[HN Gopher] I built my own analog drum machine ___________________________________________________________________ I built my own analog drum machine Author : danboarder Score : 100 points Date : 2021-06-02 07:36 UTC (15 hours ago) (HTM) web link (reverb.com) (TXT) w3m dump (reverb.com) | aidos wrote: | What a great insight! | | I absolutely loved his first album. Even better when he teamed up | with Conan Mockasin (who I've always kept an eye on because I | went to school with him) to form Soft Hair. Their track, The | Lying has to Stop, is a work of beauty. | tessierashpool wrote: | I built a drum machine last summer. highly recommend it. wasn't | analog, but I was building it for different reasons. | | I had some help, and some disappointments, but building your own | hardware is pretty easy with the Arduino ecosystem. | jarmitage wrote: | There's a brilliant set of live performances from the artist, of | music made with these machines: | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLafsplTntnuaL2ARcXtij... | alpineidyll3 wrote: | "Lady's in trouble with the law" is a classic track. I love this | guy. | the_local_host wrote: | This dude's stuff is incredible and I never heard of him before | today. He should be famous! | annoyingnoob wrote: | I saw 'analog drum machine' and thought 'drum playing robot'. | motohagiography wrote: | The slider interface on the second prototype is very appealing as | a UX. His other ones look sold out, and naively I could see | custom collector synths from artists become quite a thing. | | What I love about making music with synths is you're essentially | exploring a fractal overlaid on all possible audible frequencies, | modulated by time. There is a kind of romanticism to the analog | aspect of it that emphasises how it is a tangible event instead | of a sampled representation, which is basically a fluffy idea now | because physically humans are indifferent to whether it's one or | the other, but the way it comes out in music is that on machines | like this, the art of it is something discovered and shared | moreso than reflected and produced. It doesn't really matter, but | if there were an impulse-buy priced one akin to the stuff at | teenage.engineering by this artist or another one, I could see a | mini-craze for them. | munificent wrote: | _> you 're essentially exploring a fractal overlaid on all | possible audible frequencies, modulated by time._ | | Another way to think of it is that every knob on the synth | gives you a new dimension and each patch is a single point in | that n-dimensional space. Sound design means exploring that | volume by changing coordinates. | | I look at synth usability (which is very similar to how a lot | of game designers talk about fun) as in part a question of how | that space is arranged. How much of that volume produces sounds | users will like versus ones they won't? How continuous is it? | If I like a sound at point X, how likely am I to like sounds | near X, or will moving even a small distance radically change | the sound? Can I intuit what neighboring regions will sound | like based on the current sound? | | I think a big part of why subtractive synthesis has been so | successful is that it works well in that model. Most parameter | changes are continuous and intuitive. The space feels like it | smoothly changes in useful and predictable ways as you | navigate. | | FM synthesis is really cool, but it feels a lot more like a | chaotic universe where there are tiny islands of brilliant | sounds separated by empty volumes of noise, or | indistinguishable FM bloops. | pushrax wrote: | > the art of it is something discovered and shared | | That's what microtonal harmonic structures feel like to me, in | the present day. Exploration and sharing of a new but familiar | frontier. Even when done digitally. | smoldesu wrote: | Thanks to the magic of Eurorack, it's easier than ever (albeit | expensive) to build your own synth. Even "from scratch" | oscillators aren't too difficult, if you're familiar with | breadboarding/soldering. | danboarder wrote: | Thanks for mentioning that, I was not aware of Eurorack and | when I looked it up I found the Synth DIY Wiki, which is a | treasure trove for this topic, super cool | (https://sdiy.info/wiki/Main_Page ). BTW, some friends and I | build the Box of Boom, which is an interactive digital + analog | drum kit that uses actuators to play real drums with a video | game console ( see https://www.boxofboom.com ). We're exploring | doing a new version that integrates more synth-y sounds and | signal modifiers. | smoldesu wrote: | That's neat! I forgot to mention VCV Rack [1] which is a | great way to get started with Eurorack for free. | | [1] https://vcvrack.com/ | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Rack is awesome, and I use it almost every day. But it's | not a way to get started with Eurorack. | | It's a (great) way to get started with _modular synthesis_. | | Eurorack is specific term for a particular hardware format | (physical dimensions, power supply specifications, | electrical standards). In general, most of the modules are | analog, though there's no requirement for this to be true. | Hardware modular synthesis existed before the emergence of | Eurorack (perhaps most famously the Moog modulars, but also | Buchla and perhaps 6-12 other companies making modular | systems). Eurorack is an industry-wide specification that | allows many different module makers to create modules that | will all fully interoperate with each other. | smoldesu wrote: | My distinction is that it's to get you used to the | standard, not the hardware. VCV Rack still uses 1V/Octave | and CV just like a real Eurorack synth, so calling it | "modular" is a bit of a disservice. VCV Rack is an | emulation of the hardware, so much so that you can | actually mix and match the two if you have the proper | interface. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | The lessons you learn from using Rack are lessons about | modular synthesis, not Eurorack. These are valuable | lessons, and because Eurorack is also a modular synthesis | environment, most of those lessons will carry over to a | hardware environment. The same lessons will also help | when using an older pre-eurorack hardware modular (e.g. | Moog or Buchla) or a different software modular | environment (e.g. Reaktor). | | I don't think that it is accurate to call Rack an | emulation of the hardware. Rack itself doesn't emulate | anything at all. Some of the modules emulate specific | hardware modules. Many do not. There's also no actual | voltage in Rack, just a nomenclature consensus on | "1V/Octave", despite there being no volts anywhere. | | ps. I love Rack. | mastazi wrote: | Several VCV Rack modules are software renditions of | hardware Eurorack modules, e.g. the Befaco or Expert | Sleepers ones. | | I'm sure there are some VCV modules inspired to other | systems like Buchla or Serge but they are not official | software reproductions of hardware products, like the | examples mentioned above. | munificent wrote: | If you search for "eurorack kit", you can find a ton of | module kits where you get all the parts and solder them | yourself. It's a really enjoyable hobby and a nice way to | ease into electronics. | squarefoot wrote: | Also worth mentioning the fully Open Source and Open | Hardware TSynth by ElectroTechnique, which is very cheap | and sounds great for what it costs. | | https://electrotechnique.cc/ | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCA2L7CeWSE | erikschoster wrote: | It's nice to see this here -- as Ellen Fullman said, instrument | building is composition. | qrv3w wrote: | Is that quote from a particular interview or talk? I'm | interested in the context and learning more about Fullman | erikschoster wrote: | Yes it's actually paraphrasing the title of a nice piece she | contributed to the second issue of the Spectres journal | published by Shelter Press! The full title is "Instrument | design is composition, resonance is harmony." It's an | inspiring essay -- the Spectres issue on Resonances has a | number of other nice essays from composers, sound artists etc | loosely grouped around the subject. | qrv3w wrote: | Thanks a lot! | doctorhandshake wrote: | In school I studied computer music, and I participated in a grad | seminar for which the final project was a group concert. Alvin | Lucier, one of the progenitors of electronic music, led the | seminar as guest faculty. | | For the performance I built a software instrument in Max/MSP with | some similar principles around free timing to those in this drum | machine, but with a digital granular synth voicing. | | At the pre-show critique, I performed a piece using this | instrument, and explained that the synthesizer had 3 voices | because I found that to be a sweet spot between a full-sounding | texture and what I could manage live. | | Alvin asked me if I had considered 5 voices. Confused, I said I | had, but, and I repeated, I found it too much to manage. | Cryptically, he replied something to the effect of 'well, ok, but | three is three but five is five.' This was bizarrely hilarious to | me but I kept it to myself. | | Later, the student who designed the show poster elected to call | it 'Three is Three but Five is Five'. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-02 23:00 UTC)