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.