During the making of the presentation for this unit I came up with the phrase (as a presentation title) ‘at the junction between science and art’ which aimed to sum up my practise as an amateur electronics engineer who is aiming to make interesting and stimulating electronic instruments. This seemed to be quite representative, quite apt, in that my creations are neither wholly in the camp of science (my engineering is amateur and scrapped together from disparate knowledge bases, entirely un-elegant in execution; besides, my goal is not to create an engineering marvel, but rather to create an interesting and artful instrument that is as complex as it is peculiar) nor wholly in the world of art (I spend a great deal of my time crunching numbers and trialling different topologies, measuring and metering, recording my results in a scientific manner – not very artistic, really).

In an effort to reference my work to related practitioners who lie/have lain on a similar boundary, I referenced some of the creations from the book “Instruments and the Imagination” (which has been introduced in a previous post) to illustrate that there are many notable examples of instruments that are both scientific curios and yet also devices of tangible artistic beauty. The foremost notable example is the Aeolian Harp, which is detailed in a prior post, but also as equally notable are the Chladni Figures demonstrated by Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni, a German physicist and musician. These figures (pictured below) are achieved by exciting a metal plate with a bow, upon which a thin layer of fine sand is laid. The sand arranges itself in different patterns according to different frequencies that the plate is excited to; the sand lies at the boundary of two opposing vibrational forces: nodes, as labelled by Chladni.

His research is heavily involved with the science of acoustics; these discoveries are related to the study of ‘room modes’ that is a common acoustic consideration when designing acoustically treated rooms for studios in the present day, it is also strongly related to the study of harmonics and the harmonic series, along with instrument design (the image below shows Chladni figures for the backplate of an acoustic guitar).

However, these slides present a beautiful picture of art in their own right. Scientists of previous ages would ascribe these to be an aspect of ‘natural magic,’ demonstrating the inherent beauty of the world; today, these are known to be related to the solutions of the Schrödinger equation for one-electron atoms. I seek to find a middle ground between these two perspectives. These patterns, if presented as art generated by a human, would be perfectly viable for a gallery show or exhibition, and yet they are patterns inherent to the physical world that we exist within. Perhaps there is more to ‘natural magic’ than we give credit to; beauty can be found in the manipulation of inherent natural forces for artistic means, and that is exactly what I hope to express with my own creations.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Said by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1962 book “Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible”, it is an oft-repeated phrase that requires very little explanation. For our society to become as technically advanced as it currently is, delegation of knowledge is essential and the result of this individual specialisation is that many of the principles that we rely on every day are simply taken for granted. The title of this blog post is perhaps misleading; a more accurate description would be that science is the new alchemy/magic. Cars, planes, electronics, communication, bridges, central heating, digital computing, many of these are simply accepted to work via some logical path that has been worked out by someone or a group of people, but bothering to understand it is both unnecessary and uninteresting to the some of the general public.

Lacking knowledge about the systems that are in place around me makes me feel uncomfortable; blind trust in things that I rely on makes me feel foolish. I understand that the individual specialisation mentioned above is essential to modern living, but electronics is a means for me to get to grips with the systems that I encounter in my practise. Learning electronics appeals to the childlike desire to ask ‘why,’ over and over again. The skill ceiling is incredibly high, which I find comforting, though I doubt that I’ll delve deep into the maths side of things; I’m very happy to have a grasp of simple ratios and the functional workings of components and systems, but advanced transfer functions and other such technicalities seems far over my abilities and best left to the engineers and physicists. Besides, by not understanding the exact manner in which things function (down to molecular level, laid out clearly with formulae) I am able to retain some of that magical, mystical essence that keeps me coming back to the workbench. There is a sense of turning base metals into gold, where the base metals are components and the gold is some homebrewed device that I have dreamt up. This romantic appeal is something that I lean on a lot, which is perhaps why I am drawn to more hardware-centric analogue devices rather than their digital screen-based counterparts. Working with my hands and being able to see the objects that I am manipulating is half of the fun for me.

I’ve just cracked the solution to a problem that has been sitting in the back of my mind for the past few weeks. The problem is as follows: I want to make my current oscillator design (which can provide square and triangle wave outputs) variable in its pulse width. The method that I came up with would also allow me to skew the triangle wave output to give me a variable triangle/saw wave knob, skewing to ramp up and ramp down varieties. This is a setting I have seen on plenty of synths, and I felt that it wasn’t impossible to do by some slight tweaks to my design.

About 1.5 weeks ago I was on a night out, and upon arriving home I drunkenly ordered some diodes and banana jacks+sockets which I thought would be the solution to my woes. The banana connectors weren’t related to this issue, but were born out of a desire to make my synth designs more modular. The diodes, though, I reckoned were exactly what I needed to solve my oscillator issues! The image below was ripped from a website online, and illustrates an opamp based relaxation oscillator.

The capacitor charges and discharges via R (one can safely assume that no current flows through the opamp terminals, as they appear at very high impedance), R1 and R2 set the voltage boundaries that the capacitor charges/discharges according to, by combining ground and the output signal in a certain ratio (described by their relative values). A square wave can be found at the output of the opamp (labelled V⁰), and a triangle wave can be found (at a much lower voltage) from the inverting input of the opamp (labelled V^C). This triangle wave is then amplified, and the two waves are then sent to a 1P2T switch: single pole, double throw. This is just an A/B switch, with the triangle represented when the switch is flicked in one way, and the square when it is flicked the other way.

Googling didn’t really give me any solid answers about solutions to my PWM issue, but I thought that I could use diodes between R and C to affect the charge and discharge time of C independantly. I thought I might run into differences of frequency, but also presumed that if I kept the total resistance of the two resistors the same as R was, then the frequency wouldnt change, just the duty cycle. My assumptions were correct; wiring up two diodes in parallel (facing opposite directions) and then swapping R for two pots of the same value meant that I could achieve the PWM and tri/saw skew without affecting total frequency if the pots were turned together but inversely at the same rate. That means, all I need is a dual gang pot with each pot wired inversely to achieve smooth alteration of pulse width and tri/saw skew !!! This was a breakthrough. The only issue is: R in my previous circuit design was where I altered the frequency, but now I can’t use that point to alter the frequency as the charge and discharge rates are affecting the skew. Further testing needs to be done to see whether a pot in place of R1 or R2 will affect the frequency but leave the amplitude unchanged. If that is indeed the case, then life is bliss and everything is going swimmingly.

Extrapolating into the future, I’m curious where I’ll take all of the knowledge that I’m gaining during 3rd year. I’m interested in making circuits for other people, and I already have some commissions from interested individuals: a harmonic tremolo pedal, fuzz pedal and a dub siren. These will indeed earn me some money but I doubt I’ll reach a point of financial security from them for a long time, they are more akin to passion projects that I can earn from nontheless.

There is also the aspect of repair; repair is a whole other discipline to hashing janky circuits. It requires a true engineers mindset; the sheer lust for problem solving and the ceaseless vigilance to get to the bottom of issues lies at the heart of repairing electronics, and I feel like I have a certain dollop of that already. The knowledge and know-how is another matter, but I don’t doubt that I’ll eventually get there with a bit of practise. I’ve blown up a mates amp head (for the second time, as it arrived on my bench already blown up) in the process of fixing it, and have a number of tape decks that need some sort of repair or calibration. These will be my practise pieces, and I hope to really refine my knowledge through them. If I can get good at repair, then that is a more solid and reliable source of income than making idiosyncratic and peculiar circuits for creatives.

I already do guitar setups for a lot of friends, and have repaired an old digital pedal (removing the IC and then cleaning the contacts was the only issue), and ocasionally have people coming to me with broken thingss as I seem to be the only person in my small bubble of friends with any electronics know-how.

Perhaps one of my final projects will be repair-centered?

I’ve recently had a first rehearsal for a band that will be comprised of me and two other members, focused around homemade electronics and aiming towards folk sensibilities. Our aim (although the vision of the band is still in an ever shifting series of conceptual eddies and swirls) is to take the existing cultures around folk music and then extrapolate them into a context where electronic instruments are as plentiful and well understood as acoustic instruments. The idea being that we will be attempting to make folk-style instruments out of electronics, keeping the DIY ethos that seems important to the folk genre, and then performing folk or folk-style tunes with a combination of these homemade electronic instruments alongside acoustic instruments.

I have very little direct connection to the genre of folk music, so I’m trying to do as much research as possible to inform my decisions about where to take the instruments and the music for this project. I’m very interested in the Broadside Hacks album “Songs Without Authors Vol. 1”, as I saw them last year in the summer and they had a profound effect on me. The concept behind that particular record was “trying to find those untouched songs”, according to Campbell Baum, one of the people who began the band (from this interview: https://tradfolk.co/music/music-interviews/broadside-hacks/). I enjoy this idea of resurrecting songs that are on the verge of death, especially because folk music seems rife with songs that are repeated again and again as some sort of pedagogical practise. It814200 feels profound for them to be reintroducing songs into the canon that would otherwise slowly become lost to the mists of time.

I’ve been reading lots, as well. Trying to find links between folk and DIY culture, but I’m beginning to feel like reading about folk music to try and understand it better, especially from academics, is a tad pointless; ‘dancing about architecture,’ and all that jazz. I think experiencing and listening to folk seems to be the best way to approach it, and perhaps I will realise that there is less DIY in folk that I assumed from my naive standpoint. Nonetheless, I still have some very strong notions of how I want some of my electronic instruments to behave and work.

I am envisioning an electronic chord machine, lets say 4 chords, 3 voices. Each chord is activated by one of four buttons, and each voice in each respective chord can be tuned with pots to achieve the desired chords. There are slew control knobs, however, for each oscillator, resulting in the changing of chords creating momentary dissonance as each oscillator slews to the next note at a different rate. This is not a particularly original idea, regarding the slew; it is utilised in the Dewanotron Hymnotron to great effect. However, I aspire to implement a hurdy-gurdy style crank arm, controlling the gain into a wavefolder. As the crank turns around, the gain cycles in a sinusoidal manner, varying the amount of wavefolding that is occuring.

This hypothetical instrument (drawings to come in a later blog post) is designed to combine the electrical method of playing (buttons, knobs, etc) with the more acoustic method of playing (the hurdy-gurdy-esque crank arm) to produce an instrument that (hopefully) feels somewhere between the two. Made entirely of wood, I think that it will fit nicely in with my ideas regarding exactly how I want my instruments to behave, look, and perform (as noted in previous blog posts).

There are plenty more fascinating historically scientific instruments other than the Aeolian Harp which capture my attention. The maccabre element of some of these inventions really captures my imagination. Consider the Ear Phonautograph, invented by A.G. Bell and C.J. Blake, a device which imparted Bell with the scientific knowledge required to eventually construct the telephone. It is macabre in its utilitarian scientific design that puts the quest for knowledge above all else, using a human inner ear to record vibrations onto a smoked pane of glass. This is a purely visual reproduction of the sound as there is no possible method of playback, but the knowledge that such a light and thin membrane could vibrate such (relatively more) heavy bones such as are in the inner ear, made Bell muse upon the possibility of vibrating magnets with some sort of thin diaphragm, which was what gave the idea for the telephone.

Whilst this particular instrument is not one of sound-making, I admire the grit and determination that it takes to manufacture such a boutique item, and I adore the scrapped-together scientific brilliance of it. It was not made in a lab out of purpose built parts, but more likely cobbled together from bits and pieces of other devices. In an article by Tom Everett for the Science Museum Group Journal (http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/browse/issue-12/writing-sound-with-a-human-ear/), he notes that despite a lack of documentation relating to the design of the insrument it appears that the base was a repurposed microphone stand, and the diagrams suggest that the inner ear might have been connected purely by a tack affixed through its flesh.

I aspire for my creations to have the same archaic mystique and beauty that is exhibited by this device, both visually and functionally. My synthesiser that is on the bench at the moment is a bespoke design both in housing and in its guts, but I feel that my devices are still in their infancy and I want more crazed mad-scientist charm in my instruments. I want my instruments to encourage play and curiosity, but make the learning process as puzzling and maze-like as possible. I want my instruments to continue to cause joy over time through their idiosyncratic peculiarities, and reward those who desire to dig into their complexities. I feel that this can only really be achieved with patch points of some sort; I bought some banana sockets and jacks very recently so as to realise my goals. Light interactivity or proximity interactivity, are also things to investigate. Proximity being the harder of the two to impliment, I reckon I’ll just start with some simple front panel mounted LDRs to modulate CV signals.

I want my creations to lie along the line that bridges artist and scientist. I think there is beauty in the construction of things, beauty in precision and in things that work. This notion is held by the scientific creations of the 1800s and early 1900s, where scientific objects were treated as both tools to understand the world around us and also items to entertain viewers as well to help visualise and demonstrate the inherent beauty in natural processes that occur. Currently reading a borrowed book called ‘Instruments and the Imagination’ by Thomas Hankins and Robert Silverman, on loan to me from Milo/the sound arts office informal library. It details a variety of instruments from the 1700s to the 1900s, through which an account of the altering perspectives on science is illustrated. Romantic devices such as the Aeolian Harp capture my attention greatly; this stringed instrument is played by the wind, left on an open window so that one can listen to the music of nature. This mysterious instrument was reported to not play the open notes to which the strings were tuned (the fundamental frequencies) but to generate other tones, at first harmonious and pleasant but if the wind picked up it was capable of producing eerie screeching tones and dissonant wails. “Nothing could better match the sentiment of the romantic soul” write Hankins and Silverman. This instrument, it turns out, was playing the harmonics of the strings which was a result of the manner in which these strings were excited, but the exact mechanics behind this weren’t understood until 1878. In this year, V. Strouhal makes a guess that these strings sound the ‘frictional tones’ rather than the fundamental because of the entirely different way in which they are excited: he proposed that turbulent air behind the string was the culprit for generating these eerie overtones, and he was spot on. This was later identified as the Kármán vortex street effect, seen below. The inclusion of this instrument within the book lends a glimpse into the overlap between science and the arts in that era, which is something that I feel I want to explore within my creations.

Well, my synthesiser is finished. And despite the initial excitement of my first instrument, I can’t help but feel that it is limited and bland in its construction. It is an ‘original’ (as listed in previous blog posts) synth perhaps in that it does not exist in the commercial world of synthesis, but perhaps that is for good reason. It is a rigid and restricting design, suited to only a small sliver of sound construction desires. It bears fruit in very slow, shifting polyrythms, but beyond that it feels like a very narrow-minded design. This is not to say that it is going nowhere: with light-controlled resonant filters, A/R envelopes, and a stereo output I think that it may yet become interesting.

The notion of modularity is worming its way into my head. I ought to make an instrument that encourages curiosity and the playful redesigning of the circuit that is presented. I think with its hinged front panels, my instrument (as yet unnamed) encourages curiosity, a desire for comprehension and exploration. It encourages repair, also, by not having its guts locked away behind a myriad of tiny screws. These concepts were both very present in my mind when designing the enclosure. However, I feel that its rigidity in use is a result of its limiting signal flow and lack of general building blocks rather than a bad overall design.

What is the central area of praxis relaxing to my prototype?

Attempting to get to the very bottom of how things operate; a desire to be self-sufficient and to be aware of the processes that go on ‘under the hood’ of equipment that I encounter. Making ones own tools, and operating as an artist and a craftsman in parallel, akin to a blacksmith or other historically self sufficient trade.

Why am I interested in this?

The desire to comprehend runs strongly in me: DIY ideologies resonate with me via anti-establishment tendencies. Using things that I do not understand feels juvenile and the dependency on external organisations makes me feel unsteady. The ability to create communications networks that exist outside of the conventional avenues is exciting and may prove to be useful at some point in my life.

What are my goals?

An original electronic instrument (as original as it gets for my first proper synth) is my goal. I want a concept and a visual aesthetic, and a device that can be performed on its own rather than being heavily reliant on external instruments to generate meaningful music (see, monophonic synths).