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Category: music

Show this Friday & interview posted

I’ll be performing at Wild Goose Creative as part of the Fuse Factory’s Frequency Friday series at 2491 Summit St. in Columbus, OH.  Doors open at 8 PM.  Admission is $5.

 I will be playing guitar using my custom looping software, and it will mark the debut of my homemade electronic instruments in a live setting. Hopefully nothing blows up. The show will also feature an interactive component using a repurposed game controller similar to the Art Pad shows, so come out and play along with me.  😀

Richard Bowers conducted interviews of the performers and put together this video to give you a taste of what you can expect Friday night:

 

Cigar Box MIDI controller @ Highly Liquid

I’ve recently been privileged to get to know and work with John from Highly Liquid. He specializes in retrofitting pre- or sans-MIDI gear, and produces original MIDI hardware for standalone projects created by musicians, technicians, artists, and hobbyists. Working out of the Columbus Idea Foundry, John used the laser cutter there to repurpose a cigar box as a unique MIDI controller. I was asked to prototype a demo in Max/MSP to demonstrate its functionality. Details on the build, and instructions on developing your own can be found at the Highly Liquid blog.  I highly recommend checking it out.  And while you’re there, check out the MIDI wall he created at the Foundry.

Atari Punk Console/Stepped Tone Generator

I figured it was about time to try out this classic schematic, originally designed by the venerable Forrest M. Mims III.  I’ve included my own schematic using photoresistors to control the unit’s parameters, as well as allow for CV control from my little sequencer.  Video also uploaded to YouTube.  Overall, a fun and easy build.  😀

Atari Punk Console/Stepped Tone Generator
I also added toggles to switch the photoresistors on and off.

Embracing limitations: The aftermath of John Cage

Zen chime, vibraphone, and little xylophone. My limitations in creating the piece.

Once John Cage’s 4’33” was considered a legitimate piece of music, the world of sound exploded.  If intentional silence was music, so too was its antithesis;  sound in any form should be just as valid.  Without this work, modern electronic musicians wouldn’t feel as free to navigate the depths of their craft and embrace the unexplored for inclusion within their pieces.  Nor would school children everywhere in the 80’s be as uninhibited about playing scales on Casio SK1s after burping into its sampler.  What?  Tell me you didn’t do that.

So, the landscape was blown wide open by Cage’s work, but he also left all of us asking, or at least me, a fundamental question.  What’s the point?  If anything is acceptable, it gives the illusion that the frontier has all been charted.  If there’s no new ground to break, no new areas to explore, what’s the point in trying?

I’ve found a sort of comfort by reimposing limitations upon myself and working within those confines.  The clichés of “thinking outside the box” or “pushing the envelope” do not ring true for me.  I see the box and envelope as having been nonexistent for decades.  Instead, I will create a few simple rules and see how creative I can be within that structure.  I don’t claim to be successful, but my goal is to see how interesting I can make something beyond those limitations.  If I have everything at my disposal, it’s overwhelming to know what to include and what to leave out.  This was part of the basis for “Micycle,” a track using nothing but sounds from my bicycle, and I think it’s very important for an artist to consider when writing when faced with having too many options.

Delia Derbyshire, best known for the electronic version of Ron Grainer’s Doctor Who theme, but an amazing talent outside of that piece as well and a seminal figure in the development of electronic music, seems to agree, according to an interview posted on her site:

“I’m dead keen on limiting resources … You need to have discipline in order to be truly creative. If you’re just given total freedom to do anything you like… You’ve got to impose some discipline on either the form you’re going to use or the sounds you’re going to use.”

In that same spirit, “Vibraxylozen” uses just 10 samples I recorded from 3 instruments playing a total of 2 notes. Samples are available as a free download here in case anyone wants to poke around with them a bit.  The samples were loaded into my generative sequencer patch created in Max/MSP which creates its own new patterns.  Those patterns were then edited within Logic, and arranged against new sampler instruments created using the original 10 samples.  The result is a chimey piece of tinkly trance, which I hope you’ll enjoy.

Vibraxylozen by sineqube

Another new track – “Squoothy Scrunchy Bikso”

Squoothy scrunchy bikso by sineqube

So, the Stupid Box is doing interesting things to my head. This is perhaps one of the darkest pieces I’ve written. A sharp contrast to the fun and quirky sound of last night’s track.

I’ve been reflecting on how I’ve changed over the years and have tamed my sound considerably from what I was exploring, say, a decade ago. I’m eager to turn that around and embrace the darkness as well as the light-hearted again.  I think I have been shutting out certain aspects of my mind and as a result, may be neglecting pieces of me that I miss.

If I believed in numerology, I might mention that this is the 13th track I’ve written this year and that the time reads 2’22”, and try to draw some spooky conclusions.  But I don’t believe in any of that, so I won’t.

In any case, as I said over at Soundcloud in the track description, don’t listen to this if you’re already depressed, or if someone is chasing you with an axe through the woods.  Although it does seem to pair well with Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald.  I recommend lights off, and headphones.

Boo.

“Squeerly Quarky Bahks” – new track featuring the Stupid Box

Squeerly Quarky Bahks by sineqube

I’ve always loved the music in games like Katamari Damacy, Noby Noby Boy (especially the iPhone version), and Little Big Planet. The sounds in these games make me happy and I could listen to it all day without tiring. There’s obviously a huge link between writers of electronic music and video games, and I’m trying to embrace that more.

This new track at Soundcloud features the Stupid Box as well as the Monotron and some guitar bits and vibratone.

Hope you enjoy, and hope you smile. 😀

Updated Stupid Box schematic

I’m enjoying the sounds this thing is making more and more.  I decided to put together a cleaner looking schematic in case anyone was interested in putting together one of these things.  Hope it’s helpful, and doesn’t contain too many errors.  The original post about the build has been updated, too.

This schematic omits the diode and replaces it with the 100 ohm resistor. Sounds better to me.

Stupid Box: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love When Things Go Wrong

Stupid stupid box.

Audio demo of the Stupid Box

So, this last build was the most frustrating so far.  On the breadboard, I debated whether or not to even transfer it to perfboard and find an enclosure.  But, as it is the first synth I built from the ground up for use with my sequencer, I figured I should go ahead and complete it.

The synth itself is comprised of two chips, the 4046 and the 74C14.  The former serves as a basic square wave oscillator triggered from the CV out of the step sequencer, and the latter adds a couple more squares to modulate the first oscillator.  On the breadboard, it made some mildly interesting sounds, was pretty noisy, and I felt “meh” about it, overall.  I wanted to get it done fast so I could move onto the next thing.  I don’t like lingering on one project for too long.

I’m usually very meticulous and methodical about moving from the prototype to finalizing the build, triple checking every connection before soldering the components.  I even take multiple photographs from different angles of the breadboard, in case I get into trouble later.  This time, I also shot a little video, panning around the breadboard to make sure I could recheck working connections if something went wrong after soldering.

And tons of stuff went wrong.

I’m really not into 2nd drafts.  I want to do things right the first time, so I work slowly and try to make the end result as good as possible because I get extremely bored going over old material.  I’m the same way with music, writing, visual arts, nearly every creative endeavor — if I can’t do it quickly, I move onto something else as I have more ideas than time to complete them all.  This project, which I affectionately dubbed, “Stupid Box,” would test my patience in this regard.

Everything worked fine during prototyping, but that limbo between breadboard and final build where the project isn’t functional is incredibly stressful for me.  There exists that time where it doesn’t work, and you hope it can work again, assuming you build correctly.  I worked slowly, checked everything a bajillion times, and flipped on the power …

Nothing.

Strike that.  The battery started getting hot.  Not good.  Not good.  Polarity must be reversed on the clip.  Tried rewiring.  No joy.  Still getting hot.  Checked the direction of the electrolytics (even though I quadruple-checked as I built).  Everything looks good.  Checked the diode direction.  Looked fine.

I’m stumped.  And very frustrated.  I didn’t like this thing much to begin with, and now I started hating it.  I had a choice — keep trying to troubleshoot for a project my heart wasn’t in, or try and salvage the parts I could and move onto something else.  I had spent about a week off and on working on this though, and I hate failing.  I had to beat this Stupid Box, or I knew it would eat at me.

The hardest part about troubleshooting things like this is that it is usually some very small thing that’s simple to change, but it’s hidden.  From about a decade of working with Max/MSP, I was very familiar with this scenario.  I still hate it, but I’m familiar with it.  These problems tend to plague me for days on end and I have trouble focusing on anything else until it’s solved.

I scanned the perfboard for anything obvious.  I plugged the sequencer into the unit but kept the synth itself unpowered.  I could hear the clicking as the few volts the sequencer sent out coursed through the board and into the little battery-powered amp.  I poked and prodded every connection to check continuity, and see if I could inadvertently trigger something good to happen.  I was as much hoping for magic as science as my frustration grew.

Click click click click.  The four pulses from the sequencer didn’t change, and every time I plugged the battery in, it still got warm.  It was hard to check the issue when I couldn’t even get voltage into the system.

There!

Was that a little fleck of solder between the power and ground lines?  It was so small, that even with a magnifying glass, I had trouble telling if there was a connection.  I called my wife to come be another set of eyes.  Still too small to tell.  I fired up the iron and melted the solder enough to take a small knife and insure the separation of points.

Battery in.  LED on.  Success!

The project I was only mildly interested in was functional.  Yay.  : /

Other stuff went wrong too.  Things were shorting against the enclosure so I could only screw the circuit halfway.  The modulation section stopped working completely and after replacing two capacitors, a diode, and rewiring a solder joint that came loose, it ended up being one of the screws securing the board in place was shorting out a wire that was too close.  The mod section itself sounded way too faint in contrast to the output of the main oscillator.  When the photoresistor was engaged the filter pot acted in reverse.  And on and on and on.

So, this project has become an exercise in letting go.  It is yet another instance where I have to teach myself not to obsess over controlling every system I create.  As much as I have a deep love for generative work and aleatoric processes, I still default to wanting to be the puppet master.  Perhaps it’s because of this personality trait that I find generative systems so very Zen in my life.  It’s easy to be a Taoist when things are running smooth.  I need to carry it with me into the chaos.

I’m glad I built my Stupid Box.  It makes some decent sounds, especially after replacing the diode (see below).  I was even able to coax some vaguely formant synthesis sounding material out of it.  Time will tell how useful it is in the long run, but for now, I am pleased.  Here’s the mp3 demo again in case you missed it at the top:

Audio demo of the Stupid Box

• • •

I’m including the hand-drawn schematic in case anyone wants to play around with this monster.  Yes, I know I need to digitize the layouts, but a crappy hand-drawn one is better than none, perhaps?

*Oh, I recommend replacing the diode with a 100 ohm resistor instead.  The mod section ended up sounding much more effective as a result.

Parts list - I would replace the 1N914 diode with a 100 ohm resistor
Loooottts of eraser marks. ; ) Build at your own risk. (And replace that diode with a 100 ohm resistor!)

Update 1.24.2011

Using an old version of Omni Graffle, I was able to put together a cleaner looking schematic.  Hope this is a bit more helpful to anyone looking to build one of these.

This schematic omits the diode and replaces it with the 100 ohm resistor. Sounds better to me.