Wednesday 1 August 2007

mtf - week 1 - the victorian synth

So, how interesting a noise can you create with a battery, speaker, and some wire ? [1]

When I first opened up the readings, I was a bit sceptical, I thought that I'd given up hardware years ago.
Then when we were given a big pile of stuff to rip apart I let go of my negativity, scepticism and concern for the environmnet and jumped in :)

I did have fun. The most enjoyable bit with this 'synth', is using the speaker itself as a switch in the circuit thereby the creation of constant tone of an almost kind of constant pitch.
I thought that perhaps some soft of lever style may help in continuity of tone, so I eventually settled for a knife ( it also has the serations for extra scritchiness ).



Also in the picture, is a small plastic lid between the speaker and the knife. This added a bit of timbral variation, and by effectively raising the height of the speaker movement was vaguely useful in conjunction with the lever idea in an experimental way.

This is a poppy with a bit of constant tone (almost):
http://www.esnips.com/doc/df53e4f5-35ac-4b02-ae5d-cb863b3b45b6/using-the-lid
victorian synth.mp...


This is a scritchy style sound sample :
http://www.esnips.com/doc/91e4c83d-ef32-480a-821c-80d9877fc6bc/victorian-synth
victorian synth.mp...




And here's a not particularly exciting photo of a spark :)






[2] “Music Technology Forum – Week 01 – The Victorian Synth". University of Adelaide, Schultz building. 26 July 2007.

No comments: