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 Forum index » DIY Hardware and Software
ELBO 2
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cyclic



Joined: Mar 15, 2015
Posts: 95
Location: hobart

PostPosted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 5:55 pm    Post subject: ELBO 2
Subject description: crazy analog noises On Bikes.
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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
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donpachi



Joined: Jul 16, 2009
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 2:07 am    Post subject:   Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Thank you, this is spectacular, rad, amazing! I shall think about doing something along these lines, too Cool
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blue hell
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 8:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Shocked

Nice!

Cool

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also .. could someone please turn down the thermostat a bit.
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ablablablablabla



Joined: Feb 09, 2016
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Location: shitcore

PostPosted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 6:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

well done!
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http://amok.wtf/qnm <- quantum noise machine
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cyclic



Joined: Mar 15, 2015
Posts: 95
Location: hobart

PostPosted: Wed Feb 17, 2016 4:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

geez. what gives?
350+ read the thread, and <70 watch the vid?

oh well...
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PHOBoS



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 17, 2016 8:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

EL BO wrote:
geez. what gives?
350+ read the thread, and <70 watch the vid?

a large portion of those are bots/crawlers Wink
very nice bikes! would probably be highly illegal here. Although i used to
have two headlights (which alternated) and a siren on my bike Laughing
(I also had a small front wheel so I could always go downhill)

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RingMad



Joined: Jan 15, 2011
Posts: 427
Location: Montreal, Canada
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 17, 2016 9:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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:.
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cyclic



Joined: Mar 15, 2015
Posts: 95
Location: hobart

PostPosted: Wed Feb 17, 2016 9:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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." Shocked

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
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RingMad



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PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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:.
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PHOBoS



Joined: Jan 14, 2010
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 8:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

RingMad wrote:
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".)
I enjoyed listening to all the tracks Very Happy
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cyclic



Joined: Mar 15, 2015
Posts: 95
Location: hobart

PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

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! Wink

Cheers

Lance
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