New machine beginnings and considerations

So reflecting on this last year I've learnt and built a lot, and I have a large rats nest of a synth/noise generator pinned to a board. A lot of this has been built in the fashion it has due to getting the gig back in November. This was a brilliant experience but it locked me into building the way I was just to keep everything compatible and to get stuff together quick. There are a few issues to building that way however, the primary one is that everything is patchable including all power connections. I did this so that if I wanted to power starve any sections/modules I could...however I've never found anything that interesting using this technique...so all in all patching power just adds more cable clutter that isn't really necessary. Having everything on one level makes it larger horizontally and vertically - requiring longer patch cables whereas designs with circuit boards and front panels split the size between 2 levels allowing for more compact design. There have been some things I have been happy with though, I'm happy to keep using trimmer pots rather than fullsize ones, this keeps the cost of building massively lower, also the use of header sockets and small breadboard style patch cables is a method I will continue to use for the same reasons.

So to the new design idea. The picture shows the beginnings and first modules of my new modular noisemaker that is as yet unnamed. I want this beasty to be pretty portable and robust with the front panels being very patcheable. Just to put this in scale each panel above is 47 x 72 mm. As it stands I've built 2 x 4015 4 bit shift registers and 6 x 40106 oscillators, but for those in the know it will probably end up with, 4040 divider, 4011 pseudo ring mods, simple AREGVCA's, XOR's a plenty, 4069 LFO and some sort of active filter that I haven't quite decided on yet I may also consider a 4017 based sequencer. I have a few ideas about the enclosure design, mainly that it will have an angled front panel so it is good to use either standing or sitting and will have everything firmly attached so hopefully I can pick it up and go places with it and arrive with it in one piece!

Sunvox 1.6 is here

Possibly the best early xmas present ever, Sunvox 1.6 is here and it's rocking. Raise a glass to Mr Zolotov. Download and find out more here

Finishing off

Been one of those good days where I get to finish a few bits off. I've packaged up the matrix mixer and even found 16 matching knobs out of one of my many scrap boxes of parts. I've also made a new reclining upright unit for my ghetto modular boards. It leans back around 25 degrees from vertical and provides a more ergonomic platform that also takes up much less of a footprint. It's again made from fibre board so my modules can be pinned to it.

I also posted the schematic for the matrix mixer at TSOL, but thought I'd post it here in case anyone's interested.....typically my schematic is a lofi affair eschewing CAD or other schematic software for a good old index card and pen!

Matrix Mixer update

Just a quick update as I've managed to finish the wiring on this tonight and have a bit of a play as it is now functional although uncased. The play consisted of a couple of bits from my CMOS synth stuff being patched through the mixer and my homemade spring reverb and a zoom multi effects unit being patch into the mixer as both outputs and inputs, so they can self oscillate/feedback.

Very rough and ready but has shown me the possibilities, here's the rough jam.

MATRIX01 by concretedog

Matrix Mixer WIP

Just a quick post to show my current WIP project. It's a 4 x 4 passive matrix mixer. A matrix mixer is a mixer that allows you to create 4 different mixes from the same 4 inputs to 4 separate channel outputs. The beauty of this is when you begin to send outputs back to inputs. I'll hopefully find time to finish this this week and post some audio.

Warm Data at The Absurd

So last night saw me and my Warm Data colleagues headed over to Theatre Clwyd to take part in the absurd festival. It was a great night and we were made really welcome and all of the Warm Data sets got a really positive reaction. Above is the photo of my setup (apols for the low quality phone cam shot). The miracle of yesterday was despite a long journey which involved some madman running into the back of my car at a junction my big board of modules and wires made it without one wire disconnecting...amazing.

In a break from tradition, here's one with my ugly mug in it, mid set, taken by Lungwah himself.



This was a pretty landmark gig for me as my setup was entirely handmade the only exception being my trusty old mixer. It felt good to have made everything I played.

Nice one and massive respect to Andy and Sophie for working sooo hard to get this festival together....can't wait for the next one :) If you can you should try and support their events, keep an eye out via the absurd

And finally a massive thank you if you are one of the people who came and asked about my set/rig etc, when people are enthusiastic and interested like that it makes the hours slaving over a soldering iron really really worthwhile.

big orange reverb box

In my continuing build up to next Saturday's gig I decided I needed to not only rely on my trusty fx units...but rather man up and build something of my own! I've been messing with springs/slinkys and piezo pickups but had never got round to finishing off a reverb unit. Until today :). It's a beast...it's hard to take a photo of it as the front is covered in clear acrylic so if I use the flash it just is a massive flash reflection. In the flesh however it is a very vulgar orange colour as that's all the paint I had. Basically in this there is an amp which you feed your signal into which then plays through a small 2" speaker, attached to the speaker cone is a small metal bar which is then soldered to the spring. I started with just a 6" length of spring but then soldered another length to the spring so now it has a much larger triangular spring...this means that with the different spring lengths you get different reverb times interacting. Attached to the spring is also a piezo disk which again connects via a soldered metal bar, the piezo acts as the pickup going to the desk. The frame that the mechanism is attached to is mounted on a big foam pad to try and decouple the mechanism from the outer box to stop external stuff effecting the spring vibrations.

Here's a test recording which is just some bleeps from some 4093 gated oscs being sequenced by a ten step 4017 sequencer. No other effects or post production on this, just the orange box.

orangeboxtest by concretedog