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Monthly Archives: September 2008
Summer of Synth-DIY: Week 16
Sound Lab: Mostly done (after a 4-5 hour marathon on it last night). Here’s a rough looking demo:
Arduino Sequencer: I talked about that Thursday. I showed it off at Playshop on Saturday to rave reviews (i.e. “you should try to sell those”). I suppose I could try, but there really isn’t that much to it – a generic PCB, the CD4051, a 220 ohm resistor and then the pots and connectors. Any interest in a kit?
SN-Voice: PCB has been received, and I think almost all parts are on hand or en route(I think the tempco is the only outstanding part). Still unsure of how to enclose it – Standalone? In some kind of modular-style rack? Something in-between with a simple VCF and LFOs attached?
Other yet-to-be determined projects: Things are being determined. More information soon.
Playshop involved playing with the 556. It wasn’t an APC, but more of a plain “beeper” thing with fixed frequencies. Y’know, I prefer the 4093 to the 556. You get twice as many oscillators out of it.
And I think with the two big successes this week, this is the last “Summer of Synth-DIY” post for the year. New ones will just be “SynthDIY update” or maybe something specific to the project.
Tagged synthDIY
Arduino Sequencer 1.6, with pseudo-analog goodness.
Made a somewhat big change last night. We’ll call it 1.6, since 1.0 was the “Notacon Edition”, and 1.5 was the stable version of that which was finished a few weeks ago.
New Features:
- Note “0″ is now a rest.
- “CV” (ok, PWM masquerading as 0-5V CV) and Gate outputs. S-Trigger (for my MG-1) coming soon.
- Added 9V battery clip, so it can run on batteries. Yay! Should add a real power switch for that, though.
Construction – I need to update the schematic to reflect reality, but the original “plan” schematic is here.
Differences between that schematic and reality:
- The A,B, and C inputs on the CD4051 connect to pins 6,7 and 8 on the Arduino
- Arduino pin 9 goes to the tip of a 1/4″ jack (CV)
- Arduino pin 5 goes to the tip of a 1/4″ jack (Gate)
- For S-Trig, follow the “V-Trig to S-Trig” instructions here. I’ll be adding an additional jack for this, probably tonight. (hey, then I can have a duet of MG-1 and my soon-to-be-finished Sound Lab)
- None of the LED/Start/Stop/Clock stuff is implemented yet. The more of that which gets done, the closer we are to being “2.0″. Stay tuned.
Source Code:
- available here: sequencer_1.pde
I’ll have to whip up a demonstration video or something like that. I tried it with my somewhat wonky MG-1 last night (yeah, even though it triggers weird with gate rather than S-Trig, it still mostly worked) – it was like instant Jack Dangers.
Press The Button Podcast for September 3, 2008
Playing with my Arduino Sequencer (see following post). First hour was much more “normal” music. Second hour had more of a League of Automatic Music Composers feel – Arduino Sequencer playing the Chip32 softsynth, running through DFX Transverb.
Summer of Synth-DIY: Week 15
Not a lot to report, as expected.
Sound Lab: Finished mounting switches on panel, started mounting components onto panel (39k 1% resistors went AWOL? Ugh.). Drilled holes for 1/4″ jacks along the top of the panel. Trying to finish this thing quickly.
Arduino Sequencer: Made a quick code change (Note #0 is now equal to a rest). Will probably have to make a small wiring change in order to add an AWESOME new feature (at least, I hope it’s awesome…)
Drum Box…OF DOOM! : Planning. Pledged to get a batch of SDS3 voice boards.
Modular: Planning. Still trying to determine requirements, etc.
Other: Taking an interest in Ken Stone’s Junkbox Challenge. I have a whole box of random parts (most from old VCRs, I think, that’s ripe to be used for this.
I think these updates will have a new title soon, since summer’s effectively over.