Final Project...

For every class the projects had always been challenging and interesting in its self... Ever one of us in the class were required to build a circuit in a prototype for our final project.. Complete soldiered and fully functiong prototype was required for the project. We each had individual ideas over the project. For my submition, I made a prototype using a photo register. The pitch of the sound was processed by the litght sensitive registor. So every time I brought something to block the intensity of the light the pitch of the sound produced would differ. I could actually have different frequency come off with the circuit.
To give my project an interractive edge, I used a webcam to capture a minute of performance with the circuit. Then overlapped the sound , the previous recorded data to be the back track of my new performance. I countinued that for third time and came up with musical piece which was interactive to the self performance. Beside the sound intercation, looping video cincept was used to make the video interactive as well.

DIY Advice

- Always use a wet sponge to clean the solder from your soldering iron tip. Soldering tips degrade very quickly, especially if solder is left on them.
- Work in a well lit space where you can remain organized. DIY projects can get confusing and really disorganized, really fast.
- Do whatever you want. If you are doing it yourself, you should do whatever you want.
- Experiment. Breadboards are a great tool for experimenting with an unlimited amount of circuit combinations. Try anything; you never know what sound you will get.
- Acquire a de-soldering tool. Soldering can be pretty tough, especially when you are finalizing a circuit to a circuit board. If you drop a huge glob on your board, a de soldering tool will save the day.
- Lick your finger and touch things. Electronic things that aren’t plugged into wall outlets.
- Photo resistors and LEDs are best friends forever.
- Soldering guns are very hot. They will burn your flesh or melt your de soldering tool if you aren’t careful where you place them. Melting your stuff can be a bummer and filling your workspace with burning plastic fumes is just plain no good.

Tape Music

A microphone can be turned into a speaker and a speaker can be turned into a microphone. All you need to do to make the switch is switch things backwards. If an air microphone is wired to an audio output, the diaphragm will vibrate at the same frequency, making the signal audible, just like a speaker. If a speaker is wired backwards and its cone is vibrated, the frequency of that vibration will be turned into an electric signal can be played by a speaker. Electronic motors can also be turned into speakers. If the power input of the electronic motor is an audio signal, the electronic motor will turn on and off at the same frequency of that signal. This action effectively turns the motor into a speaker. Kristian Twombly demonstrated one of the possibilities that electronic motor speakers present by placing a small electronic motor on a 5 ft long span of packaging tape, suspended in the air between two points. The motor vibrated the tape and turned the entire span of tape into a very unique speaker. The motor was hooked up to a personal music player. The music could only be heard clearly if your ear was within a few inches of the tape. However, if you pressed your ear right up against the tape, the sound quality was much better. Also, the volume, tone, and timbre of the music is altered if you move your ear across the tape.

STUD STICKS

Look out Les Paul, guitar pick-ups are pretty easy to make and cheap too. In DIY audio we learned that an electric “guitar pickup” can be created by spooling copper wire around a sewing machine bobbin. A magnet is then placed in the inside of the bobbin. I placed my bobbin pickup on a wooden stick, just below a metal guitar string, strung up the length of the stick. When the guitar string vibrates, the copper wire and magnet create an electric signal which is sent down the length of the copper wire. I soldered the wire to an 1/8 in connector which I then plugged into a mini amplifier. The result was a surprisingly loud and rich timbered stick guitar! Stick guitars are a great fix if you need an electric guitar in a jiff. They can be used in performance, but are the most fun to just play and jam out. The total cost of one of these guitars is only a few dollars and if one string isn’t enough, it wouldn’t be too difficult to rig up five or six more!

DIY Audio and Beyond

DIY Audio taught me much more than just how to create microphones and electronic instruments with little or no cash. Before DIY audio, I had a very minimal understanding of electronics and wiring. That understanding was enhanced by DIY at “paradigm shift” levels. DIY taught me that most electronics are very simple at their most basic level. DIY also taught me skills like soldering and circuit construction. I learned how to make circuits that can be used for electronic sound, lighting, video, or just about anything electronic. I also learned how to repair or modify my own battery powered electronics. This class gave me skills that will save me large sums of money in the long run. This class also exposed me to an entire new world of artistic possibilities. The materials for DIY audio projects are cheap and easy to come by and their possibilities are limitless.

Final Project

The circuit I mentioned in my last post used a bcm14093 nan gate chip. I used this circuit to create the electronic instrument for my DIY final project. The resistance on the first oscillator is controlled by a 1 megahertz potentiometer and has a .1 uf capacitor. The second oscillator is controlled by a photo resister and has a 35 uf capacitor. The third and final oscillator is controlled by a 10 k potentiometer and a .1 uf capacitor. From the final oscillator are an audio out and then a 100k resistor and red LED. The LED lights up whenever audio is being produced. The two potentiometers are mounted on top a small black box, about the size of a tin can. The circuit is mounted on the long side of the box. The photo resistor is mounted on the left side. The 9 v battery is mounted inside of the box. The LED light is mounted on the top of the box, between the potentiometers. The instrument also has a large power switch mounted on its right side. When the switch is activated, a green LED inside of the switch lights up. The instrument can be played by altering the potentiometers as well as varying the amount of light exposed to the photo resistor. The potentiometers control the pitch of the sound and the photo resister controls the tone. The potentiometers can be controlled while leaving a finger or two free to control the photo resistor. I am very pleased with this instrument. The sounds it produces are awesome. They sound pretty good when played out of a mini amplifier and sound amazing out of a large amplifier. I have already begun recorded music with this awesome instrument.

Solder Practice

The first time I attempted to solder together a circuit was a complete disaster. All of the circuits I had created up to this point had been done on bread boards which do not require soldering. The reason for my failure was that I assumed circuit boards are set up in the same fashion as most breadboards. This is not true. It seems that circuit boards require close examination in order to determine how to set up your circuit. I had made the mistake of setting up my circuit on the circuit board in the exact same way I had set it up on the bread board. I had spent about six hours carefully soldering and de-soldering before I realized that my circuit was completely useless. On the bright side of things, the experience made me much better at soldering circuits. Re-doing the entire circuit correctly, took only about three hours. I also learned how to adapt my circuits to the interesting and sometimes confusing designs of circuit boards.

Bubbletron 4000

The Bubbletron 4000 is a giant, interactive, inflatable instrument/sculpture and was created by myself and Kirissa Grams. The first step to creating the Bubbletron was to tape many large sheets of clear plastic together into a large dome-like sphere. This sphere was about 8 ft wide on all sides and 12 ft tall when inflated. The “bubble” was inflated by connecting a large floor fan to the inside of the sphere with an 8 ft long tube made out of the same plastic material used for the “bubble”. We also created a hatch-like door on the side of the bubble so that we could get inside of the bubble once it was inflated. We then attached two different contact microphones to opposite walls inside of the bubble. These contact microphones were taken from the Kawasaki Drum Kit mentioned in an earlier blog. We soldered ¼ inch female jacks to the contact mics and then connected the microphones to multiple audio effect processors housed inside of the bubble. We also taped a contact microphone to the end of the inflation input tube. As air flowed into the bubble, the input tube flailed and waved around. The sound of the waving tube was also sent to an effects processor. All of the contact mics were amplified by a large amplifier and speakers housed inside of the bubble. The waving tube created a constantly changing sound that was very similar to the sound of thunder. The contact microphones placed on the inside walls of the bubble created very interesting sounds when the bubble was touched by someone on the outside. This sound changed depending on where the bubble was touched. The bubble could also be played by firing a “super soaker” at the sides of the bubble. All of the electronic equipment was protected from the water by the bubble walls. The bubble was set up outside on the St. Cloud State University campus and was up for about four hours. During this time, many different people interacted with the bubble and created many different unique sounds. One individual discovered that very dramatic squeaking sounds could be created by pushing their fingers hard across the plastic. The next time we set up the Bubbletron, it will have more contact mics and therefore, more potential sounds. We will also set it up earlier in the day when there is more foot traffic in the area.

4 for $4

The other day I visited a thrift store and picked up some old electronic toys. One of these toys was a Kawasaki Electronic Drum Set. The drum set is about the size of a shoe box, has 4 different drum pads and only cost $4. I dismantled the drum set and found that there was a contact microphone glued to the backside of each of the drum pads. When the drum pads were impacted, the contact mics created a signal which triggered a sample of a drum sound. The signal sent by the contact microphones is actually the sound of the impact on the drum pad, however, this signal was used by the toy to trigger a pre made drum sound. The chip inside of the toy also stored samples of music which could be triggered by buttons on the surface of the toy. The tempo and volume of the music could be controlled by two fader switches. While tinkering with the toy, I found that I could also control the tempo of the music by licking my finger and pressing it to different areas of the chip. The tempo change was much more radical and unpredictable with this method. This method also caused the audio to suddenly cut out. Flipping the power switch off and then back on again fixed this problem, but had to be done every time the audio cut out. I decided to disconnect the contact microphones and drum pads in order to use them for a future project.

Deep Contact

Air microphones are not the only way to amplify real world sounds. In DIY Audio, we also made contact microphones. Contact microphones are placed in direct contact with an object then amplify the vibrations of that object. We made our contact microphones by opening a piezo buzzer and removing the copper and quartz plate inside. We then soldered the two wires coming from the copper plate to an 1/8th inch male connector. The copper plate is glued to a very thin piece of quartz. When quartz is compressed, it creates a very small electronic signal. When the copper plate is pressed against a surface, vibrations from that surface compress the quartz and create a signal representative of the surface vibrations. This signal can then be amplified. When we plugged the copper/quartz plate (contact mic) into our mini amplifiers we were able to create all kinds of interesting sounds. Contact mics can be used to amplify heart beats. They can also be used to turn ordinary objects into musical instruments. Contact mics are best used for percussive sounds. These microphones can also be used underwater which is one of their biggest advantages over air microphones.

Air Microphones

In DIY audio we made air microphones by soldering a 9 volt battery connector to a resistor, capacitor, and two female 1/8th inch connectors. We connected the microphone piece to one of the female connectors and then connected our miniature amplifiers to the other. The air microphone creates an electrical signal when the small diaphragm in the microphone piece is moved back and forth. These movements are created by the vibrations in the air otherwise known as sound. Air vibrations are known as compressions and rarefactions. The nine volt battery, resistor, and capacitor amplified the signal sent by the air microphone. This microphone was surprisingly effective and inexpensive. These microphones are easy to make and are also very compact. It would be easy to hide these microphones in a space for an installation or performance.

The Final Failure

Advice to future DIYers: Don't drink a pot of coffee before you begin soldering your final project together. I usually pride myself on my soldering skills, but I'm usually not shaking due to copious caffeine consumption. Truthfully, I never figured out what went wrong with my final project. It was basically the circuit I outlined below (see "Recipe for my favorite oscillator") but I think something went wrong with the amplification area of the circuit. I thought it might be some problem with solder dots touching, but as I tried to clean it up, I made the connections progressively worse and eventually connected 5 pins of my 14093 to each other with a big blob of solder. After scraping the connections clear with a knife my circuit buzzes quietly; a pale shadow of its former self. I'll try to salvage it sometime, I don't like the idea of wasting such a wonderful chip.

Anyway, it's been an enlightening journey in DIY class. I learned a lot about electricity and sound. I got to listen to my hair. I will forever treasure my radio-shack mini-amp and the assortment of tiny electrical components which currently litter my carpet. I still think the class needs more enameled copper coils though. Many thanks to Dr. Twombly and my classmates. Have a safe and productive summer everyone!

Amp Chip 386N

Tiny and useful. Cut out the middleman! This circuit should be pushed back earlier in the semester. Once we built it I was able to apply my chips to the happy task of oscillating all the random speakers that are scattered around my room. No more restrictive mini-amp. Better yet, you can build the 200-gain variation and listen to the distortion as your speaker attempts to cope with the ridiculous amount of power. And it uses one less battery than the typical mini-amp setup. This was a vital piece of my final project (and sadly the source of its failure) but after I dig it out of the circuit board I'm sure I'll be using it again.

I assume if you made a fancy little case for a circuit like this you could undercut radio-shack by selling the things for 10 bucks on ebay.

That Amplitude Follower / Gate Thingy

By far the most complicated circuit we built in class. I understand the uses it might have but in my opinion the returns don't warrant the effort. Other than making mp3 players sputter with oscillator controlled volume it doesn't seem to serve much purpose. I mean, the lights are pretty and all, but I want my circuits to generate sounds not follow them. I suppose if you were building a stereo it would be a useful indicator of volume, but I don't frequently build stereos. And what happened to our class playtime? That's the best part! Another note to Twombly: Don't cut out playtime. Also, get some of those frequency divider chips next time around, simpler and way cooler than amp tracking.


Hmmm... now that I think about it though, it might be interesting to modulate the amplitude of one oscillator with another oscillator. Perhaps a summer project?

Guitar Pickups

Our Guitar Pickups combine two of my favorite things: Powerful magnets, and copper coils. I don't quite understand how a magnet that is glued into the center of the spool can vibrate enough to induce a current. But it does, and I guess that's all I really need to know. My guitar was a soprano as I could only find a two foot stick. Fun but tragically limited to the fundamental and harmonics by the single string setup. Frets would be useful. I thought it might be fun to pair a series of pickups to a few strings, but I found out someone beat me to it already. I briefly experimented with trying to pickup signals from other things, but results were similar to a poorly constructed telephone pickup.

I'm much more interested in building the inverse of a pickup: a speaker. Note to Twombly: consider adding a speaker assembly day, there was a disappointing lack of copper coils this semester. Better yet, build the amp circuit and a speaker early on and we can use homemade speakers on the other projects.

The Fourteen-o-Nine-Three!

Finally! Clean, pure, digital, clarity. My radio-shack mini amp hums and bleeps with modulated magnificence.

Recipe for my favorite oscillator:

Input 1: +, Input 2: cap 47uf to -, Output 1: Route to Input 3, Input 4: cap 4.7uf to -, Output 2: Route to Input 5, Input 6: 2.2uf to -, Gound pin 7 and hook pin 14 to positive. Put some pots between even numbered inputs and their relative outputs and listen to the difference between Output 3 and ground.

Best chip ever. It provides countless hours of entertainment and a clean form of modulation between oscillators. Hook it up to a guitar amplifier and play around with reverb and wah-wah effects. Hook it up to the amplitude gate and make your favorite tunes throb with intensity. Hook it up to a subwoofer and shake the dust off your furniture. Add some LEDs and you've got a festive Christmas decoration. Connect it to the pickup coil and broadcast your signal into the aether. Matrix two of them and you have eight oscillators at your fingertips. Run jumper cables between random points and observe results. Limitless potential!

The Hex Schmitt Trigger aka 74C14

Bad integrated circuit! Very bad! Your oscillators fail to maintain independence from one another! Bad! I've never liked this chip. Six oscillators sounds like a great deal, until you realize that they all leak into each other and form an ugly jumble of sounds. I attempted to use a series of diodes and resistors detailed in the textbook to separate them; still an ugly jumble. Some people might enjoy ugly jumbles, I do not. Synthesized sounds should be clean and pure, or dirty with intermittent bits of purity, or clean with bits of impurity, but never ugly jumbles. The only way to isolate the signals is to use an amplifier for each one. Who can afford that many batteries? You can get one good oscillator out of this thing. Don't try any more because it will sound like an ugly jumble. I suppose this is the downside to using circuitry that was never intended for sound applications. I guess it's possible I wired it incorrectly, or I have a bad chip; but the 14093 is so much more awesome that I don't even want to look at a Hex Schmitt again.

Childhood Distortions

Who doesn't love to hack the toys? I fondly recall the drunken ramblings of my Leapfrog Phonics Teacher as she lethargically inquired if I could spell "cat" whilst the inner workings of her brain were being subjected to ungodly abuses at my hands. Curse her surface mounted resistors! I was never able to wire in a potentiometer, so satisfied myself by removing components until her voice became indistinguishable. Can you spell: spare parts?

I had better luck with the nameless pan-cultural child depicted on the front of my Playschool cellular phone. At least he was kind enough to show an interest in whatever I was doing that day. His circuits were large enough to allow variable resistor control. Useful for speeding up dull conversations.

Experiments with voltage starving (suggested by the textbook) were ineffective for both of these toys. I think it'd be more interesting to tamper with a less "scripted" toy such as a keyboard. If you watched the DVD that came with our book then you saw the Casio circuit beneath the ornamental waterfall. Awesome.

The Electret Microphone

My knowledge of Electret Microphones is limited, even after an extended visit to Wikipedia I still don't know much about them. Apparently, electret microphones have a permanent static charge stored inside a dielectric material, this removes the need for phantom power to the capacitor which is required in traditional condenser microphones. You still need a powered preamplifier though. They make them by melting plastic in an electric field or something. It seems the main advantage of the electret mic is its cheap production cost. Wiki says your cellphones and computers probably use them, and over 1 billion are produced every year.

I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of microphones. In my opinion sound synthesis is so much cooler than sound reproduction. Granted you can probably find some way to take the output of the microphone and alter it (say filtration via aforementioned contact mic), but I'd rather spend my time with the mathematical purity of integrated circuit oscillators. Mmmmm....integrated circuit oscillators. I also find it rather annoying that getting this thing to make audible sound requires an additional 9 volt battery. I don't have the money to support such lavish power needs. I'd rather save my cash and listen to my hair with the contact mic.

Contact Mics!

Piezoelectricity! What a word. It's the primary component of the so called "contact microphone." Tiny fluctuations within the piezoelectric disk transform manual force into voltage. I love these things. They're like magnifying glasses for your ears. How often have you wanted to listen to the sound of your individual strands of hair, only to be hampered by your pitiful human ears? Now you can! Compare the sounds of fabrics like wool, cotton, and polyester. Hear the dull thud of rocks falling on two by fours. Or revel in the glory of the plucked spring! Beware or pursue the feedback loops created when speaker and mic are in contact with the same object.

Interesting filter effects can be obtained using two contact microphones transmitting vibrations across a material; spring, metal, plastic, wood, anything rigid will do. Attach them to conventional instruments like tubas or flutes and observe results. It's too bad the tiny wires attached to my disk broke off, or I would be listening intently to sounds of my keyboard right now.

DIY: Early Endeavors

OK, I realize writing all ten posts on the last day possible is probably not the best approach to this assignment. That said, let's just pretend I haven't been procrastinating all semester and think back to those first magical days of DIY.

The Speaker and the 9 volt battery:

Oh how I love the simple principles of electromagnetism which control our modern speakers. Succinctly put: a tiny copper coil, wrapped around a paper cylinder, and suspended in a permanent magnetic field. Electrify the coil, and the wonders of nature shall bestow magnetism upon the coil, causing it to be repelled or attracted to field the permanent magnet. We exploited this property early in class by interfering with the circuit; include a semi-conductive material (such as rusted metal or graphite) and drag the contact across it. Your ears will be treated to a satisfying series of pops and snaps as the current struggles to complete itself. Paperclips connected to opposite ends of the circuit and placed within the speaker cone create an unusual feedback device; as the speaker cone vibrates, it alternates between completing and breaking the circuit. If adjusted appropriately, this kind of circuit can almost produce a sound vaguely reminiscent of an actual frequency. Astounding! Other ideas? Toss in some random pieces of metal; screws, nails, coins, broken glass, etc. Cut/rip/punch large holes in the speaker cone and observe results. Or submerge your speaker in water and see how long it lasts (after about 10 minutes my cone became quite soggy and would generate delicious sputtering sounds as it died). After you are finished abusing your speaker, hook it up to a stereo system and check to see if popular music sounds any better. If so, immediately patent your design.

The Final Blogtier

To be honest, I am not sure how to wrap up with my final blog. Do I discuss the skills I have learned? I could. My soldering is better as is my confidence in dealing with circuitry but such truths are trivial and do not make good reading of any kind. Do I talk about circuit bending? Been there, done that. Do I talk about homemade instruments? Same shit, different day. What's left? It's the end of the semester and I'm blown out physically and mentally. To borrow a phrase from Dylan, I'm tangled up in blue.
What is left? How about using MIDI to control telsa coils? Not exactly DIY stuff but I think that can be forgiven (it still falls into the electro-acoustic music after all). Bah, that is old hat too. You know maybe I have nothing left to say about DIY. May be I have things to ask instead. This question is open to anyone. This DIY stuff is entertaining on its own and to be a part of but I have to wonder and ask - do you think you will continue to tinker after this class is done? I surely hope to. In fact, I have a few projects in mind for summer. But this is not about me - I would like to hear if anyone else plans on using this stuff in the future.

Toy Tweaking

If youtube is any indication (no I'm not going to post a crappy video with this blog), toy tweaking seems to be a common interest among DIYers in this day and age. Personally, I do not get the fascination as much as others. Sure, toys squeak and squeal, they make hundreds of noises great and small yet in the end they are just noise making circuits. That is all and no different than a home built oscillator or contact mic or some other homemade way of making sound. I guess part of it is ease, why build the circuit when you can buy it made cheap, and part of it, I think, is we respect our own projects too much to bust them up. Part of it might be too the evil enjoyment of making something that is made to be entertaining to children (but annoying to adults) and tweaking it to make horrible noise.
All this is not to say that I do not enjoy circuit bending at all. In fact, one of my favorite things to do that I learned in this class is to bend a circuit using just my hands. There is something about taking a thing that is supposed to be artificially controlled and messing with it in such an organic way. No, I quite enjoy circuit bending. I just do not enjoy tweaking toys as some others. No specific reason. I enjoy doing it as much as tweaking other circuits and may be that is it. I do not see it different than any other circuit while others may put some value to it.

Some people are too good for their own good.

With the last couple of blogs so focused on circuit bending, art installations, and electronic projects I thought I would explore the other side of what DIY audio means for a little bit. That is things that do not plug in or require power or circuitry to work. Apparently, these kinds of instruments are big in the folk scene which I did not know before. It makes sense as folk traditions have often been linked to lower socioeconomic statuses than the rich and homemade instruments must have been commonplace in desolate economic times in the past such as the depression.

This guy has a few acoustic DIY projects that caught my interest. Honestly, the propane tank drum nor the upright washtub-esqe bass are all that interesting (they are common enough projects) but that third instrument caught my eye. A hand cranked fiddle is truly a bizarre wonder and I still am trying to wrap my mind around it. Unfortunately, no plans are listed in the video comments and no discussion on these instruments are made but I will see with a little google fu you can find this information.

PVC pipe drums are nothing new. Hell, the Blue Man Group made a career out of using them. Yet, they seem to be a common instrument among DIYers. I guess, short of trashcans, there is no quicker and easy way to cobble together some drums. And PVC at least allows for variable pitch from some analogy non-circuit bending.

Dr. Twombly Is Going To Hate This Blog (Progressive rock ahead)

I am guessing that blogging about progressive rock in a DIY audio class is going to seem like trying to pick up a hooker outside of Saint Paul's Cathedral to some. This can only be sacrilege of the highest order - worthy of the death penalty or a really nasty stomach flu. Yes, I am bound to make at least one enemy today (Please don't fail me) but as bizarre as it seems circuit bending as a long and strong tradition in the progressive rock world.
The first Moogs were rolling out just about the time progressive bands started to hit it big. Progressive rock bands were known for their musical experimentation and it seemed every would be Wakeman or Emerson got his greedy hands on a Moog as fast as possible. What they failed to see however is that the Moog is not played - it is defeated in mortal combat. The true virtuosos were forced to create their own sounds through complex networks of cables that crossed, shorted out, or elongated the various audio ports on the front. When that no longer survived to create the sound the musician often went to the back of the instrument itself and with a licked finger or a tight grip bent, broke and modified circuits by any means necessary. After all, all was slave to the song. There are a few great videos listed below and, for the sake of the sanity of some, I have listed the time the circuit bending begins to save viewing time.

Keith Emerson playing a Moog with an insane amount of cables patched in it. Watch as he modifies the sound on the fly by changing the network of the cables. (1:40)

Keith Emerson (again) directly messing with the circuits on the back of his synth. (6:05)

From The Desk of the Projects Beyond Me Editor

First Project
I really dig this project due to a couple of reasons. First, being able to interact with any project brings greater understand and joy to some who have troubles connecting to art otherwise. Second, the combination of multiple sense (in this case sound, touch, and sight) can really add some depth to the observers experience with a piece. As such, this is a great multimedia project and one definitely rooted in the DIY mentality (I couldn't find a schematic for this anywhere). The downside is while the guy showcases what his project can do - he never reveals how it was made or how it does it. It's still interesting to watch and listen to but the inquisitive side of me will not shut up about learning how it works.
Second Project
This is another interactive installation. Unlike the previous one which required modifying the resistance of water to produce sound, this project, instead, has individuals use a glove with tape reader built in. People run their gloved hand over a wide surface of tape material and they then produce sound from their hand reading the information of the tape. This project seems less connect to DIY than the other one but it reminded me a project listed in our texts as the tape violin. The tape violin works on similar principles as the tape is strung on a bow and the tape is then dragged over a tape head to produce the audio.

You Science the console for 75 experience. Your Science skill has increased!

Before my meanderings in the music department as a non-music major and before my inevitable fall to a major in the arts, I started life as a baby physics major. I wish I could claim that I left early but I ended up wasting three years of my life (and nearly sixty credits) in pursuit of a physics degree that would not be (they canceled the astrophysics major here the year I tried to apply to it anyways). Yet, I still find use for the math and science classes on occasion and . . . well . . . I thought I might use this blog to explore one thing I have heard conversed about in class. That is the formation of a square wave from the more normal sine waves we have been working with.
Now when modifying the tone of a sinusoid, we end up changing the wave itself. This is not some great revelation as any high school graduate could tell you a change in pitch is a change in frequency. Yet, to modulate a sine wave into a square one requires instead a modulation in amplitude not frequency. Here is another handy video (I post a lot of these) showing what I mean by using a Fourier transformation to create the wave from the normal sine. As the video progresses, you will see that the period (the section of the wave that does not repeat or the "beginning" to the "end") of the wave does not change but instead the amplitude (that is the peak (top) and trough(bottom) of the wave) changes. It becomes more ripple-y. These ripples increase in fluctuation as the signal advances to represent a more square or flat line. As the wave approaches infinity, the squareness of the wave approaches perfection. Neat stuff, huh?

PS - I hope I made this easy to understand so any fault in understanding is a fault in my explanation.
PPS - I hope people check out the other video on Fourier Transformations. It's really well done.
PPPS - I hope Dr. Twombly or some other kind soul might fix any errors in this post if they should arise.

Cage Match: Oscillator vs Guitar

We have done a lot of breadboarding of oscillators in this class. We started easy with the simplistic one oscillator schematic working our way through having oscillators that modulate oscillators and well beyond those projects. Creating oscillators that produce sound as certainly, I think, has been one of the most popular projects for us to explore and play with this semester. There is something attractive in torturing those poor circuits into scream their little electronic lungs out and there is been more than once that we have heard someone make some bizarre growl or screeching cry come from their breadboard and we have smirked, and asked the offender how they did it.
Yet, one thing we have had little experience of, until late in the semester, was feeding audio input into an oscillator. I would say it is fair to venture that this is the forum, in which, people are most used to dealing with oscillators. They are not used to create the sound themselves but instead used to modify it in some way, shape, or form. For me at least, as cool as it to get this oscillators to twitch their own sound, I am more driven by how oscillators tweak the sound of an instrument (especially a homemade one). So when I stumbled upon this video - I could not help but want to share it on the blog. The sound this guy gets out of his guitar is amazing but it is the sound at the end that really had me impressed and jealous.

John Cage and the Question

This may not seem to be a blog post that is very related to what we are doing in DIY but I would disagree. First, it is slightly about John Cage, a composer not only mentioned in our text but one also respected among electro-acoustic composers and musicians. The second reason I would disagree with this opinion is that from this story there is a viewpoint or opinion that I think must be addressed and I am curious as to how others in this class might respond.
A friend of the family once told a story about his father had seen Cage perform in the 1960s. His father, he said, had attended the concert almost by accident; as he merely looked to find a show to bring a date to and a friend of his had offered his tickets to the concert. Without further thought, his father attended the show with his date and, needless to say, they were more than a bit a confused by the event. As they left, before his father could ask a question of the woman, she turned to him and said, "I think you are too weird for me and I think I am going home now." And she left. Simple as that. This friend's father was apt to remark then that Cage was forever "too weird" for any "normal people".
Who knows if the story is true (I would like to think it is) but the question is then is that true? Does Cage (or electro-acoustic music in general) appeal to only a certain aesthetic and does it alienate a more general audience? I like to think art tends to speak to something universally human but I do not have answers to these questions; and, therefore, I would like to hear anyone else's thoughts on the subject.

The Diddley Bow

One of the projects I looked forward to the most in this class was the construction of our homemade guitars (or diddley bows as they are sometimes known). Part of it is I have a fascination with homemade instruments (the project listed as tape head violin has my interest as a possible summer project) and part of it probably lies in a deeper and dirty shadow of my subconscious that I care not to explore or reveal.
Yet, I would also lay blame at one group in particular - blues musicians. The blues has always been a music at root in the folk traditions of African Americans. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans suffered from institutionalized racism and, as such, oppression occurred not only socially but also economically. African American blues musicians of the early 20th century often created their music with homemade instruments. This tradition greatly affected the development of rock and roll as the homemade instrumental music of early blues musicians later influenced British skiffle bands which in turn gave rise to British invasion bands such as the Beatles, the Stones, etc.
With all the history, how could I not be interested? On top of that the summer this academic year before I discovered an artist called Seasick Steve. He has created and performed songs with his custom built diddley bow and that is where and why the instrument captured my attention the most. Below is a link to Seasick Steve playing a song titled "Save Me" on his custom diddley bow (perhaps custom is a bit redundant now that I look at it). For all its flaws, one has to respect the honesty of such music.

Seasick Steve - Save Me

DIY Audio - The Beginning

To be honest, when I first entered this course, I had no idea what DIY Audio might entail. My only experiences with audio equipment were those as a consumer. I have dealt with audio equipment as a stage performer (as I am sure nearly everyone who will read this has) and faulty amps, cabs, and mics were the bane of my existence (as I am sure nearly everyone who will read this will agree).

As such, I have grown cautious in my dealings with the Electronic Audio Gods. Sacrifices, while abhorrent as they are, are necessary and you take the Gods' smiling benevolence when you can and weather, best you can, the droughts of happiness when they come. Messing with equipment, beyond the mildest affair of using prebuilt equipment to mess with the output of prebuilt equipment, seemed sacrilege.

But I think any artist might agree that from great sacrilege arises great art. I will not make any such claim to my own meadanderings and tinkerings nor am I anymore even in any way performer of music any more. I will state, however, that this class as at least shown me the hint of possibilities in available in the DIY scene. If I were a composer, I could see myself working with this kind of instrumentation and music; but then again I'm attracted to the new.