Geometric Synth Idea

[Inventor]

Just now I was playing around with the soft synth that I coded in ChucK. I hooked up 10 oscillators in a circular geometric mesh and it made the expected woo-woo kind of sounds, warbling and wailing chaotically. Then it suddenly occurred to me that if I had built each oscillator on a separate little circuit board, kind of elongated in shape, I could hook them up into geometric patterns physically. There would be no need for a confusing jumble of patch cords, just short little jumper wires to make the connections.

And now that I'm writing this post, I'm imagining that each potentiometer would be one of those tiny little single-turn dealies that fit into a breadboard, each oscillator could be powered with a little solar cell to eliminate power connections, and that many other simplified synth modules could be constructed the same way.

I also just realized that with little modules like that one could create three-dimensional structures that made cool sounds. Oh, and LED modules would be a must-have as well, and speaker modules with little LM386 drivers, and microphone modules. My thoughts run amok!

This is sort of the dual, or inverse form of the traditional hardware synth because the modules can be moved and arranged as desired instead of being fixed in place. Surely this idea is nothing new, just new to me - have you seen such a thing before? I think some electronic hobby kits are made that way, but this would specifically be a synthesizer.

It seems kind of interesting at the moment, maybe I'll create something like that someday. It definitely goes on my wannado list for the future. What do you think?

[blue hell]

[bachus]

[Inventor]

[Inventor]

The connections could be made with clear tubing that fits over the standard LED package, you know - the bullet-shaped LEDs. The right sized tubing would fit over them and might carry enough light to bend corners and reach a few inches to the next module.

Each module has its own power supply, so each module can run at any voltage, there is no need for a common supply voltage.

The little simplified circuits could be made in any shape and size depending on their design, adding to the variety and aesthetic appeal. The circuits would tile up on a PCB by the dozens or even hundreds, so they could be sold super cheap, like a few dollars each. This would bring hardware synthesis to a wider audience and schools and parents might buy kits of the modules. It would be nothing to have a few hundred modules in your collection.

The optical connections could be done as pulse-width modulated digital values, that way the attenuation of the light would not affect the analog value. Also it would facilitate both digital and analog connections. Each module could have its own frequency as long as it was higher than a decent sampling rate of 44100 Hz. The only difference between a digital signal and an analog signal is that the receiver of an analog signal would low-pass filter the input to create on-board analog.

For audio output we could use those tiny little speakers that DigiKey sells, i've bought some of those before. They are high impedance so they wouldn't use much power.

The optical receiver could be a cadmium sulfide cell (not sure how fast they are) or a phototransistor.

One possible module would be a PIC chip with analog and digital inputs plus the mixed signal LED outputs. If the PIC were in a socket or had in-circuit programming, then a generic module could perform many different functions. The only problem with that is you need a Windows machine to run the PIC software... Perhaps there is a Mac/Linux solution as well.

I think, therefore I ramble...

[ian-s]

Spooky

see

nice idea.

[bachus]

Dreaming into instrument

instrument into art

art into life
life into dreaming

[Inventor]

That *IS* spooky! But then again, it's just the natural process of creation in action. When it's time for something to happen, it seems to get whispered into the ears of many people around the globe at more or less the same time.

[bachus]

[blue hell]

There is also :



(audio cubes)

which is totally different (as they are control devices really for synths), but maybe inspirational.

edit: I was wrong, it does do audio as well.

[Inventor]

[Inventor]

The audio cubes are interesting. They just shine their LEDs out through diffuse plastic, but did you know you can put a lens on a regular LED and create a narrow beam? I experimented with this once. All you need to make a beam is a point source and a lens, it doesn't have to be a laser. Of course you need to get down really close and small to make a laser pointer but a regular LED can make a beam say half an inch in diameter, and it will shine from your table top up to the ceiling just fine if it's dark. That is another possibility, using either laser pointers or LEDs with lenses to "beam" the output signals from one module to another. Gee, I better start taking notes!

In fact, I still have dozens of laser pointers laying around. If I mounted them on solid wire, the wire would be somewhat bendable and positionable. Also, the receiving device could receive from some angular field so there would be some flexibility there... interesting!

[elektro80]

I guess using something like the Ardour would work just fine, but wouldn´t it rather be more interesting to use symbolic objects and figure out a way to detect and route meaningful control signals by the way of the objects and then do the sound engine bit somewhere else? That way you could say build binary counters, sequencers and interactive fm synths using the symbolic objects ... and leave the sound generation to something else somewhere else?

[blue hell]

[Inventor]

[Inventor]

[Inventor]

After sleeping on it and thinking a little, I have decided to add this project to my projects list. I'm not sure where to start, but I do have some questions for you. Specifically, is there a PIC-like software that runs cross-platform? Also, do you know of some good free PCB CAD software for the Mac that is easy to learn?

I've decided first off that all three ways of routing signal: electrical wires, optical tubes, and audio tubes are good, but for cost and simplicity reasons I will make the first modules with electrical routing. This will be done with solid 24 or 22 gague wire or similar so that the wire is bendable to create 3D structures that support theselves.

Power will be routed with wires and there will be a +/- 9 V battery power unit with electrolytic and ceramic bypassing and an on/off switch plus perhaps an LED on/off indicator.

The first module that makes sense to me to create is a PIC-like module that can be a sine osc, a delay line, a filter, or whatever you can make with that chip. This way I only need to make one type of circuit board and I can use many of them in many ways. There will be one or two pots and a button or two on the module, plus an output or two and an input or two.

So, can you answer my two questions? Thanks in advance!

[Inventor]

It's been about a week since the concept occurred, so here's an update.

My latest design concept is to make a teeny little board not much bigger than a quarter. It will have an 8-dip PIC in a socket, a 0.1uF decoupling cap, and two potentiometers The circuit will have two inputs for signal, two for power daisychain, and two for outputs. These will be some type of easy-to-use connector that I haven't figured out yet.

The signals will be PWM or similar, where the analog information is encoded as digital bitstreams. This one module will perform many functions including 2 x oscillator with sine, square, and triangle waveforms plus modulation inputs,
2x of echo, reverb, and filters, etc.

There will be some auxiliary modules including a power module, a speaker module, and LED modules. Then there will be specialty modules such as a Boolean sequencer circuit with lots of DIP switches on it, or an oscilloscope / FFT module for advanced users (more cost there).

Rather than do a custom circuit board, I will build them up on little cutout sections of protoboard at first, for testing purposes.

That's my update for now, and a sketch of the product, comments?

[BananaPlug]

[Inventor]

[Nth L0gik]

interesting idea..... though would the virtual geometric
shapes have their own predetermined opcodes, and then
one could assemble/request other modules to accompany
the shapes to calculate the resulting sequence/texture ?
or would there be some kind of math to manual configure to
build it up to completion ?

2 ideas to consider alternately:

syd 1.07
quack sound studio 4.1

PZ!!

[Inventor]