Chibitronics fun time

Combining crafts and electronics in a lovely little way.

http://www.crowdsupply.com/chibitronics/circuit-stickers

3d print show

I attended the 3D print show in London this year and found a couple of interesting sound related occurrences.

Here the website for the show
http://3dprintshow.com/category/london2013/

One thing that caught my eye was Gilles Azzaro voice sculptor with his exhibit http://www.gillesazzaro.com/pages/fr/printing3D.htm. Using an Obama speech carved physically into a 3D printed sculpture with a lazer that ran along and scanned the riddles and trough to churn out the speech. It was pretty epic.

Another awesomesauce feature of the show was a robot, like acutal robot, that would respond to vocal commands and was not only 3D printed with the parts, the software and the schematics were all completely open source. By the company InMoov. http://www.inmoov.fr/

Check it! I want to build one.

Marco Donnarumma Xth sense

After attending a recent talk by Miguel Ortiz (http://www.miguel-ortiz.com/), the name Marco Donnarumma was mentioned in conjunction with Xth sense. A free open source system for interfacing biochemical signals with the computer to create sounds from biology!

Its cool, look it.

http://marcodonnarumma.com/works/xth-sense/

Chris Watson, meeting an inspiration.

I got the chance to go and see Chris Watson, forerunning audio recordist, in Bournemouth as part of the Arts Festival. This guy is phenomenal and very passionate and informative about what he does, I would urge anyone to see him talk if the can as he is very open with techniques, equipment and rivetting stories of the natural and man-made world of sound.

http://artsbournemouth.org.uk/events/chris-watson-talk-and-performance/

I then went on the field trip day to Brownsea Island the next day where we took hydrophonic, contact and parabolic mics to capture some of the sounds of the island and to glean knowledge from Chris himself on what to record and where, and why. It was a fantastic day!

http://artsbournemouth.org.uk/events/chris-watson-field-trip/

RING! An experience

On 1/10/13 I went to see/listen to Ring. What an experience to be sat in pitch black room with 200 other people and binaural recorings played to simulate your journey to another room. It was pretty epic and at times terrifying.

http://artsbournemouth.org.uk/events/ring/

Penned in the Margins and Mercy presents Electronic Voice Phenomina

This was a special and weird night and I enjoyed each performance in a different way. My top two were Ross Sutherland with hisamazing spoken word and visual accompaniment;

http://www.rosssutherland.co.uk/main/

Also Leafcutter John with his energy field microphone that made audible the hidden world of electronics and their electronically goings on;

http://leafcutterjohn.com/

Here is the website for the event which was part of Bournemouths Art by the Sea Festival;

http://artsbournemouth.org.uk/events/penned-in-the-margins-mercy-presents-electronic-voice-phenomena/ 

Here is a few pics of the night and the wonderful and kooky location of Shelley Manor Theatre!

Chorus Ray Lee - Arts Festival Bournemouth

I had the pleasure of seeing Ray Lees spectacle of metal, light, and sound that was Chorus. Below are a couple of pictures and a little video (sorry shaky and blurry cam). Also links to Ray Lee's website and the arts festival information on the event. 

http://artsbournemouth.org.uk/events/chorus-ray-lee/

http://www.invisible-forces.com/about%20ray%20lee.htm

Gel based audio speaker from Harvard

This is a first and very cool!!!

A gel based speaker

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/08/transparent-artificial-muscle/

Grendel Toots

It gives me great pleasure to announce my working on a very cool new indie film! I am going to be a sound designer which it the bomb. Head on over to indiegogo to see all the details and check out the vids. This is going to be an excellent experience I am sure of it.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-grendel-toots

An easy way to share audio

Handy website that had the tag of imgur for audio, drag and drop sound files and receive a unique link to share;

http://audiour.com/

Chiptune Chime

My attempt at a didgital windchime using Arduino and piezos

Fritzing for the electronics set-up with Arduino.

I used cat5 cable and piezos available at a bit more of a premium price from Maplin. The cat 5 cable is good because its already paired and you get 4 pairs so lots of cable for cheap price, its also quite stiff so can be modeled into position and stay. 

Resistors on the piezos are 1M Ohm and the one on the speaker is 1K Ohm.

The Arduino code is as below thyat I have adapted from the tutorial mentioned in it:


/*

 created 21 Jan 2010
 modified 9 Apr 2012
 by Tom Igoe

This example code is in the public domain.

 http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Tone3

 */

#include "pitches.h"

const int threshold = 10;    // minimum reading of the sensors that generates a note

// notes to play, corresponding to the 3 sensors:
int notes[] = {
  NOTE_FS4, NOTE_GS4,NOTE_DS4, NOTE_CS4, NOTE_AS4 };

void setup() {

}

void loop() {
  for (int thisSensor = 0; thisSensor < 5; thisSensor++) {
    // get a sensor reading:
    int sensorReading = analogRead(thisSensor);

    // if the sensor is pressed hard enough:
    if (sensorReading > threshold) {
      // play the note corresponding to this sensor:
      tone(8, notes[thisSensor], 20);
    }
  }
}

Arduino based music hacks :)

Some fun projects made with Arduino!!!

http://www.hackthings.com/rock-out-with-arduino-music-related-hacks/

Using internet sensors with Max

internet-sensors « Cycling 74

Some sweet Portal techno-connections

A very cool project

http://portals-and-friends.com/statement/

Very Cool Electronic Sculputures

Check it

http://brucecannon.org/

If this then that- Networking your stuff

This cool website shown to me by Luke Woodbury enables you to use various things to control other things, for example using a weather rss feed to activate the heater in your house by using an if this then that statement. The posibilities are only limited by imagination!

https://ifttt.com/

About;

https://ifttt.com/wtf

Nifty app for organising your studio management issues

Check out this app that makes studio management a little more user friendly.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/audio-studio-manager-lite/id525327190?ls=1&mt=12

Learning music, then check this out!

A nice new website/app thats helpful for those learning music and lovely to look at.

http://www.hooktheory.com/

Programming cheat sheets of glory!

OverAPI.com | Collecting all the cheat sheets

Awesome and easy to navigate.

Massively useful and comprehensive website for help with arduino and more

THIS website is immense!

https://sites.google.com/site/arduinowarrior/system/app/pages/sitemap/hierarchy

Arduino based button box adventures

So my aim is to make an Arduino based button box with 30 momentary buttons that communicate serially via USB into Max. Here are some photos of my efforts thus far.

I am using an Arduino Mega clone by Funduino and lots of buttons from lots of places.

The moving from breadboard to stripboard.

The button box in construction mode.

 The abomination of a breadboard figuring out the wiring for 10 buttons.

The first 11 buttons worth of wires, plus the next 11's resistors. Already a bit of a crazed scramble!

Testing the first 10 buttons with success!!!!

All buttons tested well so that was nice.

Marking out the project box purchased from Maplin.

 Drilling mini holes for the bigger holes.

 Lots of buttons.

 Getting a better drill with actual round drill bits.

With a little help from the boy.

 Fitting the buttons. Inside view.

Buttons fitted from the outside.

After much soldering, resoldering, gluegunning, pin headering, code checking, resoldering, rewiring, and heqad bashing.....IT'S FINISHED!

 Just a bit of cosmetic tidying to do plus any remending as and when it breaks. :)

 30 momentary buttons running via a Funduino Mega into arduino each giving a discrete serial number which are mapped to the numbers 0-10 plus a few letters from the alphabets!

A great place for interviews with the greats.

Sound engineers discuss their work/

http://www.pensadosplace.tv/

EQ reference sheet

Easy to digest reference sheet relating to EQ.

http://www.soundpunk.com/index.php/page/articles.html/_/tutorials/tips-and-tricks/handy-eq-reference-r11/

Very valid points about bouncing.

Nice and easy to digest!!!

http://www.resoundsound.com/7-reasons-to-bounce-tracks-to-audio-before-final-mix-arrange/

Crazy Robot Band!

First came The Trons then came these "guys", the drummer reminds me of a certain Chris Cunningham and Aphex Twin video called Monkey Drummer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1ZGIrNf71Q).

See the robot mahem here:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3RBSkq-_St8#!