The group we have been assigned to has very little cares when it comes to the realm of audio. We seem to have complete creative freedom and we plan to abuse this fact to ensure that our work is massively uncommercial and centered around the enjoyment we have for implimenting absurd and overblown audio characteristics.

Soundscapes and drones will occur.

Crisp, crunchy foley will occur.

Dialogue that is recorded with a microphone ripped out of an old desktop cassette dictaphone will occur.

We have free reign, we can do whatever our sound arts hearts desire, and holding back is simply not an option.

I’m assigned to a group with Inaki and Dan, and we’re working on a VR game project surrounding the issue of mental health. The game takes place mostly within a phone booth, although the player will spawn outside of the booth and has to walk inside to begin play.

The group assigned to us already has a team-member dedicated to score, so our work lies almost entirely in the foley/diegetic world; ambiences, player generated sounds, environmentally generated sounds.

They’ve provided an existing video game as a reference, which is titled ‘What Happened to Edith Finch’ and envoles a lot of character movement. The movement of the character is spurred on by the sound design, following a variety of sounding objects like birds and twinkles. Other than that, the game features many sounds close to the character; wind rustling as the character flies through the air, lots of clothing noise, breathing, etc. There are also some ethereal drone textures that seem omnipresent and exist outside of the diegetic world. This is in place of score.

This game bears very little similarity to the game provided to us. It focuses heavily on movement the sounds that are created by that; our game has almost no movement and instead focuses primarily on dialogue. There will need to be some creative thinking.

For my final sound piece, I recorded lots of my small circuits together, processed them with only a digital delay, printed them straight to tape and then dubbed some wholly absurd bepop jazz guitar and bass over the top.

The electronics were purely of my own construction, and they consisted of a couple of oscillators and a tremolo. I printed some of the oscillators running as LFOs, then clocked my tremolo with other LFOs, sending audio rate oscillators through the input of the trem. Then, on another pass, through the send of my mixer I was retriggering my tremolo using the combined output of many LFOs which was processing more oscillators. These ended up (through a bit of ping-ponging) onto three channels of tape, with the guitar and bass sum ending up on the fourth. Plenty of analogue drive was used, even some select-band feedback was used to alter the guitar and bass as they were summed, by re-sending the summed signal into the bus that was being summed from (with some drastic EQ in between).

Conceptually, it borrows from ideas from Makoto Oshiro, other artists I like like Madalyn Merkey, and combines it with the bombastic tendencies of the most silly bebop jazz to create a composition that represents how I feel about this assignment.

Lack of organisation on my part, too much changing my mind, fluctuating degrees of interest in academic writing, coupled with a spontaneous trip to Paris in the middle of trying to write the essay all joined together to make a hectic and stressful experience. The past two weeks have sounded not dissimilar to my piece “Mommy, I think I broke the radio ._.” because I’ve been tinkering with horrendously unstable and sometimes ear-splittingly loud circuitry, and then taking breaks from that and essay writing to blast out some highspeed jazz lines on my guitar as a form of comfort and stress relief. It helps me think.

Overall – I’m incredibly happy with how the piece turned out. And I think I’ll make some more in the same style very soon.

I’m feeling disenfranchised with academic writing. Perhaps this is an organisational thing, but it feels as though there is very little point to what I’m doing. The research and discovery that it has prompted me to do have expanded my knowledge of subjects that I’m interested in and have refined my field of study, but going through the motions of writing a few pages on the sources that I’ve used (when mostly I’ve just been finding sources that support my opinions or confirm existing knowledge) seems contrived and slightly pointless.

Most of my sources are online articles on specific things, interviews in video or written form, or the websites of synth builders. How do I talk meaningfully about these sources?

“This article taught me XYZ on this subject, and it enabled me to write about it in my essay because I now have a source for it.”

“These websites set up by synth designers display all of their products alongside descriptions of how they work, often a manifesto, and are designed to make you want to purchase something from them.”

“These interviews lent me insight into the design process of certain bits of equipment, and taught me about how this person thinks about circuit design. I will now detail how this person talks about synth design.”

The three above sentences sum up my source use very well, in a concise manner, and I feel that going more in depth than an extra 100-200 words on each seems to be a celebration of fillibustering. I’m going through the motions of academic writing without being in any way attatched to the process, especially that of finishing the essay. I’m unsure about how many sources I need to use, how much I can say without using sources, and on top of all of this, it feels as though my essay is almost entirely pointless in the grand scheme of things. I’m referencing things so that my facts can easily be verified, but I’m not saying anything new. Nothing in my essay is new, it is all simply regurgitation of things that I have found, and this is disheartening. Many of the concepts that I’m exploring seem to have already been explored to their logical conclusion before I was born, and maybe that’s why I’m so interested in them in the first place. But I can’t shake the feeling that the literature review is almost the same as the essay – the essay uses the data gained from the literature to package and present facts in a digestible and concise manner, and the literature review talks about the data that I got from the sources. These feel like two sides of the same coin – I will be presenting the same information using a different word order. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood the point of the literature review – I haven’t attended too many lectures recently and was too busy working on external audio projects to attend my 1-on-1 tutorials.

My problems are certainly organisational issues. Massive deja vu here, this happens every assignment. But it feels like essay writing gets in the way of my practical explorations, and that frustrates me. Today, I’ve spent my morning at my workbench working on a tremolo unit that needs to be finished before I can start playing around with my polyrhythmic drum machine design, but I keep having to slap myself on the wrist and get back to writing this literature review and finishing the referencing for my essay. I enjoy the practical work. It makes me very happy, I feel that I am working hard and getting results out of it. I feel as though it will benifit my life, progress my artistic potential and massively boost my skillset, as well as setting me up for the future. My essay writing seems to be more akin to ticking a box and jumping through hoops. I definitely think that this is a childish, immature, hedonistic way to think about things, but its a feeling that I cannot shake. These feelings are what the blog is for, I suppose? Perhaps this is too conversational for university and I will be marked down for it.

This bears a striking resembelance to me not attending university lectures over the past ~2 weeks because I’ve had so much work to do regarding this essay. Can’t attend uni because of uni; very very amusing predicament. Can’t do any circuit design because I must write about doing circuit design. All of these issues stem from my lack of organisation, but despite my best efforts I always seem to fall into the same problems. It’s making me think that university life isn’t for me; my brain is not wired to be an academic because the past two years has proved that I’m incapable of doing anything unless it’s up against deadline. Or maybe, university life is perfect for me because I will learn better and better ways of managing my time so that this doesn’t happen next year with my dissertation. Glass half empty, glass half full. I’d like to think I’m not stuck in my ways, as stagnation and inflexibility is a heinous crime that signifies the death of the mind. But look at this wall of text above, I’ve written just under a thousand words in 10 or 15 minutes, with plenty of potential future essay topics contained within – the psychology of procrastinaors, practise vs research, what is the purpose of academic writing, pessimists within the education system, hedonism and the short-term biological reward system within a modern long-term goal orientated society.

Maybe uni is indeed for me.

Been doing a lot of sitting and thinking. Watching lots of interviews and talks with Peter Blasser of Ciat Lonbarde, thinking about wonky rhythms, life rhythms, Henri Lefevbres’ Rhythmanalysis, polyhythms, silly absurd bepop jazz (Sur l’autoroute – Miles Davis, from the soundtrack of Elevator to the Gallows. It’s just balls to the wall, especially when that walking bass comes in), Ciat Lonbarde have a wonky drum machine that utilises odd numbers of transistors on each LFO to construct square/rectangle based waveforms that induce noise and unpredictable, unbalanced waveforms. These can be clocked independantly and thus create lush, complex polyrhythms.

Theres an old (supremely simple) square oscillator that I constructed using an LM358 IC, it’s been lying around unused in my box of unfinished circuits for a few years simply because it was so unstable. A combination of shoddy design, recycled capacitors (~45 year old caps), a poor understanding of the differences and purposes of split rail and single rail supplies and floating GNDs and also it being a difficult chip to use (I think because of some requirement for input biasing, still unsure) is what caused this instability. But now, I’m recycling that circuit because it creates some incredibly interesting groups of pulses at LFO rates – perfect for triggering oscillators in a wonky drum machine of my own. The main problem I have now is modifying it’s frequency range whilst this time KEEPING A HOLD of the wonk.

It’s very interesting to see how desires change over time. I can now build perfectly useable square wave oscillators using a different opamp more suited to the purpose, and I’m hunting again for the wonk. I’m just glad I soldered down this wonky circuit all those years ago and didnt just breadboard it, to be ripped out once it failed. Its really teaching me about the impotance of failure and also the importance of doing and finishing, even if there are imperfections within the end product.

I think that capturing the process of designing the aforementioned synthesiser may be a more evocative and comedic work than actually utilising the finished synth. I also have my doubts as to whether I can engineer a working synth within the short time that I have available to me. This is a classic woe that I find myself experiencing when it comes to uni work. Setting myself big goals at the last minute and then struggling to fulfill them, thus creating subpar work that is not representitave of my abilities. This is an organisational issue, but I can work around it by being thoughtful and measured about the products that I intend to deliver. For example; this assignment I initially planned to create a synthesiser and perform a piece with it, and now I have backtracked to simply making a piece about making a synthesiser.

My concept is to hit record (on some stereo mic pair) only when I’m about to test some part of my circuit. This means that I’ll be capturing all of the tiny victories and the tiny problem solving moments and all of the disappointing moments where nothing works despite my contrived plans.

I then plan on splicing these all together to create a rollercoaster compilation of all of the mini victories and failures that occur when attemtping to construct a working circuit.

The only logical road to go down for my sound work is to build a rudimentary synthesiser and perform using that. This will not be my first synthesiser build, but may be my first permanent build that won’t be held together purely by blind luck. I’ve also been putting a lot of thought into playability, how one controls a synthesiser, this sort of thing. Ciat Lonbarde (run by Peter Blasser) has been a great influence in identifying simple and intuitive ways to control synthesisers.

In terms of my research proposal, I intent to propose to build a synthesiser. It’ll comprise of a few oscillators being triggered by other oscillators, all independant of eachother to enable polyrhythmic functionality. Filters and envelopes would be an additional bliss, and oscillation intermodulation would be the tin hat on it. Dont even get me started on stereo…….

But envelopes and filters are things that I’m still working out – lots of work is still to be done, and we’ll see how successful I am given the limited time and resources. Component cost is a thorn in my side; I’m about to drop £30 on components in the hopes that they’ll enable me to experiment more, and get a working model. We’ll see. Thats pretty much two nights out; perhaps I should have chosen coding, instead. That would enable more money to be spent on drink.

There is a certain aspect of experimentation that comes alongside dealing with the chaotic and sometimes unpredictable environments that are present when dealing with pure voltages, and this lends a hand regarding innovation. Has every analogue audio device been invented? Of course not, people will continue to innovate and create new FX units and new sounding devices (sounding is being used here as a verb).

Makoto Oshiro, who was a recent visiting practitioner, creates a variety of electronic sounding-devices but the one I’m focusing on here is the Kachi Kachi. It uses relays triggered by oscillators to create acoustic sounds, it can be triggered into audio rate and thus create tones, or triggered slower for rhythms. His 30 minute piece (linked below) is a great example of using minimal technology to create powerful and dynamic works. It’s inspiring, and aides my drive to build more and more circuits. It also teaches me that I should be soldering and finalising all of my electronics, as even the most simple things that seem trivial should be given the chance to be performed with.

Eirik Brandal is an artist who has been on my radar for many months now. He creates sound sculptures using DIY electronics, combining occularcentrist ideologies with sound art to make beautifully functional works. These inspire me greatly, and they also relate heavily to my essay subject which is starting to now take shape. I’m writing about the benifits of learning electronics, which could be argued to be somewhat of an obsolete medium. Digital technology is getting more powerful and readily available every year and soon there will be no audible difference between it and analogue, but yet I feel that people will still gravitate towards it. The inherent physicality that exists with analogue, coupled with the ease of constructing simple things creates a multifaceted medium for not just sound-making but also spatial composition.

Brandals work is simple and ingenious, meticulous and precise with mathematical beauty derived from its sheer functionality. The interactivity within instruments such as ‘Composition #11’ is uncomplicated but effective, it doesn’t seem contrived. ES #17 hints at communication and collaboration with machines and toys with notions of sentience. He creates endlessly exciting sculptures that seem to display a childish glee at building better and better toys. But these aren’t the dreams of an overexcitable toddler, these are nuanced works that have been weighted and balanced with deliberate thoughtfulness. He is one example of an artist who innovates through analogue means, creating devices that simply have no digital counterpart. He shows that there is indeed room to innovate, and that electronics is a still evolving field of study that has not yet been entirely mapped out.

I don’t wish to make this about analogue vs digital, but I see it as less of a competition of better or worse, and more as an indication of where my time should be spent. Incidentally, my mind is made up and not much will be able to dissuade me from my interest in circuit design rather than software development, but I see this project as a means to discuss and justify my decision.

It seems like there is plenty of potential essay subjects when it comes to audio electronics.

• 1) Planned obselescence, small companies making electronics are more likely to promote fixing things rather than scrapping and moving on.
• 2)Anything about how much our choice of tools dictate the sound of our work.
• 3) Being creative within rigid constraints.
• 4) designing circuits is often bad for the environment and unsustainable – components break down over time and need to be replaced, the overwhelming majority of electronics are not recycled.
• 5) Is it a good thing that we understand nothing about the innerworkings of our equipment? Is that a priviledge?
• 6) Cutting out the middleman – design the equipment that you would like to use, at wholesale cost.

Although pretty much all of these topics relate directly to my own practise as an aspiring circuit designer, I think some of these are more related to experienced electronic engineers. For example, no.6: years and maybe decades of experience are needed to design and create electronics up to specifications that can be used in a professional audio capacity. No.5 also requires years of experience, and relates to fixing electronics which is a particularly hard field to get into.

I think a topic more suited to my abilities would focus more on the aspect of learning electronics, touching upon areas such as ‘why learn electronics during a digital age’, ‘the difficulties of learning electronics when fewer and fewer experts exist’, ‘ensuring that there are enough technicians to maintain the vintage equipment that is so fetishised within the field of audio’, ‘the benifits of learning to fail, and how electronics teaches that’.