#15

#15
Originally uploaded by preposterousman

Here it is everyone. It took me a while to finish this. Believe it or not the hardest part of bending, for me at least is trying to come up with, or build enclosures. This time I made one out of cardboard. Looks pretty sharp doesn't it?

Yep, the enclosure is made of a stiff cardboard, and is painted with some pretty sweet spray paint. It is all shiny and nice. The knobs (4 out of 5) are off of a vintage television.

It has an 1/8" input, and output, and five distortion knobs. It is designed to modulate the input of other electronic instruments, but it can produce its own sounds, and quite well.

It takes one 9v battery.






















I think most of the sound samples work now. If they happen not to, just wait a while, or come back again, or if you're real desperate to hear em', just leave a comment, or email me, and I will give them to you. Also if you are annoyed by the lack of sound file dependability, and believe in what I am doing, give me some money.

On two, or three, I can't remember, I had to use the laptop mic for lack of sufficient cables and adapters, so the sound quality may be poor, and I think on one, perhaps the last one I forgot to amplify it in audacity, so you may need to turn it up.

When ever I record stuff, it is probably my first time to sit down with the instrument, so It is not as if I really know what I am doing with it. This means there still could be a whole lot of cool unfound (apparently unfound isn't a word) sounds in them. Also all patterns, and/or beats you hear are independently produced by the instrument. I'm just turning knobs:


This one is #15 working all by itself


This one is #14 being modulated by #15


This one is #13 being modulated by #15


This one is #15 being modulated by #13

I am working on it

#15
Originally uploaded by preposterousman

Here is the guts of it. Look for sounds tomorrow, and if I can get someone with a camera over here, maybe videos. (Obviously, it isn't in its case)

#14

#14
Originally uploaded by preposterousman

Here is number 14. This really is meant to be used with something which I have yet to make, but is in the works.

It has a pitch knob, witch pitches it up, and a distortion knob. For some reason I couldn't make the distortion knob do any cool stuff while I was recording in audacity, therefor the sound sample only demonstrates the pitch knob, but it really does some craziness through its own speaker, or amplified.

I fed this thing through number 13, and some really wacky sounds came out, and one day I may record that and post it.

Sound sample(just the pitch knob, everyone):

batteries

P1010075
Originally uploaded by preposterousman

In case I didn't say anything about it (I didn't) this thing takes five AA batteries in two packs. They were contained within the box, but removing the guts of the thing to change the batteries wears out the solder points, leading to wire breakage. No one should ever have to go through the terrible condition of wire breakage.

Workin'

P1010106
Originally uploaded by preposterousman

I was workin' today on that little red keyboard. You can also see the purple voice changer, which will become something really super awesome.

I will probably get some sound samples of the little red keyboard, or what is #14, tomorrow, but what I really need to do is get a video of me playing it through #13. It sounds totally awesome.

Look out y'all.

Good news everyone

Well, my very good friend has just bestowed upon me his very nice laptop, and I am grateful. He was able to procure another laptop through means I apparently am not at liberty to discuss.

I now am able to compute like never before, In my well lit living room, sitting in my relatively uncomfortable reclining chair.

In relevant news, I am waiting on parts to arrive so that I may begin work on my sk-1. Unfortunately I somehow forgot to order switches, so it looks like my work with the sk-1 will be somewhat basic. That is unless I can find some way to get radio shack to give me some free parts. Well I already have a way, the question is can I receive them in a timely manner.

13

13's got a sound sample.

Sorry

Sorry for the no video on #13, but my friend had to go to work today(he has a camera with a mic inside it!). I will probably post some sound samples for it on the morrow, or if it happens to be the morrow now (I have no clock)I will post them in many hours.

I need to get better at posting what I am working on, but I generally can only do one thing at a time. I can't even clean my office/workshop while I'm building something.

My buddy gave me a 500mhz comp, and it works something fierce, compared to the old 300mhz one. It is a dang shame I am so desperately poor.

#13

Want to play with this? Well you will need to buy it. If interested click here. Audio and video at the bottom.

I did it again everyone! Meet #13 (to the left). Of all the things I have made, I like this one most.

I still am no good at describing these things, but I'll give it my best shot.

It generates a simple tone, which is then controlled by eight potentiometers (knobs), and four toggle switches. Five of the potentiometers control pitch; three pitch it up, and two pitch it down.

It is necessary to have all those pots for pitch, as precise control comes into play when the tone is fed into the modulation circuit.

The tone generation circuit has three switches which control it. All three need to be on, but only one can affect the sound, that being the middle one, if my memory serves me. When switched off it deactivates the tone, but in a pleasant way.

It has a separate circuit that the tone is fed into to modulate the sound further. This circuit has one switch, top middle, to turn it on, and three pots, which add different distortion, and generally do insane things. I got five commas in that last sentence.

This really can produce a lot of sounds and I am super proud of it. It also has an input into the sound modulation circuit, and an out put, to your favorite computer, or amp, or tv. Both are rca.

It also features a 1" x 1" likeness of its maker above the top middle knob.

Audio. Its long cause I was just goofing on it, had no real plan, but it gets good nearer the end, so listen to the whole of it:



You really need to see a video, as that would demonstrate how you can control it like a theremin.

Video:

Look for this when I can convince my friend to bring his camera to my house, or I travel over to his. Worst case scenario, it will be next Sunday before I can get it done.

How to operate #11

Here is the manual for the assembly and operation of my eleventh instrument.

In the picture below, we can see the brackets on the back of the ca-110 to which the smaller keyboard will be attached















Here the ca-110 is preparing it self to recieve the smaller keyboard.















Unfortunately the camera didn't focus the way I hoped it would, but here are the bolts which will be placed inside the brackets, on the back of the ca-110.














When the ca-110 brackets are fitted over the smaller keyboards bolts, there will be no room to place your nut onto the smaller keyboards bolt. For that reason you can see I am holding the ca-110 up while I place, and turn the nut a few times.















Below is the hole which will receive the bolt for the control box. With the ca-110 held upside-down, it will be to the right of the smaller keyboard.















The bracket on the control box:















First connect the control box to the smaller keyboard; it should be obvious how to do so.















Place the bolt through the hole, form the back, so the nut will be tightened against the control box bracket.















Nextly, find the wire which ought to be protruding from the underside of the ca-110, and attach it to the connector closest to the yellow portion of the control box, like so:















Finally attach the voice changer to the only available connector. It will only go in one way.















Next I will explain the control box:















First the color scheme. The green controls belong to the smaller keyboard. The black belong to the voice changer, and the yellow controls the ca-110.

Knobs, such as greens 1a, correspond to a switch, so to use knob 1a you must flip switch 1.

The toggle switches are on/off/(on), which means one side of the switch is momentary. Flip any switch down and it will stay on, flip it up and it will momentarily stay on. This will not matter though, as no bends were attached to the up position of any switch, or no important bends that is.

The yellow controls are momentary push buttons, ad are not meant to be held down, though holding them down may garner results.

Now for what they actually do.

Green:
1:
Activates pitch and distortion bends which are controlled by the knobs 1a, and 1b simultaneously. Unfortunately these bends work best when not amplified, that is to say, when fed through the smaller keyboards speaker. The bends can be random, and two knobs are necessary to fine tune, and control them.
(If you don't want to amplify this bend, but still want to use the voice changer to add distortion, you could mic the smaller keyboard's speaker, and then feed the output of your computer/amp, into the voice changer, and out again)

2:
Distortion

3:
Activates a sustained tone. You can change the tone by pressing a key twice. Different bends from the voice box, and the smaller keyboard can be layered on top to create pretty interesting effects.

4:Distortion

Black:
Black controls correspond to the voice box, as stated earlier. The voice box itself has three settings, alien, monster, and amplify. The three black controls will work with the voice box set to any of its own settings.

1:
I believe this activates a tone, just as green 3 does.

2:
Pitch, to be controlled by knob 2a

3:
Distortion

Yellow:

1,2,3:
Random glitches. Use demo mode or select a beat, and then press a button quickly. They can easily crash the ca-110, but pressing repeatedly can bring it back to life. If not turn the ca-110 off, and then back on. Using these buttons will be trial and error.

Now to explain the wiring:


















The outputs, and inputs, are marked on the ca-110, and the smaller keyboard, but not on the voice box. The left side, as pictured above, has two inputs, 1, an 1/8" inch, and 2, a 1/4". The right side has two out puts, 3, 1/8", and 4, 1/4".

To use the keyboards with the voice box (anything that has an output which is, or can be adapted to, 1/8" or 1/4" can be used with the voice box; this includes guitar, and microphone.) simply plug the outputs from both into the inputs of the voice box, and then choose which voice box output you'd like to use, and plug that into your computer, or amp, or whatever.

I have been working on this project for a long time, and because of that I tend to worry about how good it is, but soon Dylan will share with us all how well it works.

Hello

I added a navigation at the top of the blog there. Hope it is useful to the one million visitors I get a day.

Soon I will be shipping off my custom project, #11, and I can't wait to hear how poor a job I did. Nah, I'm sure it won't be as bad as that, but I can't help but to worry. I took some pictures of the finished product in all sorts of positions, and states of disassembly, so I could write a manual of sorts, which I will probably post up here.

In other news I came across a casio sk-1 a couple of weeks ago, and have been waiting for a less busy time, and some cash, to bend it. Exciting times, y'all.

Here the sk-1 is, underneath the teddy bear.









A picture of #11, all finished up. I suppose my carpet wasn't the best background.

Robusto, #12

If you would like to trade some cash for this, click here.

I finished the technical aspects of this piece a while ago, but just recently put the finishing touches on it. It functions rather well, and is capable of a lot.

I am sort of at a loss on how to describe it. It is the first non toy(though I did make it from a toy) I have made. I used some on/off/momentary toggle switches. The bottom right switch turns it on, or plays a tone rather. The down position is the permanent one, and plays a high tone, while pushing it up will play the low tone momentarily.

The knobs all do strange things including some distortion, and pitch stuff. Its best to watch the video to see how it all works:



It has two momentary switches, one which acts just as the high tone toggle switch does, and the other activates some distortion, which is fed through a capacitor, so it sounds pretty weird.

It also has a body contact which adds rather random effects, though generally just pitch. If you can get the setting just right, it will even act as an antenna, and you can control pitch without even touching it, sort of like a theremin.

It has a speaker, and an 1/8" audio output, and it is all cased within a cigar box.