Learning music theory This is not really a tech post, but it’s related because music theory is kind of a technical language. Not quite programming language technical but maybe math technical. I’m doing a series of exercises I call 5-minute song drills. I pick a key and chords and write a song. Picking a key consists of me naming the…

Synth golf I’m revisiting some ideas I had around minimal audio synthesizer circuits. One of the simplest methods of creating an oscillator is using a schmidt trigger oscillator using a 74LS14 inverter. The trick here is to get the oscillation range correct with the RC values. I used a 100uF cap and a 10K potentiometer here. I like to test…

Cassette deck pitch control I got around to playing with the pitch control circuit on the cheap Amazon cassette recorders. The circuit uses a 500 ohm trimmer and an AN6650 IC speed controller. Most pots I have are in the 10k-500k range so I didn’t have anything close to 500 ohms. I decided it was probably a voltage divider anyway…

Universal power for synth gear I have been playing around with powering all my synths as you would a guitar pedal board by daisy chaining one power supply to all devices. One concern is that standardizing on one voltage would over power some devices and under power others. Also some devices take reverse polarity For daisy chaining I use a…

MIDI harmonica I’ve been thinking about a harmonica-style electronic instrument for a while. This thought grew out of my obsession with foot controllers in the past. I liked the idea of playing bass lines with my feet, which grew to loopers and controlling Ableton, the McMillen SoftStep, Pedal Fighter and other things. I started thinking about the harmonica idea after…

Finished cassette looper I got a basic cassette looper put together using the techniques I wrote about earlier. The basic premise revolves around separating the erase head from the engagement of the rest of the record electronics and making each of them momentary so that it’s easy to retry a few times until the loop is just right. The record…

12″ cassette tape loop In my recent posts I described some different loop length scenarios. I have made loops as short as 6″ that still are able to work with the stock location of the erase head. I just completed a 12″ loop that worked out pretty well by threading the tape over 2 extra small rollers up in the…

Tape loop experiment #1 Technically not the first experiment, but the first one that had an interesting result. I will write some more about previous things soon. Walkman https://www.amazon.com/Byron-Statics-Converter-Automatic-Headphone/dp/B07JWC2624 Modded for line input in place of the microphone. Quick note on the mic: this unit has an electret mic that seems to be biased with a 1v signal and is…

Walkman tape loopers I got a few cheap portable walkman-style tape recorders from Amazon recently with the thought that I would get into doing tape loops in my live sets. I didn’t really think through what I wanted to do but it seemed like plenty of people out there were splicing loop cassettes together and things worked out ok. I…

Why are patchbays confusing? I have a studio space that is shared with a few people. I have a patch bay set up. For some reason people unplug things from the back of the patch bay to set things up. Patch bays are confusing unless you think about it the right way. Ideally the studio is set up the way…