Noise!
8-step sequencer & oscillator building
Productive day. Got the 8-step sequencer using the 555 timer and 4017 ICs running. Haven’t plugged it into anything yet, but am excited about the potential.
Also, played around with the Hex Schmidt Trigger IC to play two oscillators with a couple of photo resistors and my Altoid flashlight.
Anyone interested in this kind of thing should really check out Nicolas Collins Handmade Electronic Music. It is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. 😀
Happy Holidays
Little video for the holidays. Enjoy. 😀
Holiday sale! Qbloop Selections I 50% off!
From now until the end of the year, Qbloop Selections I will be half off the normal $8 price tag.  Have some last minute shopping to do?  Check out the music page or go directly to CDBaby to download the album now.
(Note:  iTunes pricing isn’t something I can change.  Sale price only available at CDBaby).
New live track
Been listening to a lot of Plastikman again.  He reminds me to leave more open space instead of trying to cram too much in.  This track is a late night live jam using the new custom sequencer I wrote in Max/MSP and the Alesis Ion and Korg EMX-1.  Best enjoyed with Black Chocolate Stout from the Brooklyn Brewery.
My first homemade synth
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I’ve started studying electronics.  Up until this point, I’ve been simply wiring together LEDs, buzzers, motors, and mucking about with programming the Basic STAMP microprocessor to hook up to my Max/MSP patches.  Ray Wilson’s Weird Sound Generator is my first foray into putting together something more complex.  It’s quite a nice kit for beginners and at the end of the process, one has a useful little noise maker in their arsenal of electronic instruments.
Since I found the documentation of building one at Matt Stanfield’s blog, the sync24 blog, and the image at Make very helpful when embarking on my own, I thought I’d pay it forward by posting images from my own adventure in circuitry in case it might help other people interested in making one.  I know that the hardest part for me was just starting the process as I was worried about making a mistake and blowing the $90 for the kit.  Sort of like staring at a blank canvas and daring to make the first brush stroke.  Seeing detailed images at the above links really facilitated the build for me.
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There were a couple of glitches that cropped up once I had finished.  There seems to be some crosstalk from the filter and one of the oscillators resulting in an unintended clicking that goes away when I open the housing.  I’ve tried to shield the wires and resolder them so they were further away from one another, but it’s still present.  Also, the volume control mod only seems to reduce the volume on part of the sound.  Still, I was worried the project wouldn’t make any sound at all, so the fact that I have this cute lunchbox to make noise with is a success to me.
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You can check out a couple of mp3s of what it sounds like below …
wsg02.mp3 :  This example was recorded with the housing open, eliminating the clicking and restoring some volume functionality.
wsg01.mp3 :  Here, the housing is closed, bringing back the clicking.  If anyone has any suggestions on reducing it, I’d love to hear ideas.
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I highly encourage anyone interested in going down the hardware DIY path to check out Ray’s kit.  It’s quite fun and can be finished in a weekend.
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The sound of my new bike
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I recently purchased a new bike.  I love my new bike.  I love it so much that I’m sad when I’m away from it.  So I sampled all of the noises it makes, and wrote a new track using nothing but the pings from the frame, the swish of the pedals turning, the gentle clicking of the chain against the gears, the clacking and punch of the shifters, and a host of other little sounds, 41 in all.  The result is “Micycle.”  Enjoy.
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New generative Max/MSP track at Soundcloud
Just uploaded a new track using a couple of different Max patches I built for my generative music.  The melodic material was composed by routing summed LFOs into coll objects storing scale content, then sent out to 3 external synth voices. Percussion is all generative as well using 8 different samples chosen every half-measure by Max from a folder of field recordings. The end result is a track filled with ambient pads and varied melodies atop glitchy IDMish beats.