Archive for the 'instruments' Category

a new instrument is born...

just did a new instrument. its a 4093 chip with an oscillator and another one serving as LFO.
all packed together in a tupperware with a little lm386 amp and a speaker.

sonator

and it has a sequencer in and that turns it into a great noisy thingy i have never expected.

in fact i planned to create a sonator to check room Eigen-frequencies, but when i found all these noisy bits and pieces in it i wanted it myself... so felix has to wait.

How to control a resistor (or a potentiometer) using Arduino

Many times I asked myself how to control my simple noise-electronic-circuits by a computer. Most of these instruments are hacked toys or small circuits on which i can either switch on and off an effect or change one by the use of a potentiometer.

potientiometers in circuitbent toy

and it would be great to have them played by a midi-clocked software or to create fancy high speed effects on the potis/resistors, which no human fingers could ever do.

So what we need is an Digital to Potentiometer/Resistor device.

arduino_resistor_control

The Arduino board suits perfect for that! because it already has several Digital-to-Analog inputs and outputs and vice-versa. There is many tutorials out there, but I couldnt find what i wanted.

So how can we use the Arduino's outputs to control a resistor?

The answer is pretty simple: we can use one of the PWD analog outputs to control an LED, which is situated next to a photoresistor.

LED photoresistor pair

The picture shows such an example. its generally better though to put it inside a opaque casing, tape or some shrinkable wire, but to show it here i have ommited the case.

Remember to put a resistor in series with the LED to keep it alive. Of course some tuning needs to be done, by choosing the right LED/photoresistor pair . There are really bright LEDs or cheap ones and the photoresistors have different ranges and finally also the distance and the casing are crucial.

Using any software to control the Arduino PWD output we can dimm the LED and thus we can now change the resistivity of the photoresistor.

I used PureData to control the arduino outputs. and made a simple patch to oscillate the resistivity of the photoresistor.

pd patch to oscillate the resistivity


finally i used the resistor in a very simple circuit using a CMOS chip (40106). by a resistor and a capacitor a square wafe oscillator can be built, where the resistance controls the pitch/frequency.

40106

8-step sequencer movie for flausen.ch

This movie was done for a presentation in flausen.ch at the Tweakfest, 25. mai 2007.
Producers: myself and Markus Haselbach

It was done to promote the ideas of SGMK (Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Mechatronische Kunst).

By the use of simple and cheap electronic parts this simple 8-step sequencer was built in the same way as for the short workshop at Dock18 during the Festival der Medienkulturen.

It was the goal to inspire the audience to do a bit of tinkering to create artistic audio devices that allow simple interaction with the musican. SGMK provides the knowledge for doing such projects by offering a range of workshops, see the homepage for details.

Minimodular MK II - prototype finished

this is the new prototype
dusjagr's Minimodular MK II- Vintage edition

see the old entry for the first prototype....

similiar design, with integrated LEDs.

bild064.jpg
and a beautiful wooden casing....

Minimodular MK II - Vintage Edition

dusjagr's Minimodular MK I- Pink Edition

The first prototype of dusjagr's minimodular.
made for hinti, because i thought he has to take with him a synth, going for a world trip without your personal minimal experimantal analog audio kit seemed horrible to me.
Minimodular MK I - Pink Edition

so the idea came up to build something small to go with his tablet. usb powered, modular and especialy PINK.

Hinti trying to get along

the ideas is now followed further, check in again to see the progress.

Die kleinste Gitarre der Welt

As a present for Brandon my good ole' irish friend and favorite musician (if it werent about his terrible tastein harmonics) i made him a new guitar.

Die kleinste Gitarre der Welt
its pretty much a Möslang style usage of 2 photoresistors (one with an on-push button) and 2 color-changing LEDs. So u can turn the frequency from the LEDs (or from any other light source,such as tv-screens or bycicle lights) into an audible low frequency noise. beautiful.
hold it in your hands and play around with it. sadly the wired tended to break easily and an updated version will follow soon.

and please remember that the mouthpiece is still under development....

Adi mit Gitarre