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Scott Stites
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Joined: Dec 23, 2005
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Location: Mount Hope, KS USA
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 Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 4:06 pm Post subject:
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Well, thanks guys!
| Quote: | | Your text suggests it's an automatic running thing, no user inervention after setup, did I get that correctly ? |
There was quite a bit of intervention. The nature of the device makes it sort of an inspirational compositional tool. Each pot supplies an interval that adds with the intervals of other pots when those bits are '1' as well - couple that with the actual bit pattern that and that makes it sort of a trial and error device. You can often get very interesting results, but there's always a bit of luck involved in making it pop out a really interesting sequence. Oftentimes this type of sequence will just pop out of nowhere.
One day I was fiddling with the device and the random pattern started forming a cool sequence structure with the pot settings, so I set it to 'loop' and *BAM*, literally that main sequence just magically appeared. I recorded several minutes of it at a few different intervals, manually varying the filter cutoff and so forth. Most of these bits I used in the main sequence, and for the sequence heard at the very beginning.
For the slower, spacey part right after the beginning, I created a different sequence and recorded it using different outputs to fire the EG controlling the VCA and filter. The EG would be set for a fairly long cycle, enough to capture a few notes before the VCA shut down, and resulted in that neat sort of phrasing at the beginning. Though it's the same sequence heard, different parts of it are voiced differently and gives it a dreamy, slurred kind of effect (what I meant by 'illuminating different parts of the sequence' in my previous post).
I had the fragments for the beginning and the main sequence itself, but I needed a way to sort of glue everything together. I layered different pad notes by multitracking a VCO over and over for each note. I also then (reluctantly) said goodbye to the main sequence and entered another bit pattern and different pot settings into the Klee. I clocked it at a very fast rate, varying the clock rate to create that sort of 'vrooming' sound between the languid beginning and the sequenced main body.
During the main sequence track, I added a little bit of the higher interval of the sequenced track to that for a short bit, but I couldn't do that for very long - between recordings of the different intervals, the clock had drifted enough to where it wouldn't stay in sync very long (no sync track, no MIDI). I also layered a bit of a different interval as the sequence progressed, which goes out of sync in a way that sounds to me like the sequence kind of 'turns around' at one point, if that makes any sense.
To add a bit of variation to the sequence, I would do the same kind of thing I did with the 'vrooming' sound, but with different patterns and pot settings to add little background accents. Then, I wondered how in the world was I going to end the bloody thing.
I set up another fast clocked pattern and ramped the clock down so it dove down to the brief random bit at the end. To get the random bit, I recorded the Klee in random mode and mixed a few tracks together for that. Then I did the clock 'spin down' at the end again with a random pattern.
I assembled the piece in Audacity as I went along. I didn't have the D8 recorder at the time. When I needed something somewhere, I'd record it and put it where I wanted. To get the stereo delay, I'd just double the same track, and slightly offset one of them in time.
This is one of those pieces, by the way, that my brain can get reversed on - sometimes the sequence just sounds different. I suppose it has to do with what cues my brain picks up at the time. I have the same problem with other pieces - like the sequence on Ultravox's 'Western Promise' for example. It's weird - kind of an Escher-esque thing I guess.
| Quote: | | It's good to associate music with the DIY forum. Essential even... |
It's such a refreshing change to read that - this is what makes electro-music such a premium forum in my view. Oftentimes DIY lists/forums frown on such things, but IMHO the two are inextricably linked. That's like having a power tool forum where discussion of carpentry is discouraged.
Cheers,
Scott |
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blue hell
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| Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 5:00 pm Post subject:
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| Scott Stites wrote: | | There was quite a bit of intervention. |
Ok ... see somehow I got the impression that there wsn't from what you wrote ... and it would have been truly amazing when it would have been true. I couldn't have guessed it was that laborious though :D
Thanks for your explanations.
I had missed the "political" piece before. I like that one as well, although it ended sooner somehow than I had expected (I shouldn't have such prejudice ...)
Somehow I had to think about something Howard said a while ago, well almost a year ago actually. He then said something like that he saw the electronic music mevement of today as being comparable to the folk music of, I think the 60's, maybe early 70's of the last age. In those days a lot of people were building their own instruments to make music with, something that sems to happen right now in the DIY section of this forum. Don't know if Howard would remember it himself, but it was a remark that seems to make sense here and now. Anyway, I don't have the time these days for such activities but it's a really pleasure to read about it, and hear it.
I'll listen to the piece again later, to see if I can discover the Escher like aspects :-)
Scott why don't you post something in the online music section ? I know you use your pieces as ilustrations here, but I see them to be interesting for more people, as being more than "just" illustrations.
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also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
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Uncle Krunkus
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| Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 8:24 pm Post subject:
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I think both Suffocation and Final3n are bloody brilliant. Classy, simple, rich, subversive. All the stuff I love in electronic music! 
I must say though that I'm concerned about the fact that you felt the need to add a disclaimer to Suffocation. Don't take this the wrong way, I don't mean it to sound personal, but I've noticed more and more lately that people from the US are becoming scared of having an opinion about their government. There was a US stand up comedian on an ABC show the other night (The Glass House), the rest of the team were having a bit of a laugh about how much of a dickhead Bush is. Now I don't know if this guy agreed or not, because, and this is the thing that scared me, he was not willing to say anything about it at all. He just said "I've got to go home again, I'm not saying a word."
We are so often reminded that the US is the greatest country in the world  , you know, land of the free and home of the brave. Why are US citizens starting to throw away their right to free speech?
Again, Scott, I am not having a go at you. I think you're a bloody genius!! All I'm saying is that Suffocation is a great track and you should be proud of it. Not feel like you have to apologise for the fact that you find Bush's opinions and rhetoric interesting enough to incorporate into a piece of music.
Whew! I'll calm down now! 
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blue hell
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| Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 9:04 pm Post subject:
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Scary indeed to see people of the free country to be scared for freedom. Music like suffocation is doing good in that context.
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Jan
also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
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Mikmo
Joined: Dec 01, 2005
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 8:07 am Post subject:
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Hey Scott
The "klee sequencer" sounds like a really great idea
Are there any schematics for the "klee sequencer" available anywhere.
Mikael
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Scott Stites
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 2:09 pm Post subject:
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Thanks again to all for all the kind words. Really, I'm just bumbling along the best I know how.....
| Quote: | | Scott why don't you post something in the online music section ? I know you use your pieces as ilustrations here, but I see them to be interesting for more people, as being more than "just" illustrations. |
The thought hadn't occurred to me. I've always been all over the map, and my stuff is so scattered over two different web pages. I've always had this idea to make a unified piece of work, but have never gotten around to it. I think I'll centralize my stuff onto one page and make a post. Thanks for the idea!
| Quote: | Ok ... see somehow I got the impression that there wsn't from what you wrote ... and it would have been truly amazing when it would have been true. I couldn't have guessed it was that laborious though  |
Man, I wish I could come up with a circuit that could automate like that.
| Quote: | | I had missed the "political" piece before. I like that one as well, although it ended sooner somehow than I had expected (I shouldn't have such prejudice ...) |
It started out as a typical short 'here is the phase shifter doing this' kind of sample. I listened to it and thought that it would be kind of neat to add spoken voice to it, and oddly I knew just whose voice I wanted. Believe it or not, I'd had a conversation with my brother about George, and I remember telling him the best word to describe what he was doing to the common man, the country and the world in general was 'suffocation'. I found this batch of sound files on the Web from some of his speeches, and lo and behold, there was the phrase with 'suffocation' in it! Honest truth, there. The idea struck me to take things he'd said, and translate them to what I think he really means.
| Quote: | | Somehow I had to think about something Howard said a while ago, well almost a year ago actually. He then said something like that he saw the electronic music mevement of today as being comparable to the folk music of, I think the 60's, maybe early 70's of the last age. In those days a lot of people were building their own instruments to make music with, something that sems to happen right now in the DIY section of this forum. Don't know if Howard would remember it himself, but it was a remark that seems to make sense here and now. Anyway, I don't have the time these days for such activities but it's a really pleasure to read about it, and hear it. |
That's quite an astute obervation on Howard's part. I hadn't thought of that, but it does ring true. There's an irony there that, at the beginning, the folk movement was pretty much an 'acoustic' thing - it was quite the deal when Dylan 'sold out' and went electric. Now it's come around to, if not exclusively, a largely 'electric' thing.
| Quote: | | Not feel like you have to apologise for the fact that you find Bush's opinions and rhetoric interesting enough to incorporate into a piece of music. |
Well, you're right Uncle K - I can't speak for everybody, but for me, the current climate contains a palpable fear of speaking one's mind, and that is very, very sad. It's like a throwback to the McCarthy era of the '50's, perhaps even worse, because there is legislation involved here. As an example, not that I'm into country music, but yesterday I read an article in the paper about the girl group Dixie Chicks. Back in '03, one of the group members said something against the prez as he was preparing to go to war. They were immediately blacklisted. The article was about how they have this great hit now that a few stations are grudgingly beginning to play.
As for the piece, part of the paranoia has to do with taking bits of phrases out of context and assembling them into new phrases - I don't know how much of a backlash that can bring on, legally, even though I think the 'translated' phrases have more to do with the truth...
| Quote: | | Are there any schematics for the "klee sequencer" available anywhere. |
I drew some up, I'll see if I can find them and post them. I think they can be improved - I did this back before I knew some better ways of doing things. For example, I think when Romeo built his, he stuck more with Ken Stone's comparator input than what I had (and I'll probably do the same when I build it again). Also, I think a nice improvement for it would be to add a switch that would allow you to manually enter a pattern. Say a three position momentary switch - flipping it up would enter a 1 and flipping it down would enter a 0. As it stands now, once you turn the power off, your pattern is gone forever, and there's no good way to bring it back. If one could rig a battery backup to the CD4006, it could stay there as long as you wanted it to, but there's still no good way to enter the same pattern back in once it's gone. If you had an LED that indicated the state of the last output, you could clock through and jot down which bits were high and which were low, and then manually enter it in again at a later time with the switch.
Cheers,
Scott |
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v-un-v
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 2:23 pm Post subject:
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| Scott Stites wrote: | Mosc/V-un-V, if this is not appropriate in this forum, please let me know. I'm not here to make 'statements'.
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Statements? Well you just made one there!  - Hasn't electronic music always been political to a degree?
(btw, I wish someone would su---cate GWB!!! Elections should be coming near?)
[editor's note: changed a word to obfuscate it. You can get arrested for saying these things in the USA, and I assume a web site owner is liable for what is published on their site. We have free speech, but not that free. --mosc]
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Scott Stites
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 2:29 pm Post subject:
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| Quote: | | Elections should be coming near? |
Just a little under 3 more years of W  |
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elektro80
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 2:43 pm Post subject:
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| mosc wrote: | | [editor's note: changed a word to obfuscate it. You can get arrested for saying these things in the USA, and I assume a web site owner is liable for what is published on their site. We have free speech, but not that free. --mosc] |
A wise decision.
However, you could claim that God will punish him and then make a nice list of all things God will make him suffer before he is thrown into Hell and eternal consuming fires and all that jazz. Sometimes you just gotta love christianity.
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mosc
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:02 pm Post subject:
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Yes, if anyone here is a Christian minister that owns a huge television empire and was a former candidate for the republican presidential nomination, feel free to post all the death threats for any chiefs-of-state you wish.
Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuela's president
Pat Robertson, host of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
From the August 22 broadcast of The 700 Club:
ROBERTSON: There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.
You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200508220006
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elektro80
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:06 pm Post subject:
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Right..
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v-un-v
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:10 pm Post subject:
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| v-un-v wrote: | | Scott Stites wrote: | Mosc/V-un-V, if this is not appropriate in this forum, please let me know. I'm not here to make 'statements'.
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Statements? Well you just made one there! - Hasn't electronic music always been political to a degree?
(btw, I wish someone would su---cate GWB!!! Elections should be coming near?)
[editor's note: changed a word to obfuscate it. You can get arrested for saying these things in the USA, and I assume a web site owner is liable for what is published on their site. We have free speech, but not that free. --mosc] |
So you DO live in a dictat.....ahem...choke.... democracy.....????
I didn't know that Well thank the good lord for eternal damnation then!
- and after the those enlightening comments from our beloved Prime Minister- we too can look forward to the day when the lord gives him a good toasting too  
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elektro80
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:12 pm Post subject:
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feel the love
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ian-s
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:44 pm Post subject:
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| v-un-v wrote: |
- and after the those enlightening comments from our beloved Prime Minister- we too can look forward to the day when the lord gives him a good toasting too |
Huh? |
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elektro80
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:49 pm Post subject:
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That would be Reichskommisar Blair and not mosc?
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ian-s
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| Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 6:51 pm Post subject:
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| elektro80 wrote: | | That would be Reichskommisar Blair and not mosc? |
Yes, of cause  . I must have missed to much TV or what Tony says does not make the news down here anymore. |
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v-un-v
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| Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 3:12 am Post subject:
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To quote Tony 'Margaret Thatcher' Blair;
| Quote: | | The lord will be my judge on the decision to take Britain into Iraq |
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No Tony- your country's people will be your judge- and YOU will go down in history as being a mistake.
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Uncle Krunkus
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| Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 1:47 am Post subject:
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I've been away for a couple of days.
I'm really worried about Mosc having to "obfuscate" anything.
Although I have to agree that it's not a good idea to promote the assassination of nut cases. Take for example our own "Mini President" John (Cut Snake) Howard. If anyone assassinated him he'd just become a martyr. That's the last thing we want!
P.S. I'd like to point out that by "nut cases" I mean people who are powerful and personallity disordered, not the standard cliche of the schizophrenic (who, BTW are less dangerous than the average person and live their lives in fear and isolation)
P.P.S. Yes, I suppose that means I'm alot more concerned about offending or stereotyping schizophrenics than I am about John or George. I'm glad that I hold these priorities.
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Uncle Krunkus
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| Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 3:38 am Post subject:
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I must say that I'm very aware of the fact that Scott's Multiphase Project thread has kind of been hijacked (for want of a better word) by some political rambling (mostly by me) and I've decided not to continue it.
If any of the moderators feel the politics should be shifted to a "schmooze" that's fine by me. Hell, I'll delete it altogether if that's warranted, I've had my say.
I got a number of things today, including a second (cheap) digital multimeter so I'm going to do some more accurate graphs of my hand-made vactrols. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the "high brightness" 3mm white LEDs I've used get bright a bit too quickly. I'll find out soon enough I spose.
I also got what I need to get both the Roboride and the Monsciter powered up.
Bub is due literally any day now.
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Scott Stites
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| Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:10 am Post subject:
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I've got no problem with 'hijacking' of any of my threads - I enjoy spontaneous direction. The only down side is that when a really good thread within a thread appears, there are sometimes problems locating it with a search engine, though I think that is just a matter of persistence when conducting the search.
Yep, expressing a written or verbal wish or intent of any type of bodily harm to the president here is a punishable offense (may not be limited to just the prez, but that's the big kahuna of going to the pokey by way of spoken/written word). This well predates the current president - I'm not sure when it was enacted. I'd be somewhat surprised if most countries didn't have something along those lines on their books.
Advocation of the otherthrow of the US government is another example of a supreme No-No, but that's more along the lines of sedition.
Anyway, building a phase shifter or filter out of optocouplers, especially hand-rolled, I think really requires a bit of breadboarding. The range of resistance is only one vital parameter - another important parameter has to do with the speed at which the LDR reacts. There are some really fast ones out there, and some really sloooow ones, too.
Cheers,
Scott |
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v-un-v
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| Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 1:56 pm Post subject:
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| Uncle Krunkus wrote: | I must say that I'm very aware of the fact that Scott's Multiphase Project thread has kind of been hijacked (for want of a better word) by some political rambling (mostly by me) and I've decided not to continue it.
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me too Andrew
I'm also terrible for hijacking threads too
I've done no electronics for yonks either- far too much work with kids, house DIY and university work- but I hope to get back to a bit of soldering this summer. I got my soundlab artwork printed out today- it looks fab- but here I go again hijacking Scott's thread. So time to stop so I'll announce the finished front panel in a new thread soon
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Scott Stites
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| Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 7:19 pm Post subject:
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| I've added the soft knee compressor/limiter to the regen line. This is very cool. I'll have to make a sample or two. |
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Scott Stites
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| Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 10:49 am Post subject:
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Things are progressing nicely on the MultiPhase.
This weekend I got down to brass tacks as far as measurement of what the Vactrols were actually doing.
First of all, I was surprised to find that my expo sink is not working them all that hard - the minimum resistance was going to around 4K, so Uncle K, I see absolutely no reason why your homemade Vactrols wouldn't fit the bill quite nicely. This also made me want to work the vactrols a bit harder, to increase the range of operation. I didn't want to move it too far, but I changed the 1M resistor in the expo sink to 680K - this brought the minimum resistance to around 2-3K. I was worried that this would affect the expo response, but the sweeps still sound fine.
Another thing about the Vactrols that shocked me somewhat is just how much damn variation there is from device to device - even in the dual LDR elements in a single VTL5C3/2. So I tried an experiment - I thought I'd go ahead and measure the LDR's to find a mean value at minimum resistance, then record how far the LDR's varied from that value. I then applied that percentage in the opposite direction for the capacitors, and spent Saturday morning matching capacitors to that value. Did it make a difference? - it made a neglible bit of difference. I think the curve of the Vactrols may vary enough from device to device to so that one could never get them to 'agree' at more than one spot over the curve.
Be that as it may, the phase shifter is just sounding better and better. With the increased lower resistance, I went back to the value of 2N7, with 2.2M resistors in parallel with the LDR's.
The hypertriangular waveform produces some really old school funk 'tight' sounding phase shifts, as well as some pretty nice longer sweeps.
Another thing I've discovered is that inserting the signal into the second stage, producing an odd number of stages for the actual signal (rather than just the regeneration) creates a nice new variation.
But, probably the biggest difference in the circuit now is the THAT Corp device soft knee compressor/limiter in the regen loop. Holy cow! Before, recording a highly regenerative phase shift was quite difficult - peaks would come popping out, overdriving everything. As a result, the overall level can be brought up while preserving highly regenerative phase shifts. On top of that, the compression aspect of the limiter allows one to 'squish' the regen up, rendering a good amount of control over the timbre of the signal. The more compression used, the more definition to the regeneration is squashed out.
I chose this design because (A) I wanted control over how much clipping I wanted, (B) I wanted soft clipping, not hard clipping and (C) THAT parts have a very good reputation. This circuit is excellent - I took it straight out of an app note. Ripple is next to non-existent. I'm extremely pleased with it.
The circuit can be found on this page:
http://www.thatcorp.com/desnotes.html
It's DN107 'A Simple Effective Soft-Knee Limiter/Compressor'.
The soft knee compressor started out with two controls - one control adjusts the gain of the VCA so that one can make up for any loss in the compression process. The other control allows one to set how much compression is used - from none to 'infinite'. The threshold where compression kicks in is set to -6dB in the original circuit. I've added a control that will adjust the threshold to a lower level. I like to crank up the regeneration control to max, then adjust the gain of the compressor/limiter to right below self oscillation. Then I adjust the compression to where I want it. This method will render some really smooth self oscillation too.
The MultiPhase itself is producing such a wide range of phase shift effects, I'm in a quandry as to making samples - what does one choose? I have the same problem with filters.
Having the stages of phase shift and regen selectable as it is now allows me to find some fairly unusual phase timbres. One I stumbled across is surprisingly different sounding (to me). This one injects the input and regen into stage 2, taps the phase shift off of stage 2, and the regeneration off of some nearer higher tap (say tap 4 or 6 ). The effect is a really cool 'sharp' kind of regeneration.
Anyway, I haven't recorded any specific samples, or anything at all for that matter except a little conglomeration of phase shifts I've attached to this email. Towards the end of the night last night, I wanted to try recording just to see what kind of levels I could get, and I spent about an hour recording the samples. There are five tracks, each with a different phase arrangement. I'd just record a track, change phase settings, record another track and so on, til it was close to bedtime (time change here robbed me of an hour, dammit). The main 'rhythm' track is run through the phase shifter, delay and then the Dim C operating in Mode 3, mono in/mono out.
One other track uses that same path, the other tracks are just phase shift then delay. It's a mishmash, and not not terribly expository, but it's kinda neat to hear how all the phase shifts play together and other devices. Towards the very end, one can hear that 'sharp' regen I mentioned earlier. The DW6000 provides the voices - I used the same general setting for each track, just changed the filter cutoff up or down, or lowered an oscillator pitch up or down from voice to voice. The DW6000 voice itself is unmodulated - just a plain Jane voice with no filter sweeps or vibrato.
Cheerios,
Scott
Edit: Corrected designated taps for the 'sharp' resonance.
Last edited by Scott Stites on Mon Apr 03, 2006 11:06 am; edited 1 time in total |
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mosc
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Joined: Jan 31, 2003
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Location: Durham, NC
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Scott Stites
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Joined: Dec 23, 2005
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Location: Mount Hope, KS USA
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| Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 11:14 am Post subject:
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Thanks, Mosc!
I corrected the tap assignments for the 'sharp' resonance sounding phase shift.
The regen and signal input are both at stage 2, and the phase tap itself is taken from the output of stage 2, while the regen is taken from a higher tap. It takes two stages to get a notch, so just listening to it with no regen provides no audibly discernable phase shift.
Cheers,
Scott |
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