The bane of my existence so far has always been grounding. Why do my oscillators sound all throughout my circuits, even in places they do not belong? The click of LFOs and the drone of audio frequency oscillators permeates every aspect of my work, bleeding into amps, PSUs, noise generators. “Star grounding will fix all of your issues” they say on the forums – how am I supposed to star ground on stripboard? “Isolate your digital and analogue grounds” they say, “buffer your virtual ground”, but nothing seems to work. Frustration is the dominant emotion that I feel at the moment. My best efforts to solve these issues are met with failure, time and time again.

They do say that it takes many failures to achieve success, but my failures are things that others have failed at before, and (obviously, due to the ubiquity of analogue synths with significantly less bleed than my own) overcome – it is just that the secrets of their success elude me.

My noise oscillator works very well, except when plugged into the rest of my synthesiser. Both of them running at the same time, from the same 9v supply, results in total circuit failure of the synth. Writing this out, it now occurs to me that perhaps I am exceeding the current draw of my PSU, and I could test this with another 9v supply. Somehow, my gut tells me that something more complex is occuring, as a result of the exact design of my noise oscillator.

More experiments to be made.

Last week I went on a day trip to the Musical Museum in Brentford, on reccomendation from my tutor Gareth. Full of bizzare clockwork musical instruments, it was eye-opening with regards to my own mechanical dreams. Firstly, it made me realise that the sky is the limit in this field, but that much of the (reachable) limit has been achieved at least 100 years ago – to be creating interesting work in the field I should be working to combine the electronic and the mechanical in new and exciting ways; both acoustic and electronic sound sources, aiming for interaction between acoustic sound and raw voltages. Mechanical LFO, perhaps, using a similar method seen below to generate some sort of cyclical motion?? [Bellows, too. See later blog posts]

There is a gothic sensibility to these instruments that I would like to reflect in my works. The dark stained wood, creaking, humming, whirring, clicking and visible mechanisms drew me in and enthralled me with childlike wonder. This is a characteristic that modern technologies lack as the mechanisms through which they achieve complex ideas are obscured – this proffering of the knowledge of how exactly devices work is key to my sensibilities, I feel.

Further blog posts will try and demonstrate methods that I can use to incorporate mechanical ideas into my synths.

Working within such an established field as audio electronics means that being original is tough, however, I am coming to terms with the idea that originality is not the purpose of any artistic venture, and it likely does not exist. I am just the latest in a long lineage of creatives who are manipulating voltages for musical means, and I should be working to enjoy and the create purposeful objects. Speaking to Gareth on this subject, he mentioned that having ideas that have ‘been done before’ are a good sign, and the creative should merely continue to work on the idea trusting that by extending beyond what others have done, a different outcome will be reached.

The conversation arose when I was talking about an idea for a speaker cabinet I had, containing numerous different cones of different sizes (and thus different frequency responses), with one (or two?) input(s) and volume controls for each cone. Using the natural filtering of the cones instead of an EQ might create some interesting tonalities, and the cabinet can then be stereo miced for recording.

As it turns out, a similar idea has already been put into motion: Luigi Rossolo’s Intonarumori were experimental noise-making devices that rely on the same principle of physical objects filtering the same sound in different ways. The below image is delightful, and encourages me to be more physical with my prototyping, making objects rather than just circuits

My idea is somehwat different in execution, despite being similar in principle, and neatly demonstrates the notion that to innovate, you must first copy.

Having just finished the first read-through of this article, I can safely say that it is a lot to take in. There are many nuggets of gold strewn throughout this soupy academic mire which have each been tiny eureka moments about my own work. In this article, the point is made that technology, and the obscured means of creating technological objects, are a form of enchantment and “it achieves its effect vie the enchantment cast by its technical means, the manner of its coming into being, or, rather, the idea which one forms of its coming into being”.

I”m starting (again, perhaps? I may have written a blog post on the matter before…) to view electronics as a form of strange ritualistic magic, in which the controllers of electricity place small objects in precise arrangements, invisibile forces act upon these objects, and a tangible effect is seen/felt/heard. Whilst also grappling with ideas about synthesis being perhaps a ‘done’ field, Gell’s ideas about the enchanting processes through which art is made having an effect on the viewer has made an impression.

I do disagree somewhat with his ideas – it seems Gell is saying that the technical proficiency of the artist and the mental difficulty that the viewer experiences trying to imagine themselves creating a particular art object are the primary sources of artistic merit. I may be mistaken on this front; the introduction, which seems to shed light on the exact framing of the argument, is full of lofty, inpenetrable sentements. It seems that Gell outlines his theory as a method through which anthropology can analyse art, but beyond that I am lost for now.

His describing of art “as a concrete product of human ingenuity”, amongst other similar descriptions, exudes a pleasing phrasology that appeals to my sensibilities as someone who dabbles with both art and technology to create my work. There is a feeling of awe around artistic objects as technologically advanced works, made only through countless hours of patient, quiet working. This is exactly how electronics projects come to fruition, and explains why his wording pleases me.

I will give this article another read-through at some point, and try to make more sense of the introduction. Perhaps this will help me frame the point of view better.

Pictured above is a double-page scan from one of my notebooks that shows the initial planning stages of the kinetic sound sculpture. Having written that phrase out a fair few times now, I’m starting to think it needs a name or title….

I’m lacking progress shots, which is proving to be a slight pain when dealing with the whole ‘evidencing’ side of things. Creative solutions will have to be found soon – paintings of progress? That is laughable and time consuming, but not altogether ridiculous.

Progress so far; parts 2, 3, 4 and 6 have been made and sanded, all fits nicely and works well. I have a motor and bearing, plus belt for the motor, so I think this project can be completed easily within the first week back of university if I book 2 or 3 days in the 3D workshop. In an ideal world, this is a first sketch of my electromechanical projects which will result in a more complex construction before May 11th.

I’ve got long term dreams of some electromechanical boxes that incoprorate gear ratios, flat metal rods that are excited like rulers held firmly off the edge of a school table, small chimes, sewing machine style sounds and more, but these sort of musical contraptions could easily be the life work of some 19th century clockmaker.

The mechanical project that is described in previous blog posts is underway now, scans of work pages will be found in the following posts. With the long break coming up I will be unable to work on it for several (3…?) weeks, so now is the time to begin work on my second project. This will be a synthesiser that follows on from the work that I did for the prototype hand in, with improved electronics that action on the knowledge gained during the construction of that prototype.

The oscillator design is the first area for consideration, I will be moving away from op-amp centered designs and instead focusing my efforts on constructing a transistor based VCO, in the hopes that it will reduce the strain on the PSU and thus reduce bleed. To be more specific, I’ll be making an astable multivibrator and then using an op-amp comparator to turn the square wave into a triangle wave.

INITIAL OSCILLATOR EXPERIMENTS

My tests are documented in the image above. This oscillator design seems a lot more tweak-able than the ones I have worked with before with a greater tendency towards odd behaviours and quirks. Imbued with more life than the rigidity of op-amps, this simple circuit topology is the latest in a series of transistor experiments that are wooing me with the analogue flippancy of simple circuits. The principle of biasing transistors is a lot more conversational than the prepackaged and finicky nature of op-amps (so far, that is. I presume that soon I will grow to be frustrated with transistors: I have already blown up a few, which is a rare occurrence with op-amps at low voltages).

After more testing, these oscillators (unmodified) will not be suitable as slope generators, op-amps with diodes in the feedback loop seem superior in that regard, although I’m now getting very curious about what happens when oscillating voltages are fed into the biasing network – what happens if low voltage broadband noise is injected into one of the bases of the transistors? First I shall need to build a noise osc… transistors are well suited to that, I have heard.

This mechanics-forward project involves a simpler assemblage of electronics compared to my previous work. I’m doing a couple of electronics projects for other people at the moment, and it is becoming increasingly frustrating to try and create electronics with an acceptable degree of cleanliness to them. My purely electronic synthesisers are giving me a lot of grief with oscillator bleed; as far as I can tell, the oscillator design that I am currently employing puts a lot of strain on the power supply, creating a voltage ripple with each cycle. This slightly modulating supply voltage is then used to power the amplifers, and the changing power is manifesting as bleed. I am doing investigations into this; either some sort of pulldown resistor that ties the output of oscillators to ground (this is presuming that they only bleed when unpatched…. not 100% about that…) or a completely different oscillator design – transistorised oscillators are looking to be a good bet, a la Buchla.

The project after these ‘acoustic’ synthesisers that I am dreaming of is a synthesiser that can sound nice. My current finished synthesiser is a bit abrasive and obtuse, characteristics that are definitely befitting of a first synthesiser, but I have learnt a lot about designing electronics and have realised that there are many faults and mistakes present. Moving towards more triangle waves, perhaps an envelope or slope generator or two, but keeping the cross modulation (with room for attenuation of this cross modulation, a feature which Is sorely lacking in my current synth, which makes it very obtuse and not at all delicate) seems like a good starting point for the next design.

The electronics that will power the acoustic synths will be fairly simple, but as this will be my first venture into CMOS chips I will be learning a lot. CMOS chips have long been heralded as great for beginner DIY synths due to their relative simplicity. Stanley Lunetta, a pioneer of synths focused around these chips, is the namesake for the CMOS sub genre of DIY audio electronics, which has a particular cult following and a particular sound. Shift registers, clock dividers, lots of intermodulation, plenty of square waves: these all result in a very digital, bitty sound.

I will be using some CMOS counter IC, but I’m not fully decided on which one. Some can count upwards and downwards, which seems like an appealing feature. With independent modulation of clock pitch, count direction and pulse width (not sure how PWM would br possible, as I have read that the CMOS counters are quite particular about the clock signals that they receive, and I’m currently not aware of any methods of altering the pulse width of a signal after it has been generated). The 4017 is a pretty standard chip that can go up to 10 steps, but there are other, more curious IC’s at my disposal.

The image above is taken from the data sheet of the 4029 counter IC. This seems to be generating some seriously interesting rhythms, but I’m curious how much control there is over these rhythms. There definitely seems to be options out there.

These 4000 series CMOS counters will be used to either trigger solenoids or control the turning of a motor. A low pass filter can be applied to these square wave clock signals to make a smoother curve, which might be good for controlling motors.

Electromechanical devices are beginning to appeal to me greatly; I’ve been flicking through PDFs of Telephony volumes 1 and 2 by J. Atkinson, and the combination of mechanical and electronic methods is fasctinating.

For the next portfolio project I’ll be aiming to create a synthesiser that acoustically excites resonating bodies, as opposed to the classical model of generating AC voltages to excite a speaker cone. Some may argue that the core essence of a synthesiser is the creation of tones in an electronic fashion (be it analogue or digital) and thus physically excited acoustic objects do not fall under the category of a synth, but I am making a claim that all synthesisers have to eventually excite some resonating body to be percieved as sound, and consequently my concepts can be described as synthesisers due to the resonating bodies being excited by electronic means.

I have been drafting ideas for the past few weeks; below is a scan of my notebook showing some of the designs that have been conceptualised. All are planned to operate using some combination of motors and solenoid actuators; so far these are the only two electromechanical devices that I’ve designed with, but other ideas are starting to grow using acoustically noisey relays, or perhaps piezos?

Motors with objects attatched to the shaft present an opportunity for continuous and repetitive beats, like crochets. Solenoids, however, present an opportunity for more complex rhythmic ideas involving simple sequencers using CMOS chips such as the 4017 decade counter IC, or other more complex chips like the 4516 IC which can count both upwards and downwards (similar to the sequencer module in the Serge unit at uni).

Top left of the scan (fig. 2) depicts two designs. The uppermost design is similar in form factor to my last project (which dissuades me from proceeding with the design), and operates by exciting a row of objects with motors or solenoids. Controls for sequencing the solenoids and altering the rate of the motors exist on the front panel, with objects on the top. Objects I would like to use include wood, rock, metal and ceramic.

The device in the lower half of the image, housed in a rectangular case, is a device that excites ceramic plates with solenoids. I have a friend who makes ceramics, and I am considering asking her to create some plates for me similar to those on a glockenspiel or xylophone. I am assuming that by using a mass of clay that is proportional from one to the next, i.e 10g, 20g, 30g, that the pitches produced would be also proportional.

In the lower left part of the image (fig. 3) a third device is shown, one which explores a more continuous form of sound genesis. A cylindrical glass jar is slowly rotated by a DC motor, the rate of which can be altered either with a knob or, if the design process trends this way, modulated with a variety of low frequency oscillators. Pebbles are placed inside the jar, but a variety of other objects can be used, pebbles just seemed to be an appealing choice to me. This design appeals to me as the exact rhythmical outcome is random, but the use still has control over the flavour of the sound.

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.