Author |
Message |
cyclic
Joined: Mar 15, 2015 Posts: 95 Location: hobart
|
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 5:55 pm Post subject:
ELBO 2 Subject description: crazy analog noises On Bikes. |
|
|
Hi diyers,
I don't know if this is the right sub-forum for this or not, as its more about what I've done than a question for the community...
Anyway, I'm more of a reader than poster here, but thought I'd share this back to the community.
As well as a synth diy kinda guy, I'm also a bike-fixin' kinda guy too and am quite involved with the local bike co-op (www.hobartbikekitchen.org) I have melded my two interests together with my own home made synths and a bunch of my HBK mates...
Last week we had our second run of the ELBO (The Electric Light Bike Orchestra) at a locally organised event "Ride The Night" down here in Hobart, Tasmania. It went pretty well really.
https://youtu.be/WmXSnco82GE
In essence, we are analog noise on bikes. One day we might get enough time to practice together to start making something more closely resembling music... Maybe ELBO 4 or 5!
Each rider has their own bar-mounted mini synth which has a light-dependant resistor mounted on a 'wand' (aka a piece of garden irrigation hose.) Mostly they are set up in a voltage divider (with a trimpot on the other half to allow for light/dark sensitivity settings)
The rider is then able to 'play' the bike-lights of the surrounding riders, so that the sounds we generate are modifed depending on the type of lights which the 'audience' is running.
For those who haven't been near a bike in years, bike lights come in two flavours: Fixed, and flashing. This means we get two flavours of CV: A fixed light source basically generates a CV based on proximity to the LDR, while a flashing light is effectively an LFO, and then the LDR proximity sets its depth.
Since this is the diy section, this is what I have made:
I run my own mini modular with a 1/2 dozen or so home made modules. In the video it went something like
Baby 10 sequencer
-> Barton Musical Circuits Simple CV Quantizer
-> multiple
1 -> Thomas Henry 555-VCO -> Yusynth Minimoog clone input
2 -> CV mixer so I can muck about with which CV I am using at any time
-> old MFOS variable skew LFO (I love it!)
-> the BMC Simple CV quantizer output
-> my LDR-Wand to harvest the lights around me
Paul has a Korg Monotron with my homemade patch board. He can plug his wand into 'gate', 'frequency' or 'cutoff' and these also have internal normaling via switches.
Dan has a Barton Musical Circuits Analog Drum, also going through a cheap E-Bay PT-2399 delay module.
His wand has two options: in 'normal' or 'trigger' mode each light flash just triggers the drum module. This can either be a flashing light (generally a very fast beat) or just a rapid waving of the light i front of a fixed light source.
in 'drone' mode I have skipped the initial triger circuit and the wand is wired directly into the timing cap of the decay circuit, so brightness effectively equals volume (ie LDR -> CV in of the VCA)
Mark has a Barton Musical Circuits FM Drum (no delay I'm afraid) which is setup the same as Dan's
Matt has a Weird Sound Generator, with the LDR simply paralleled with the filter cutoff frequency.
Max has a wand of my own creation, which is the only one which survived the tumult of ELBO 1. This is completely self-contained on the wand itself (I was initially aiming for extremely simple setups with ELBO 1 but have now decided it was too hard to make such simple circuits do what I wanted) This is the sooper-simple single opamp VCO (from a collection of circuits by Nicholas) followed by a mashed up single-op amp filter based on the WSG/other super simple VCF by Tim Escobedo etc. The LDR affects cut-off frequency and there is a thumb-pot for frequency control, between subaudible to about low-midrange (maybe 10-200hz).
It is fun. Most of the other riders appreciated ourweirdness. Hopefully next time was can actually practice together a bit more!
cheers
Lance |
|
Back to top
|
|
|
donpachi
Joined: Jul 16, 2009 Posts: 81 Location: Marburg
Audio files: 2
|
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 2:07 am Post subject:
|
|
|
Thank you, this is spectacular, rad, amazing! I shall think about doing something along these lines, too |
|
Back to top
|
|
|
blue hell
Site Admin
Joined: Apr 03, 2004 Posts: 24079 Location: The Netherlands, Enschede
Audio files: 278
G2 patch files: 320
|
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 8:39 am Post subject:
|
|
|
Nice!
_________________ Jan
also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
|
|
Back to top
|
|
|
ablablablablabla
Joined: Feb 09, 2016 Posts: 7 Location: shitcore
|
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 6:02 pm Post subject:
|
|
|
well done! _________________ http://amok.wtf/qnm <- quantum noise machine
B16BCA94D0F413FA2272E713A4CEC06C59D9C5076512DB065C40CBBAE6868803D12C1A820929 (tox id) |
|
Back to top
|
|
|
cyclic
Joined: Mar 15, 2015 Posts: 95 Location: hobart
|
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2016 4:56 am Post subject:
|
|
|
geez. what gives?
350+ read the thread, and <70 watch the vid?
oh well... |
|
Back to top
|
|
|
PHOBoS
Joined: Jan 14, 2010 Posts: 5591 Location: Moon Base
Audio files: 705
|
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2016 8:55 am Post subject:
|
|
|
EL BO wrote: | geez. what gives?
350+ read the thread, and <70 watch the vid? |
a large portion of those are bots/crawlers
very nice bikes! would probably be highly illegal here. Although i used to
have two headlights (which alternated) and a siren on my bike
(I also had a small front wheel so I could always go downhill) _________________ "My perf, it's full of holes!"
http://phobos.000space.com/
SoundCloud BandCamp MixCloud Stickney Synthyards Captain Collider Twitch YouTube |
|
Back to top
|
|
|
RingMad
Joined: Jan 15, 2011 Posts: 427 Location: Montreal, Canada
Audio files: 4
|
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2016 9:24 am Post subject:
|
|
|
Haha, pretty cool!
As PHOBoS mentioned, in some places it might be problematic with the police, but at least you are all very well illuminated.
Years ago I recorded a piece with a contact mic on the frame, running through a delay pedal which I'd tweak whilst riding and then into a cassette recorder.
One could also use the same method as those bike computers/speedometers with the magnet and sensor... thus turning the speed of the wheel into some control value... then again, an LDR watching a light on the spokes would achieve the same thing I guess... sorry, thinking aloud...
Anyway, looks like fun! Continued success to ELBO!
.:James:. |
|
Back to top
|
|
|
cyclic
Joined: Mar 15, 2015 Posts: 95 Location: hobart
|
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2016 9:49 pm Post subject:
|
|
|
Quote: | Haha, pretty cool!
As PHOBoS mentioned, in some places it might be problematic with the police, but at least you are all very well illuminated.
|
well, is was a big ride and the cops were there watching on like everyone else! At one point we stopped 50m from them so I at least turned off my noise and lights then. What was more of a worry was our practice session the night before the ride when they rocked up on us in the carpark of the local brewery with the call out that "there was a loud bang and guys running around with lots of lights."
Quote: |
Years ago I recorded a piece with a contact mic on the frame, running through a delay pedal which I'd tweak whilst riding and then into a cassette recorder.
|
yes, this is one of my plans actually. what type of contact mike did you use? I got 3 really cheap guitar bridge mics because they are a good shape to put on a bike frame, but I think I need to build a preamp to get anything useful out of them.
Where abouts on the frame did you get the best sounds?
Quote: |
One could also use the same method as those bike computers/speedometers with the magnet and sensor... thus turning the speed of the wheel into some control value... then again, an LDR watching a light on the spokes would achieve the same thing I guess... sorry, thinking aloud...
.:James:. |
yep I've already done this thinking too.
thoughts at present also include:
- one of our guys is investigating a hacked voice recorder toy so we can sample sounds of the night. I think we put a mic on the end of a stick so we can sample some clickety clack bike sounds and then loop and distort etc
- yep, bike speedo = trigger source.
- also, a bike light dynamo = sinusoidal oscillator.
slow walk speed = LFO, slow-medium riding speed = bass - mid audio rate. Many many possibilities here for me to play with, especially considering a dynamo puts out a very convenient 6vAC. I've actually just plugged one straight into my modular and rolled it along my arm with good effect...
- im also going to look into making a better frequency split colour organ for the LED strips next time, so we can be more light-sound integrated.
- in the longer term, I'm considering how we might bluetooth or ad-hoc network ourselves together via our phones so we can be a more coordinated noise beast.
cheers
Lance |
|
Back to top
|
|
|
RingMad
Joined: Jan 15, 2011 Posts: 427 Location: Montreal, Canada
Audio files: 4
|
Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:04 am Post subject:
|
|
|
EL BO wrote: | what type of contact mike did you use? I got 3 really cheap guitar bridge mics because they are a good shape to put on a bike frame, but I think I need to build a preamp to get anything useful out of them.
Where abouts on the frame did you get the best sounds? |
Oh boy... let me think... I did that about 17 years ago, when I first started doing "experimental" music. I believe I used a German "Shadow" brand contact mic that someone gave me. I can't remember if I had it partway down one of the front forks, or partway down a seat stay.
I'm a bit hesitant to link this, since I now find it a bit embarrassing with my naïve overuse of delay, but a much abridged version of my bike piece can still be heard online here: http://notype.com/drones/cat.e/nt_032/ . (Click on cover image to reveal tracks... it's track 4, "Spincycle".)
The last few seconds are when I dismounted and put the bike on the kickstand, and I always loved the particular filtering of the ambient sound. I tried a few times to duplicate it, to no avail.
EL BO wrote: | - also, a bike light dynamo = sinusoidal oscillator. |
Ah yes of course! That would be nice to use.
.:James:. |
|
Back to top
|
|
|
PHOBoS
Joined: Jan 14, 2010 Posts: 5591 Location: Moon Base
Audio files: 705
|
|
Back to top
|
|
|
cyclic
Joined: Mar 15, 2015 Posts: 95 Location: hobart
|
Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:02 pm Post subject:
|
|
|
Yep, I only got to listen to the bike related track, but that is certainly exactly the kind of naive delay overuse which we tend to hit!
Cheers
Lance |
|
Back to top
|
|
|
|