Audio Cookbook

Four Oscillator Drone Produced with the WSG

What good is a Weird Sound Generator if you’re not using it to make weird sounds? Sometimes it is nice to just hold it on your lap and stroke it gently. That aside, it’s quiet useful once you plug it in and start twiddling the knobs. Here’s a piece I created by tuning the each of the four oscillators on the WSG and then fiddled with the filters. At the same time I made some adjustments to a phaser that I was running it through in Ableton Live and topped it off with ping pong delay.

Four Oscillator Drone

WSG Build Gallery

I’ve created a slideshow that illustrates the process of building my Weird Sound Generator, from the unopened box through completion of the project. The third photo in the series (shown below) shows the items that came out of the box including all of the components for the WSG and a CD by Ray Wilson titled Electroluminescence.
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Korg MS2000 Bricked by Firmware Update

ACB readers are sure to be aware from previous posts that my Korg MS2000 is one of my favorite and most indispensable synths. Embarrassingly I seem to have turned it into a drink stand during a firmware update. I used the firmware upgrade utility on korg.com to attempt the update. The process failed part way through and now my beloved instrument is a brick, well more like a cement block, that shows a blank back-lit display after turning it on. I’ve tried resending the update at all the available speeds that the utility allows with no impact on the results. I also tried a factory reset to no avail. I’m going to try again tomorrow with a different MIDI interface, but I’m afraid that this isn’t going to be an easy fix. I’ve searched the forums for a solution, but haven’t found anything. If anyone has any suggestion, please let me know. I’m desperate to get this thing up and running again.

Weird Sound Generator

This weekend I completed building a Weird Sound Generator, or WSG, component kit from Music From Outer Space. The kit comes with a printed circuit board and all the electronics, including resistors, capacitors, diodes, ICs, potentiometers, switches, and wires. The rest, like the housing, faceplate, and soldering is up to the builder.

I built a box similar to the recommended specifications and cut the faceplate out of an old computer case. The wood I used was scraps that I held onto and recycled. In fact, I managed built the entire instrument without buying anything beyond the kit itself. Even the stain, nails, glue, screws, and backing board were materials that I had hoarded from previous projects over the years.

It took me about thirteen hours to complete. But, it was a fun thirteen hours of playing with my soldering iron and power tools while following instructions, or coming up with a way to cut through metal, or mount a nine volt battery inside an already cramped case. And, although the case isn’t perfectly square, and the leads are more than a bit tangled, I’m pleased with the little noise maker that I now have at my disposal. In the next entry I’ll illustrate the sequence of events that took place in building this device. Oh yeah… and sounds.

Exploring The Sounds of Ice

This is one of the coolest (no pun intended) sound design projects ever. Marlin Ledin rode his bike and camped around the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior covering about 150 miles on the ice recording the creaks and groans of the shifting ice plates. Listen to his recordings and checkout photos and videos of his expedition at www.bikingtheapostles.com. Marlin describes the ice sounds:

The Lake Drums, as some people call them, are an amazing phenomenon that rank right up there with Aurora Borealis. Lake drums, or drumming perhaps, occurs when a shift in the ice creates friction between sheets of ice, like tectonic plates of the earths crust. The unique sounds created come after these shifts in the ice. I ventured out and captured some of these sounds with modern recording techniques.

Sequential Circuits Pro-One

I have finally started restoring my Sequential Circuits Pro-One. My plan is to get it as close to mint condition as possible and start using it again for recording and perhaps performing. Once I started using the Korg MS2000, I neglected the Pro-One and it fell into disrepair. Over time the key contacts became dirty and inconsistent. At some stage one of the knobs was broken off and lost, leaving a stub of potentiometer protruding uselessly from the control panel.

The first thing I did was clean the pots. For you laymen, pots is short for potentiometers. In other words, I wasn’t diverted by dirty dishes. To clean the pots I removed the knobs and then squirted a few drops of a greaseless lubricant called LPS-1 around the post. The stuff works wonders on crackly volume knobs and was recommended to me by the electronics experts at AEI Electronics in Minneapolis years ago. I’ve been using it ever since. After applying the LPS-1 I made thirty or more rotations of the pot from zero to maximum so that the dirt particles were worn away by the fluid.

I put the thing back together and did some tests. The knobs no longer had anymore crackling going on, so that was fixed, but the keyboard was horribly inconsistent. The Pro-One uses a J-wire keyboard with open air connectors that are prone to collecting dirt (or residue from malted beverages spilled over the keys). For a close up view of the Pro-One J-wires check out this post on MaxtrixSynth. Another problem is that the J-wires can become less springy, making the connections a bit weak. I used used q-tips with a drop of LPS-1 to clean each J-wire and the metal bar that they connect to when the key is depressed. I also bent the J-wires slightly to improve the tension. After all that I tested it again to find it working flawless, although still a little difficult to tune. Next up I’ll be replacing the missing mod wheel, the broken potentiometer, and the missing knob.

Social Sound Design

Social Sound Design is a Q&A site for sound designers recently created by Andrew Spitz of { sound + design }. It looks like it has the potential to be an excellent resource. If you’re not familiar with Andrews site { sound + design } I recommend that you check it out as well. From SSD:

SSD is a Q&A site encompassing all the wonderful disciplines of sound design: film, game, art and installations, sound effects, new media, software, programming (Max/MSP; Pd, etc.), Arduino and micro-controllers, gear, feedback, recording, techniques and tips… as long as it involves sound design it is welcome here!

Experimental Music Mondays Call for Entries

I am curating a series of Experimental Music events hosted by the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The first installment is Monday, March 1st, 2010. Subsequent installments are scheduled for the last Monday of every month. For the first show we have three performances.

Ostraka (myself) with Graham O’Brien on drums will be performing using the GMS. Terr the Om (Nathan Brende) will also be performing his distinct breed of electronic music, melding the output from his circuit bent toys with looping and real-time arranging in Ableton Live. Thirdly, Dialsystem consisting of brothers, Graham and Casey O’Brien will likely mesmerize listeners with their ethereal mix of bass, drums, and electronics. Music starts at 9:00pm.

I’m in the process of booking the upcoming events, so if you are a performer of experimental music and would like to get involved, please send your name, artist name, contact information, links to a biography, and links to audio examples to emm [ at ] audiocookbook [ dot ] org.

David Cope’s Emily Howell

I’ve just read a fascinating article about composer, David Cope, who is known for creating music in the style of Bach, Mozart, and others with software he developed called Emmy. I first heard David Cope’s work on Radiolab, and was intrigued by his approach. The article, Triumph of the Cyborg Composer, discusses his latest application titled Emily Howell. Cope is using the computer in a more collaborative way to compose music is his own style with the help of his program. A couple of audio examples within the article illustrate the musical results.

Cope has received a lot of criticism regarding his work, including statements that his music lacks soul because it was written by a computer. But was it really written by a computer? I think a better term is generated. Cope wrote the software, so I would argue that the music generated by the software was ultimately written by the software developer. In this case Cope himself. In other instances I might argue that the music was created by the user of the software tool, rather than the developer of the software. It comes down to who is at the controls. What decisions are being made, and by whom, or perhaps what?

Since I’ve developed and am currently using software to perform and record generative music, I am curious about your opinions. You may have heard pieces on this site generated by the GMS. Perhaps you listened to the excerpts in the article. What do you think? Does music generated by computers lack soul? Does it diminish the human, communicative qualities contained in the work? Or, are we using computers simply as tools? Perhaps, as computers and software evolve we might begin to collaborate artistically with them rather than just use them slavishly. Based on Cope’s work and others, I believe that we are closer than we think to this becoming a reality.

Notion Ink’s Adam Android OS Tablet

I realize that I am running the risk of turning AudioCookbook into AudioSlateBook with all my tablet articles of late. However, I just have to say that based on the video from this article the Notion Ink Adam is pretty amazing. Notion Ink, based in Hyderabad, India, have designed the device with a 10″ transflective LCD that only uses 200 milliwatts allowing for up to 24 hours of battery life, or more than 10 hours of HD video playback. Another cool feature is a backside trackpad, apparently a first on any device. I like this idea for control when you don’t want to obscure the screen. I find it exciting that new technology is starting to respond to humans in more human ways, like Google’s voice to text in Android OS, and multitouch and accelerometers for gestural input on mobile devices.