DARK BEEP

Figured out how to ad pitch control to digital effects pedals!  Really cool bit-crushing sounds!

This is a Yamaha PSS-170 keyboard modified by me.  Cant afford a DX-7 but want cool FM synth sounds? :) Mods include: Pitch bend:  goes very very low, this can make some really heavy FM synth sounds.  It can go so low it crashes the keyboard, I left this feature because it can lead to some really interesting sounds 8 momentary data-line cut buttons.  How these work: They interrupt information flowing between the cpu and Fm synth chip, essentially combining the presets in unusual ways. This creates new and way more interesting timbres than the stock sounds.  It can take some time to find sounds you like, but if you do they are repeatable, a rarity on modified FM keyboards.  I will include an instruction manual with a few combinations that make really good sounds to get you started.

Most recent exhibition...

Here ya go, this my friend and I

I have just started to figure out an easier way to sequence bent instruments.  A company makes a circuit that decodes midi signals and uses them to drive a bank of relay's.  This solves a ridiculous amount of problems, all I have to do is write complex patterns on a drum machine (not possible on a diy step sequencer) and send the midi to the switching box.  You can assign each switch a specific midi note, and you program the midi channel with a little hexadecimal DIP switch.

The big red/orange box is the switchboard, and the other three modules are sound makers.  Each one is actually a bent or homemade effects pedal, a boss micro rack delay, some shitty peavey rack mount delay, and a barbie karaoke delay.  They are all heavily modified, have no input signal, just digital and analog glitch that is recycled back into their own audible signal path.  They are roughly divided by snare/cymbal, bass drum/tom, and bass line.  This is purely a conceptual division as they dont really mimic those instruments but it helps for writing patterns.  So its a rhythm machine were each "drum" has its own audio input. 

This has helped me think of time and drums a lot more, I used to imagine a pattern and the individual drums in the pattern as delineating a time structure, now more so I imagine each drum sound as a moment in time itself that is constantly evolving as it happens.  As the timbre and a/d of the drum changes so does the pattern, but the switches themselves never change sequence or speed, its amazing how much the pattern can be affected by the timbre of the individual drum.

This was the room Magnus and I recorded in, it was really fun and really insanely hot.  Its down the hall from my studio.  Recently some lovely people fixed it up and made themselves a great space so we don't record here anymore.

You can see a lot of our old setup in the pics:  the green box is two barbie karaoke delay circuits being sequenced by relay's, the lunetta synth is the orange box, the sk-1, the omnichord, and the hr-16 and tr 505 drum machines.  I think every instrument except the guitar pedals, and mixers are bent or homemade.

Here is some random instruments I bent that don't exist anymore, they are all Casio Sk's actually, I tried to make a rotary sequencer for the white sk-1, I have since moved on in the sequencing area.  The Sk-5 I gave to my old roommate as payment for stepping on his guitar, and the sk-1 behind it is gone as well.  They are great sounding keyboards, but I have since been looking for something a little easier to work with.  Its as if they compose whole songs on their own and its hard to play along with them.

This is basically the first synthesizer type thing I have ever built, I went with the Lunetta design ethos:  modular, 4000 series cmos, and simple.  It excels at strange percussive patterns, and harsh drones.  

Inside: 6 40106 oscillators, 4015 shift register, slacker melody generator, 4017 8 step sequencer, 2x 40106 LFO, Atari Punk Console, nand gate, and gate, or gate, shift register, 2 passive mixers, and oscillator voltage starve.

I use alligator clips for patching (money once again:( ), the lines pointed down represent an input, the lines pointed up an output.  I went with the most natural feeling layout, so it basically goes from left to right, like reading a book.  The oscillators are on the left, the time based circuits in the middle left, gates and shift register in the middle right, and the mixer is on the far right.  So far I have enjoyed this layout, but I will never use alligator clips again as it becomes a big mess really fast.

The patterns are particularly interesting to me, I like how lots of individual elements can get complex very easily.  The best is when random chaos ensues, all self generated.  The patterns are often very awkward, and It has a plodding stupidity that find entertaining.  It would be at home with a steel drum and harmonica combo.  The whole thing is really cheerful sounding, frighteningly cheerful.