[HN Gopher] I built my own analog drum machine
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I built my own analog drum machine
Author : danboarder
Score : 100 points
Date : 2021-06-02 07:36 UTC (15 hours ago)
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| 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'.
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