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).

Whilst locked in a fierce battle with a misbehaving VCA which refuses to cooperate with my attempts to give it a release control once prompeted with a pulse wave, I had an idea for a separate, more simple synthesiser than my initial plans.

Containing several oscillators outputting to a stereo summing amp via VCAs, each VCA clocked by a different square wave oscillator, (seeing any similarities here…?) I aim to create a variety of alarm-like noises. Then by adding a stereo spring reverb inside the unit, with send pots for each oscillator (post VCA) and also several LPFs, I will have generated a burglary simulator: the sound of being inside some large unwelcoming complex that has detected your presence within it as anomalous. Users can perform with it by bringing alarms closer and further away with the reverb, creating a virtual space that can only be accessed via the ears. I find this concept very interesting, as it can then be performed in a variety of ways. An alarm could sound very faintly from deep inside the complex, lots of filtering, lots of reverb, and then another could sound, closer, louder, less filtered. This could continue, and the alarms could shift and move in ways that makes the space seem non-euclidean

This varies from my original concept simply by the addition of a spring reverb+VCFs and the simplification of the VCAs, but seems to transform the concept entirely, making it a lot more ‘sound arts’ in the process. The only thing needed now, is to buy a spring reverb. Perhaps when payday hits……

The manner in which I am building circuits is slightly sideways: I don’t have a comprehensive electrical engineering background, and instead have been slowly filling that knowledge in through youtube, dusty archaeic 2000s forums (some more up-to-date forums too) and books (although not too many of those really. Haven’t got round to it much, although the ones I have read have bore a lot of fruit). This results, 99% of the time, in circuits that are poorly designed and lacking isolation from eachother. I.e, they operate in myserious ways. This results in two things, detailed over the next two paragraphs.

The first is that electronics and the process of making things work is mystical and magical to me. I find explanations of things online, circuit diagrams here and there, little tidbits of knowledge, but it never seems like a solid grasp of the concepts is really attainable because as soon as it feels like things are starting to be in any way predictable, I’ll wire something up and it will do something wildly left-field that I simply cannot account for. This initially seems like it would be a real turn-off for the budding synth builder, but instead it ignites this feeling inside of me that I’m tampering with some otherworldly forces, that I’m trying to turn lead into gold, that there are wizards out there who just ‘get’ these circuits and could point out the flaws in my designs in a heartbeat. Electronics seems only half grounded in logic and reason, and partly grounded in some alchemy-style half-science of bubbling potions and smoking, crackling resistors. Of course this is some playful pretend mindset that I sometimes adopt, and most of the time when something unexpected happens (especially when I am expecting something to happen and then nothing happens) it is unfathomably frustrating. But when things suddenly go my way after hours of trial and error and writing everything down, and the electrons all wiggle just correctly it feels as though some god has reached down and touched my forehead, that I have been chosen for just a couple of minutes to have this bundle of wires and components infront of me finally work in some capacity.

The second occurance, one more practically grounded and with far less conceptual, lofty daydreamings is that connecting circuits in such an amateurish manner results in strange cross-modulation. The lack of buffering, of proper power supply regulation and probably numerous other conventions of audio electronics to which I am blissfully ignorant results in certain parts of the circuit affecting others in unexpected manners. Think of the lowpass gate, which aims (in some use-cases) to mimic the natural decay of acoustically generated audio which decays in both volume and frequency response at the same time. Some of my circuits seem to do similar things; my VCA seems to not just alter the amplitude of the signal but also slightly nudges the waveform somewhat, and also the fequency (but only when a certain capacitor is connected, from BJT base to VCC-). This has its uses, in my opinion, becuase it pulls some of the decisions out of the hands of the user and forces some ‘life’ into the circuits. They seem to behave with a mind of their own, pulsating and organically altering other ‘modules’ within the synth as parameters are altered.

The aforemetioned monday session went ahead and I was spurred on by the enthusiastic woodworking specialist, Gregor. The process was incredibly satisfying, and having the assistance of a woodworking pro lent some really cool tidbits of knowledge and wisdom regarding how to make things neat and tidy, as well as structurally sound. I ended up managing to complete most of the enclosure apart from the faceplate, which works perfectly for me as I’m still deciding exactly what the faceplate will contain. Two or three oscillators? Filters or not? Etc. These decisions are based on two things; time and funds. Troubleshooting larger, more complex circuits will take more time and will likely slow me down more than necessary, but will yield a more satisfying and playable end result. This, after all, is the reason I’m designing such a synthesiser/drum machine. Secondly, regarding funds: pots and switches seem like cheap items (~£1.50 each) but buying 10 or 20 or 30 of them soon adds up, and I’m starting to require an awful lot of them. This project has handily aligned with the cost of living crisis, and I’m slightly struggling to fund my voracious desire to test more and more circuits.

I understand that my project is based on unconventional control methodologies and thus shouldn’t really contain too many knobs and switches, but I feel as though I require a ‘control’ synth to compare the changes in interaction with. Writing this, I’m starting to have thoughts about experiments regarding different synthesiser practitioners (likely course-mates) interacting with two different synthesisers on two different occasions which have wildly contrasting control methodologies, but idential internal circuitry. Recordings of these sessions can then be compared and contrasted to yield some degree of understanding about how performance alters with different control types.

Enclosures are impotant when designing equipment. I would like my equipment to be beautiful as well as functionally curious, and that means sitting down somewhere and figuring out what I want things to look like.

A visit to the 3D workshop in LCC after class last week has lead to me being inducted into it, and I have now booked a session for next week monday. There is scrap wood there that I can use – offcuts from other people’s projects – and that appeals to me as I feel a strong sense of distress from the wastefulness that is apparent in modern living (which I firmly take part in, unfortunately). Between now and then I need a fully realised and measured/labelled diagram that shows all of the pieces of wood needed to make….. something?

I’m unsure what I’m building right now. I would like to just get familiar with wood as a medium, and design an enclosure for some of the demo circuits I’ll be making (mentioned in prev. blog post) to work up to my drum machine. I’m certainly set on the idea of wood; it seems like a relatively easy medium to work with and I enjoy the organic connotations that it brings to instruments.

I’m inspired heavilty by two companies when thinking about not only enclosures but also audio design philosophies; Ciat Lonbarde and Dewanotron. The former presents circuits in organic shapes made almost entirely of wood, doesn’t believe in labelling controls and wants each synthesiser to be a learned playing experience, similar to an acoustic instrument. He also has interesting design philosophies that I will look at in more detail within a later blog post.

The latter, and I quote, wants to make synthesisers that look “like grandfather clocks” which appeals to me greatly. Their instruments look straight out of a 1950s inventor’s garage, very quaint, beautiful works of wood with lovely large knobs and spacious, cleanly designed layouts. They also seem very scientific, reminiscent of test equipment in some ways, but without the bakelite and chrome.

Circuitry and electronics is the main focus of my third year at uni; university is a vehicle to hone my skills regarding the fabrication of audio hardware. In the past I have run into difficulties completing projects due to trying to learn too much at once. I think I would succeed better if I set manageable goals for myself, and also was dedicated to finishing just the next step of each project, rather than being so focused on the overall image.

My current overarching goal is to make a polyphonic drum machine. The most basic signal flow to fabricate such a device is as follows: oscillator into VCA controlled by an LFO, and then a summing amp for however many channels are required. I will make each of these circuits one after the other, working out any kinks and testing to see that each circuit works with all of the preceding modules before commencing with the next. Then, once there exists working prototypes of each module that comprises a channel, I will work on creating 4 of each of them total, neatening all of the topologies and making my wiring more efficient and easier to troubleshoot should something (or rather when something) blows up.

Just a couple of days ago, maybe a couple days after the first lecture back at uni, I finished making a drone machine. This is a purely proof of concept board that happens to kill two birds with one stone. A mono summing amp and two oscillators, combined accordingly. Some component values need fine-tuning, and I also think I may need to buffer the outputs of my oscillators before they are summed, but the concept holds true. I have some transistors coming in the mail, and those will be used to configure my VCA once they arrive. If I’m twiddling my thumbs, I may try and dabble with some filters as it they would be nice to have onboard. Alternatively, a noise oscillator might be useful; and I assume not too difficult.

I enjoy the act of collaborating and would like to do more in the future, although this asssignment has definitely reinforced my ideas about how I best enjoy collaborating. Communication, bouncing ideas off of people, really reinforcing the source media and trying to enhance it in every way. These are what I feel that collaboration is all about, and I will be doing my best in future to ensure that those are the working conditions by which I operate.

Next year on Sound Arts I hope to be doing lots of electronics experiments. This discipline involves plenty of collaborating and learning as I’ll be needing enclosures for my circuits, I don’t feel that it is impossible that I’ll need some digital circuitry controlling some circuits in future – I know nothing about digital electronics, so that will involve me getting help from someone else. I’m also a novice at analogue electronics, which makes conversation and collaborating an essential tool on the road to becoming proficient.

Overall I’ve felt disengaged with this unit. The other unit, CIISA, captivated my attention more simply because of the required workload, and also the ability to write about whatever I please. This collaborating unit felt slightly shackled, but I don’t think that this was helped by my shoddy attendance. I’ve been ‘collbaorating’ (also known as engaging in countless hours of harrowing unpaid work) lots outside of university, working with other students and people in a similar age bracket to create projects; I don’t often feel shackeled in that context. More often that not I’m outside of my comfort zone and I feel encouraged to be creatively solving problems that occur.

In terms of how my group did; I feel like we were very average compared to other groups. We worked hard, but due to all of us having other projects on the go we didnt work as hard as some of the other groups. FMOD integration, for example, is something that we dropped the ball on, although not many other groups actually managed to use FMOD; Dereck and Jinya’s group stood out as one that implimented the audio into the game code to great success.