio in the vid above is just captured on the mic on my cam)

Sounds from the Breadboard

I'm working hard, when I get the chance to, trying to make interesting synths and things from the CMOS range of chips I was talking about in the previous post.

Today I managed to get this beasty working (you know its getting a bit complex when you need a second breadboard!) So its 2 oscillators one controlling the clock/tempo of the sequencer and the other providing the sound...the sequencer is a pitch sequencer meaning each step is always on and you have some control of the pitch of the note.
I've added a duty cycle and a passive filter for some ghetto sound processing.

If you're a purist you may want to check out the first raw recording I made of this....



or if you want to hear it sounding a bit more interesting this is me playing it through the trusty old Zoom PFX9003 fx unit, lots of low end on this one so headphones are recommended



In a massively off topic finish to this post I took a photo of a dragonfly yesterday that I'm really pleased with and have to share!(click to view larger version)

Prototyping.....

Getting back into a bit of low end synth diy...I gave a friend the synth that I used to record "blackbox" (listen here) off my ep he was so pleased with it, it's inspired me to try and build some more stuff...I want to build not just a load of mixed oscillators but some kind of ghetto sequencer as well...no examples as yet but stay tuned!


Above is the synth I gave to my friend being put through it's paces much to other party guests amusement!

I'm building stuff using the popular CMOS range of logic chips using info from the following excellent pages....they're pretty easy to work with and give pleasing whirs, blips and glitches with minimum cost.

http://www.milkcrate.com.au/_other/sea-moss/

http://www.beavisaudio.com/Projects/CMOS_Synthesizers/

http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth/YOUR_FIRST_SYNTH/WSG_Reborn/WEIRDSOUNDGENERATORREBORN.php

Jornadajazz

Following on from my last post...I've been using Sunvox on the Jornada a lot this last week and it's great how well Sunvox runs on such a minimal spec'd machine (206mhz proccessor). It handles multiple samples really well. Anyway I've written this track using just the Jornada and the Boss micro br and a gameboy advance sp. I used the br to record the guitar parts, the music tech pro parts off the gba sp and also to sample my resurrected yamaha DX11. All the samples were exported out of the micro br with no effects used and loaded back into Sunvox so all the effects are Sunvox only.

I've been brave (or foolhardy!) and uploaded it to a great chipmusic site, Chipmusic.org.

Listen to and comment on it here

The dulling edge...Jornada 720 and Sunvox

I have this Jornada 720 pda from around 2001 which by modern standards is massively underpowered and has limited functionality in that it has no bluetooth, wireless etc...but there are numerous reasons why I still love it as a piece of technology. First and formost it is still the only device I have with a good sized useable qwerty keyboard that I can turn on and type into a txt or a word.doc within 5 seconds (instant boot, slight lag to boot pocket word). Its really useful when I am poking around hardware/circuit bending and want to make quick notes. It also has a magnificent battery life I still get 7 hours plus runtime from the battery (and I've got 2!) and when turned off it keeps charge for months.

In a fit of fiddly hacking about today I've got the mighty mighty Sunvox music tracker running on it. I have already got milkytracker on it which is excellent (head to this thread here if you need to know how to do this) but slightly annoyingly milky would only run in 340x240 resolution using a tiny bit of the Jornada's large screen real estate. Also I am really into Sunvox at the moment it's combination of tracker form with modular instruments and effects is a glorious combination and a credit to its creator. Find out more and get Sunvox for virtually every platform here.

To get Sunvox running on your jornada you will need 2 things. The first is to install gapi on your Jornada which is available for free here. Secondly you need to place a sunvox_config.ini file or sunvox_config.txt file in the directory you install Sunvox to. In the config file you need to put

"width 640height 240"

without the quotes of course!

Lastly...why do this? Well because I can..but also it is great to use portable tracker apps in something with both keyboard and styli input..I'm using sunvox a lot at the moment on my dell axim x50 which is great.. but for writing complex parts..like drum patterns a keyboard is a godsend. Finally finding new uses for older tech feels good and I think is important.

Post proudly typed on Jornada 720:)

New Warm Data EP with Concretedog track

Released on 07.04.2010 is the new Warm Data EP "Data Protection". It features a track from yours truly entitled "This World". Feel free to check it out!

Concretedog - This World by warmdata