This is documentation of a recent idea for a synthesiser.

I would like to construct a synth that can be used in conjunction with an oscilloscope to produce live visuals for bands and music. I am visualising geomentric shapes (achieved with phase shifted pairs of function generators – sine, cosine, etc) that can be excited by audio inputs, which can be microphones placed around the drumkit or even on sends from the mixing console. This can then be recorded and projected onto the stage, shapes that pulse in accordance to the music.

Video synthesis is an emerging field, not at all as saturated as audio synthesis. There are very few makers of video synth equipment, and the existing devices that were constructed in previous decades are slowly beginning to die out. There is room for independant manufacturors to step in and build bespoke bits of kit for interested creatives for whom useable equipment is getting more and more expensive.

I have a desire to make my electronics projects successively more multimedia. Accompanying art, literature, and sculpture are all aspects that I am open to experimenting with. My electronics are already developing into something more than instruments; artifacts, curios, sculpture in their own right. However, during my presentation some questions were raised about the future of my works, and about having some sort of ‘lore’ or greater meaning behind the circuits themselves. Similar to Ciat-Lonbarde’s phsychogeographical map of Baltimore/Cleveland in the circuitboards of the Plumbutter, I think there is room for more experimentation with the actual construction of the boards and the mentality behind it.

Building electronics is city construction; resistors are small houses as capacitors are futuristic low-rise blocks. Vein-like wires pulse unseen with electronic signals, and the town planner has the responsibility of trying to control these pulses. How much kick-back should a city have to its giant-like overlords?

Peter Blasser

Small conceptual snippets of poetry seem to be very useful tools to zoom in on what it means to work with electricity. Perhaps I shall start writing these down on paper; a much better format for displaying thought than screens.

I’ve been musing about guitar pedals for a while now; several past attempts at a tremolo have been instrumental learning experiences for me. As it happens, the knowledge I have now about transistors gives me hope for a new, cleaner tremolo pedal down the line. Harmonic tremolo was always an interest too, as when I was first designing my tremolo pedal a couple of years ago there wasn’t really any popular version in the pedal market. Since then, JHS have come out with an affordable tremolo pedal with a switch to alter it to a harmonic mode – so much for me taking the market by storm.

I think the next thing that I would like to try and manufacture is a dual wavefolding circuit, with impedances set up so that it can function with a guitar. The lockhart wavefolder below seems like a great place to start and I have pretty much all the parts barring that NPN transistor. I think that a wavefolder pedal with modulation options would be fantasticly psychedelic, and the notion of gigging with my own pedal designs is very alluring.

These scans document and lay bare the design process for my synthesiser. Some of these scans really belong in blog posts further down, but I thought that I would include them all in one post for the sake of being concise, and also so that none end up being left out.

Hinges attach the front panel of my synth to the case; a purposeful design decision both from a construction standpoint but also to inform the user experience. Too many of the devices that we encounter in daily life are black boxes, in that we have an understanding of the inputs and the outputs but not of the processes through which these inputs are transmuted to the outputs. The term black box is a recognised phrase within the field of system analysis, often utilised within computing. It is a method of studying a system without delving into the innerworkings, noting only the causality between stimuli and response. From phones to transistors or diodes, this is a manner of describing a great many technological systems that are regularly encountered; my understanding of electronics, for example, is heavily reliant on certain black boxes. I do not fully understand exactly how an opamp works internally, but have a strong enough grasp on how it takes inputs and what appears at the outputs. This is entirely enough knowledge for me to use them well, and to create larger systems such as synthesisers. This phrase can refer to more abstract systems too:

“The child who tries to open a door has to manipulate the handle (the input) so as to produce the desired movement at the latch (the output); and he has to learn how to control the one by the other without being able to see the internal mechanism that links them. In our daily lives we are confronted at every turn with systems whose internal mechanisms are not fully open to inspection, and which must be treated by the methods appropriate to the Black Box.”

W. Ross Ashby, ‘An Introduction to Cybernetics’

Whilst black boxes are both useful and necessary in todays world of hyper-specialisation, I seek to make visible that which others in my field would readily hide. I would like to encourage curiosity, a pedagogical approach to electronics in which the user feels like the innerworkings are not locked away behind 12 tiny screws, but instead laid bare infront of them. Rewarding curiosity, encouraging repair and modification, these things are essential to creating the type of investigative mindset that I aspire to foster in my creations.

This synthesiser project has prompted me to learn about the innerworkings of transistors; they are fascinating devices, and underpin my learning about opamps. I feel as though I am encroaching on the base elements of electronics: the BJT transistors that I have bought and have been researching are constructed of a sandwitch of silicon, either PNP or NPN. The P or the N refer to silicon that has been ‘doped’ with other elements that with will result in it having more free electrons (P) or less (N). Silicon is a semiconductor; this means that it can conduct electricity under specific conditions. For example, if silicon is heated to glow red hot, it will conduct electricity. The NPN or PNP transistor relies on a concept of electrons and holes, which is still sliiightly out of my grasp, but the notion that I am dealing with elements (perhaps alloys, if they are doped?) rather than contrived, human-made devices is immensely exciting! The sheer simplicity of the devices that I am manipulating is encouraging to me: I feel as though I am dealing with very natural forces, not operating within systems that have been constructed for my benifit. The idea of learning a coding language, for example, is at complete odds with this thought process: the things learnt within that language might be entirely obsolete within the next 30 years, but silicon will not be obsolete so long as we have electricity. This is a seemingly illogical thought process, but is rooted in themes of DIY culture and (once again) in the childlike delight in asking ‘why??’ time and time again.

BJT transistors function as a VCA, with only a few additional components. This has been a hugely impactful discovery withim my electronics journey and has opened up a vast world ahead of me. The scan of my notebook below details the breaking-down of a very simple transistor based VCA circuit, and I am already invisioning the voltage control that I can exert over existing circuits that are on my breadboard as I write. All of the writings and drawings below were scribed whilst working at my breadboard; making changes to the circuit, writing down the effects, changing only one thing at a time so as to respect the scientific method which will enable the most efficient gathering of knowledge. I really do feel as though a new world has opened up infront of me.