Enabling The dream
For a very long time, since at least my third grade year, electronic music has exerted an inexplicible pull upon my psyche. I can only imagine, judging by the fact that you are here at this site and reading this text, you must also possess to some degree that same characteristic. Though it has been around, in one form or another for over a hundred years, electronic music is the new frontier. It is a timeless entity waiting to be sampled and given form so that it may be presented within the corporeal realm of art. Your art. It is ambivalent to style, it rests in comfort equally upon the laurels of academia or within the bowels of a nightclub. It moves you to think and to feel; it conjures visions of things not possible by being possible itself. Electronic sound and, by extension, electronic music, is derived through simulation and manipulation of phenomona that have existed since the dawn of time. This site is dedicated to the effect. It is about enabling myself, and hopefully others, to dream in color.
What's New:
sMs Audio is planning another run of Quad Bass++ PCBs!
Yes, folks, if you're interested in putting together one of these beauties, then give sMs Audio a buzz. sMs is also supplying parts kits for $17 per voice, which makes things even nicer (no scavening for parts. If you don't know what a Quad Bass++ is, why just click here.
Matrix Sequencer, Bloated Designs......
Birth of a synth.com Site Features
My original site was created in the latter part of 2003. Originally it was called "Scott Stites Synth DIY", and it featured a page that contained something of a blog (what I called a "diary" because I'd never heard of a "blog" at that time) that chronicled my fevered experiments with hapless electronic components. I called this page "Birth of a Synth". Then, the nameless provider who shall remain nameless (PeoplePC.com) managed to totally, inexplicably, and without warning, lose control over the server that contained the site. Because I was using a horrid on-line web design program provided by the great nameless, I could no longer edit or change the contents of the site, other than determine what sound and graphics files it had available to it. So, I began a second site called "The New, Improved Scott Stites Synth DIY" and it had the "Birth of a Synth" moniker more prominently displayed on the home page. During this period, which extended from 2004 through early 2010, I was lucky enough to help prototype some Thomas Henry designs and publish articles about them to the site. During this time I also moved through several of my hare-brained designs - the Mutant Filter, The Dim C, The Klee Sequencer, the lamentedly unfinished MultiPhase, The Appendage Touch Sequencer, and other odds and ends. In early 2010, PeoplePC the unnamed provider again dropped the ball (this time temporarily) to complement my insane dropping of the ball (by sticking with them) and I was again unable to edit the site. The ability returned, but the worm had turned, so to speak. I bit the bullet and...well...here I am, learning (slowly) how to code a decent website (bear with me on that count).
But, now that I'm here, the stuff from the old New Improved Scott Stites DIY is, at this writing, fully ported over. Initially my porting over resulted in a tragic display of html wankery, and the site literally sucked if you were not using my computer and the browser on my computer to view it. I have learned my lesson and am attempting to write compliant code so that the pages are....viewable.
So, at this site is nearly everything that was at the old site (I decided to not put up the sundry circuits, which were few and overblown). I plan on expanding this site to cover several projects I have not written about. I hope to complete the MultiPhase, and add a daring new time manipulator, and perhaps write some articles on some of the techniques I use to breadboard. And, best of all, the Thomas Henry content will be here.
A Blast From My Past
Here's one that I dug up, and I don't think I've published this anywhere before. It's a composition using the Triple Wilson State Variable Voltage Controlled Filter and my Lexicon MX200 Digital Delay. The digital delay was set to near infinite repeat; therefore the synth voice gets overlayed as the piece progresses. At some point, there are so many overlays, the piece threatens to break down into sheer noise.
The voice is a couple of VCOs through the triple SVVCF, controlled by my homemade Thomas Henry keyboard. It was all recorded in one take. I guess the thing that I like the most about it is, it really doesn't sound like it was done with a modular synthesizer. Strangely, that is the type of modular synth composition that really appeals to me - the piece where you don't realize (or forget) that it is actually done with a modular synthesizer. For me, that is the primary goal of composing with a modular synthesizer. It doesn't have to sound like an "existing" instrument, bu,t at the same time, it should take you away without tapping you on the shoulder every two or three minutes saying "Look at me, I'm a modular synthesizer".
What's New: Bloated Excess
13 November, 2010: Yesterday I was finally able to gain access to my old website so that I could actually delete the old content and point here, which, of course, is meaningless to you if you're already here. Of course, I haven't had access to my old, old website since 2004 or so, but that's just something I'll have to live with.....
Anyhow, on this newest of websites, and on either of my old ones, no real new items have been posted for quite some time. Probably the last thing I posted anything about was the Appendage Touch Ribbon, a product of 2008 or so. This doesn't mean that I haven't been up to the usual Tom-foolery, nor does it mean that I'm being overly secretive. More rather, it just means I've been my usual, computer-burnt, lazy self. Lazy is self-explanatory, but computer-burnt is probably something that requires a small amount of explanation:
I have a love/hate relationship with computers - I stare at a computer all day at work; coming home to a computer and typing things into it just isn't in my list of things I relish doing, though I do love a good web site. Some day I'll have one (har har). Anyway, it's that and my growing alarm at the fragmentation of society brought upon us all by our cybernetic overlords (which is an entirely different subject of discussion) which serves to delay my keeping up with my own times, so to speak.
I've actually worked on a lot of undocumented stuff since the Appendage: the Appendage Sequencer, a transistor-based state variable voltage controlled filter, a true wave multiplier that multiplies waves in octaves, a scorchingly cool analog shift register, a simple, yet effective voltage quantizer, and the HEADLine short delay project. None of these I've documented. Some I may in the future. Right now, the two main projects on my plate are the HEADLine short delay and the latest project, the as yet un-named matrix sequencer.
The concept of the matrix sequencer is derived from the old Boss DR110 type of percussion sequencer, except this sequencer has no integral drum voices. It consists of seven rows of sixteen columns, which are sequenced simultaneously. Certainly it can be used to control percussive voices, but my intent is to create a device that is readily capable of interfacing to a modular synthesizer to trigger and gate events in a predictable and programmable way. Of course, such a device would be quite obstinate if it did not possess a memory to store programmed sequences and entire songs. So RAM is integrated into the design to provide 10 banks of 80 patterns per bank, and a song section consisting of 4 songs of 200 patterns each. There are a few other features to be explained in the coming months. My goal is to have this done by the electro-music KC gathering this summer.
The catch is, dear reader, I am, of course, quite insane.
Due to my reluctance to combine computers with music (which is, in turn, due to my basic love/hate relationship with all things computeroid), this device is designed without a single processor IC in it. It is composed entirely of discrete CMOS parts. Lots of them. And MIDI doesn't enter into it, either.
This brings me to a topic I would like to write more extensively about, and perhaps will: very big projects. The Thomas Henry portion of this website deals with the ingeniously succinct designs of Thomas Henry. The Scott Stites portion deals with the mammoth, bloated, nowhere-near-succinct designs that my brain seems to have happily settled on.
I've come to the conclusion that what I really enjoy about designing my own synth is that I have the freedom to at least attempt to own something that I have always wanted. The most enjoyable things for me are things that I want, but don't exist in this world - there is no happy little PCB I can order and put together in the sweat shop downstairs.
I've inflicted two of these designs on the world - the Klee Sequencer and the Appendage Touch Ribbon. Though the devices are worthwhile (so I'm told) once they're built, they have elicited groans from the builders during the build process itself. Both designs have intimidated others into not even bothering. This project makes those designs look like child's play.
What I want is what I want, and I'm finding not only do my ends justify my means, but the means itself is so damned enjoyable. I've been designing this matrix sequencer since August 2010, and, now in November 2010, I'm finally beginning the breadboard phase. I can tell you I've enjoyed every minute of it. If it's too much of a project for you, there may be bits and pieces of it you might still be able to convert to your own nefarious use. If you wish to follow what I'm about to put on the forthcoming page, and you believe a little pain is worth a little gain, then you may find a lot of pain is worth a lot of gain. Or not. I promise it won't be boring in the sense that CMOS, circuit theory, schematics, timing charts and parts lists are not boring. In any event, no, there will not be PCBs.
Stay tuned.........
This Just In:
The project has been named the SM-2010 (for Sequenced Matrix-2010, 2010 being the year I finally succumbed to the temptation to try just such a thing). Hey, it had to be called something. I've published a page on its bedrock circuit, the very foundation upon which some three thousand or so CMOS ICs will be resting (that number may be inflated, but you get the drift).
Click here for the new page...
Or..even...try this one....
And I've got a pretty good running start on a description of the SM-2010 Control Counter section here...
