synth

The Pocket Integrator, explained

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The Pocket Integrator is add-on board for Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operators that lets you play your drum machine like a drum:

Synchronizing your electronic instruments with live music can be hard. Pocket Integrator makes it easy! It’s an add-on board for Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series of hand-held drum machines, that lets you play them like a drum.

Just tap or shake to set the tempo and downbeat of your drum pattern. Keep tapping as long as you like. When you stop, it’ll hold the beat wherever you set it. It’s as easy as clapping your hands!

In the latest Crowd Supply campaign update, Mykle Hansen shares this video which demonstrates who the device works:

The Pocket Integrator, explained

3D Printed Synth Kit Shares Product Design Insights

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Donald Papp writes about Oskitone on Hackaday:

We’ve always been delighted with the thoughtful and detailed write-ups that accompany each of [Tommy]’s synth products, and the background of his newest instrument, the Scout, is no exception. The Scout is specifically designed to be beginner-friendly, hackable, and uses 3D printed parts and components as much as possible. But there is much more to effectively using 3D printing as a production method than simply churning out parts. Everything needed to be carefully designed and tested, including the 3D printed battery holder, which we happen to think is a great idea.

Read more…

3D Printed Synth Kit Shares Product Design Insights

Switch Your SID Up!

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The SID Chip is one of the most hallowed components of electronic equipment, housed inside the original Commodore 64 and responsible for some of the most iconic chiptunes ever made. The Commodore 64 & 128 GOLD SID Sound Interface Device is a direct replacement for the original SID chip which will ensure the rare and valuable chip is safe, while accurately replicating its output and performance.

The chip installation will include desoldering the original chip, which will require some advanced soldering skills – but there are many tutorials online which will help you with this and it can be done however scary it may seem! The SID chip in the Commodore 64 came in two versions – the MOS 6581 and the 8580, both of which can be replaced by this neat board.

Read more on the Tindie blog…

Switch Your SID Up!

Stochastic Markov Beats

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From Matthew Carlson on Hackaday:

Stochastic Markov Beats

[Attoparsec] has been building intriguing musical projects on his YouTube channel for a while and his latest is no exception. Dubbed simply as “Node Module”, it is a rack-mounted hardware-based Markov chain beat sequencer. Traditionally Markov chains are software state machines that transition between states with given probabilities, often learned from a training corpus. That same principle has been applied to hardware beat sequencing.

Each Node Module has a trigger input, four outputs each with a potentiometer, and a trigger out. [Attoparsec] has a wonderful explanation of all the different parts and theories that make up the module at the start of his video, but the basic operation is that a trigger input comes in and the potentiometers are read to determine the probabilities of each output. One is randomly selected and fired. As you can imagine, there are loops and even dead-end nodes and for some musical pieces there is a certain number of beats expected, so a clever reset signal can be sent to pull the chain back to the initial starting state at a regular interval. The results are interesting to listen to and even better to imagine all the possibilities.

The module itself is an Arduino-based custom PCB that is laid out quite cleanly. The BOM, code, and KiCad files are available on GitHub if you want to make one yourself. This isn’t the first instrument we’ve seen [Attoparsec] make, and we’re confident it won’t be the last.

Stochastic Markov Beats

Oskitone POLY555: 3D Printed 555 Timer Analog Synth

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Andrew Sink has a great video about the new DIY synth from Oskitone:

Oskitone POLY555 – 3D Printed 555 Timer Analog Synth!

Interested in 3D printing, circuit bending, or synthesizers? Check out the POLY555 by Oskitone, a synth that uses twenty 555 timers to create polyphonic music!

Find out more: POLY555 DIY Kit

Oskitone POLY555: 3D Printed 555 Timer Analog Synth

Oskitone and OKAY synth at Maker Faire

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We are big fans of the OKAY 2 Monophonic Synth Kit and we were excited to see the creator, Tommy at Maker Faire Bay Area 2018.  From the Oskitone newsletter:

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I spent last weekend at Maker Faire Bay Area, an annual event put on by the people behind Make Magazine. My exhibit stall was in between the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the US Patent Office — pretty legit! I had synths out for people to play, gave demos and motivational speeches to kids, traded stickers for email addresses, and had some really great conversations with people.

Over three days, I talked to maybe 500 folks (+/- 100), which is a lot for an introvert! It was exhausting but incredible. I think I’m still processing it.

Screenshot from 2018-06-02 14-13-11.png

I met so many cool people… Makers, musicians, kids, parents, students, teachers, industrial designers, engineers, manufacturers, writers, editors, etc etc!

  • I was happy to find a lesson outside electronics for the younger visitors: the piano keys on the OKAY 2 are actually levers — a mechanical “simple machine” already familiar to a lot of students. It was fun watching it “click” in their minds that the further back they tried to press the key, the more energy it required. (I also noticed a greater appreciation in parents for a more palatable educational takeaway, so I think they liked it too.)

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Evil Mad Scientist stopped by with a 555 recreated with discrete components and swapped it out for the 555 timer in the OKAY 2. It was such a great, uneventful demo. “What will it do?” “Exactly the same thing.” Awesome!

Screenshot from 2018-06-02 13-55-59.png

I got closer to perfecting my marketing. What started as a 5min dissertation talk on Friday became a 30sec elevator pitch by Sunday, saving my throat while seemingly having no negative sales effect. I may write a blog post on this.

There is no greater stress test for a physical product than 100 kids with candy smeared on their faces banging on it. I was relieved that the synths mostly stood up to the fatigue, but, of course, there’s room for improvement, which I now have a good idea on how to design. Thanks, kids! 🙂

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Oskitone and OKAY synth at Maker Faire

Miasma: Classic Dual Voice Eurorack Synthesizer Module

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Miasma is a pure analog oscillator module based on the Curtis CEM3340 chips used in legendary ’80s synths, with new & innovative signal patching:Screenshot from 2018-02-17 12-51-02.png

Miasma: Classic Dual Voice Eurorack Synthesizer Module

We designed the Miasma Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) to bring that classic ’80s synthesizer sound back to Eurorack modular systems. We just couldn’t find any currently available oscillators with the sound textures and capabilities that we wanted, so we had to design our own; and now you get to own one as well.  

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moxon/miasma-classic-dual-voice-eurorack-synthesizer-mod#
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moxon/miasma-classic-dual-voice-eurorack-synthesizer-mod#
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moxon/miasma-classic-dual-voice-eurorack-synthesizer-mod#

There are many unique capabilities built into Miasma that you won’t find in any other oscillator module, like the built-in patching and cross modulation structures that make Miasma so flexible in your rack. However, it’s all about the sound – so let’s start with some Miasma audio samples, before we go into the technical details of how we make that sound possible (best listening with Headphones!)

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Miasma: Classic Dual Voice Eurorack Synthesizer Module

OKAY 2 Monophonic Synth Kit

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 writes on the Tindie blog:

okay2-Medium

OKAY 2 Monophonic Synth Kit

Take a look at Tindie’s thriving sound section and you’ll see there is no shortage of people making their own electronic music. These devices take many forms, and one interesting take on sound creation is the OKAY 2 Synth DIY Kit. At face value it features 2 octaves of keys, a built-in amplifier along with a 1/4″ line out, and knobs to select the octaves that you’d like to play — but it gets more interesting under the hood.

Oskitone OKAY 2 from oskitone on Vimeo.

What makes it unique by today’s standards is that it doesn’t use any sort of computer or microcontroller, but instead produces sound using an LM555 timer along with other discreet components for monophonic sound. Given its small size, you could use two at once, perhaps combining them via the line out to be further modified in your synth setup!

In case you’re wondering, the original—or nearly so as it’s version 1.1.1—OKAY is also available. It works largely the same as the OKAY 2, but features only a single octave of keys, and doesn’t have an audio output jack.

OKAY 2 Monophonic Synth Kit

ADSR Envelope Generator Module

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What’s an ADSR envelope generator? If you are a big music hacker, you probably know. If you are like the rest of us, you might need to read [Mich’s] post to find out that it is an attack-decay-sustain-release (ADSR) envelope generator. Still confused? It is a circuit used in music synthesis. You can see a…

via The Sound of (Synthesized) Music — Hackaday

ADSR Envelope Generator Module