491: Oscillators Oscillating Other Oscillators

Chris and Elecia spoke with Kirk Pearson about running audio-electronic-art workshops, interesting sounds, and their book Make: Electronic Music from Scratch: A Beginner's Guide to Homegrown Audio Gizmos. 

Find the book and a whole kit of parts on the Dogbotic Merch page. A few clicks from there you can find the Workshop List (don’t forget the coupon in the show audio). 

We also mentioned The Thing (a sneaky listening device), Elliot Williams’ writing on CMOS synthesizers (a series called Logic-Noise) and the videos of Sebastian Tomczak (YouTube: littlescalemusic).

Transcript

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442: I Do Like Musical Robots

Adafruit’s Liz Clark (BlitzCityDIY) spoke with us about MIDI, music, and tutorials. 

Liz’s Adafruit Tutorials include

Liz sometimes hosts the Adafruit Show and Tell which is Wednesdays 7:30pm ET. Speaking of Adafruit videos, we mentioned the Fusion 360 tutorial on Snap Fit Cases.

Liz’s BlitzCityDIY YouTube channel shows her building instruments including her mentioned Melody Maker. She also has many 3D printables and github repositories under github.com/BlitzCityDIY

Christopher notes that there are browser extensions that allow a person to stop auto-playing GIFs.

VCVRack is a Eurorack simulator for synthesizer modules.

Sadly, Mutable Instruments has shut down.

Transcript

359: You Can Never Have Too Many Socks (Repeat)

Thea Flowers creates open source and open hardware craft synthesizers that use Circuit Python for customization. She also writes about the internals of the SAMD21.

Thea’s synthesizer modules are found at Winterbloom, including Castor & Pollux and the Big Honking Button. It is all open source hardware so you can find code and schematics on Thea’s github site: github.com/theacodes 

Thea’s site is thea.codes. You can find her blog there with deeply technical and detailed posts such as The most thoroughly commented linker script (probably), The Design of the Roland Juno oscillators, and Understanding the SAMD21 Clocks. She’s on Twitter as Stargirl, @theavalkyrie.

For more information about the Eurorack, listen to Embedded 356: Deceive and Manipulate You with Leonardo Laguna Ruiz of Vult.

Transcript

230: What the Hell Is Wrong with Unicorns? (Repeat)

Sunshine Jones spoke with us about synthesizers, electronics, and philosophy.

Find him on twitter @Sunshine_Jones and instagram at sunshine_jones_

Sunshine’s music is most easily found at TheUrgencyOfChange.com. His writing is at Sunshine-Jones.com.

We talked about Sunshine’s User’s Guide to the Roland SE-02. That includes Ahmed, a track produced using only the SE-02.

Sunshine also wrote about building a polysynth.

The intro music is an excerpt from LELEK, released on Air Texture Vol. V. The exit music is Fall In Love Not In Line, released this year on vinyl only, TUOC01. See TheUrgencyOfChange.com for more.

Sunshine was the host of SundaySoul.com, a live podcast about music and life.

359: You Can Never Have Too Many Socks

Thea Flowers (Stargirl, @theavalkyrie) creates open source and open hardware craft synthesizers that use Circuit Python for customization. She also writes about the internals of the SAMD21.

Thea’s synthesizer modules are found at Winterbloom, including Castor & Pollux and the Big Honking Button. It is all open source hardware so you can find code and schematics on Thea’s github site: github.com/theacodes 

Thea’s site is thea.codes. You can find her blog there with deeply technical and detailed posts such as The most thoroughly commented linker script (probably), The Design of the Roland Juno oscillators, and Understanding the SAMD21 Clocks. 

For more information about the Eurorack, listen to Embedded 356: Deceive and Manipulate You with Leonardo Laguna Ruiz of Vult.

356: Deceive and Manipulate You

Leonardo Laguna Ruiz of Vult spoke with us about modelling electronics, modular synthesizers, and modulating sound. We talked in detail about applied digital signal processing.

Leonardo’s website is www.vult-dsp.com. Check out the Freak Filter, the user manual alone is a course in signal processing. You can buy finished or DIY versions on vult-dsp.com/store. 

The physical hardware is a Eurorack module (wiki) but the Vult modules are also available for the VCV Rack, a Eurorack simulator that you can use to build your own modular synthesizer. 

Leonardo has a YouTube channel where he goes in depth on signal processing: youtube.com/c/LeonardoLagunaRuiz. He’s also written about modeling vintage analog sound on the Wolfram blog.

For more information about the Vult programming language (or an example for how to build your own, check out the github repository: http://modlfo.github.io/vult/overview/

This episode was sponsored by Qt, a cross platform application framework for desktop, mobile and embedded devices. That means you get a full set of libraries for nearly everything you can think of, plus a world-class GUI that will give you a native look wherever your code runs.

Try Qt for free at www.qt.io/download (qt.io/embeddedfm ! And check out Qt for MCUs!)

QT logo.png

236: The Concept of Delayed Gratification (Repeat)

Roger Linn (@roger_linn) gave us new ideas about musical instruments, detailing how wonderful expressive control, 3D buttons, and keyscanning can be.

Roger’s company is Roger Linn Design. We talked extensively about the LinnStrument, some about the AdrenaLinn for guitar, and only a little bit about the analog drum machine Tempest.

A key matrix circuit is a popular way to handle a large number of buttons but it falls prey to n-key rollover. Roger adds force sense resistors to this (FSR example at Sparkfun).

If you have an idea for an instrument, Roger has already written his response to your request for a prototype. Roger gave a keynote address at ADC '16 about the LinnStrument, including showing the sounds it can make.

OHMI Trust is the one handed musical instrument society enabling music making for everyone.

 

Roger mentioned some other expressive instruments including:

236: The Concept of Delayed Gratification

Roger Linn (@roger_linn) gave us new ideas about musical instruments, detailing how wonderful expressive control, 3D buttons, and keyscanning can be.

Roger’s company is Roger Linn Design. We talked extensively about the LinnStrument, some about the AdrenaLinn for guitar, and only a little bit about the analog drum machine Tempest.

A key matrix circuit is a popular way to handle a large number of buttons but it falls prey to n-key rollover. Roger adds force sense resistors to this (FSR example at Sparkfun).

If you have an idea for an instrument, Roger has already written his response to your request for a prototype. Roger gave a keynote address at ADC '16 about the LinnStrument, including showing the sounds it can make.

OHMI Trust is the one handed musical instrument society enabling music making for everyone.

 

Roger mentioned some other expressive instruments including:

230: What the Hell Is Wrong with Unicorns?

Sunshine Jones (@Sunshine_Jones) spoke with us about synthesizers, electronics, and philosophy.

Sunshine’s music is most easily found at TheUrgencyOfChange.com. His writing is at Sunshine-Jones.com.

We talked about Sunshine’s User’s Guide to the Roland SE-02. That includes Ahmed, a track produced using only the SE-02.

Sunshine also wrote about building a polysynth.

The intro music is an excerpt from LELEK, released on Air Texture Vol. V. The exit music is Fall In Love Not In Line, released this year on vinyl only, TUOC01. See TheUrgencyOfChange.com for more.

Sunshine was the host of SundaySoul.com, a live podcast about music and life.