Another Mention / AudioLemon & Matrixsynth

I have been giving props to every online and offline entity that has helped us lately so I feel it's appropriate to mention a few other blogs that have given us some much needed traffic and exposure. You probably already know them but I really need to say thanks from John and I. Not only that, but like the many websites or people we mention, their content is always interesting and a great way to start your audio surf session.

AudioLemon - One of the first blogs to feature our cardboard synth, this blog has everything related to analog, synths and experimental music. One of their latest features is about Scanner, or Robin Rimbaud who uses a radio wave scanner as an instrument.

"The scanner picks-up mobile phone conversations, police/airport/hospital communications which which manipulates and mixes with his music live. He also uses recordings of electronic sounds particular to an area, such as the walk now signal/police siren, to make a sonic map of specific locations."

Read more about it here.

Matrixsynth - This blog is updated very frequently with all the latest and wierdest in the synth world. I eyed one of the latest articles about The Electronic Arts Foundation,

"The Electronic Arts Foundation was started by Tom Rhea, David VanKoevering, and Les Trubey (my father) to promote electronic music and preserve historical electronic musical instruments.

What follows is the text of an article written by Tom Rhea in 1976 for Contemporary Keyboard magazine. Reprints of this article were included in an info package with each synthesizer sold." Link

So-net.blog (In Japanese) - This was one of our first Asian blog mentions and we were so flattered to have our saw theremin featured. Arigatou gozaimasu! Link

Much appreciated. Sorry for the belated thanks.

- C

(Photo of Robert Rimbaud from AudioLemon)

Thank You / CubikMusik Music Blog

A fellow music blogger I met over at mog has generously written up a post about fotosis on his site cubikmusik. It's a great write up and a wonderful thing to read first thing in the morning, especially with a warm cup of Lyons ;-)


Very kind of you Cubik, 'go raibh maith agat'.

Link

- C

For Sale: Fotosis No.003

Good news everyone! We have been very busy the last few weeks working on commissioned work and as a result haven't posted anything on our Etsy shop in a few weeks, until now:-)

This instrument which we have labeled Fotosis No.003 was designed and built by Connie it was the first unit she has designed and built alone and I love it.

It is currently for sale on our Etsy shop.

In terms of functions it is identical to Fotosis No.002 only the housing and layout of the controls is different.

We are selling it for 300 US Dollars which the same price that we sold No.002 but translates into a bit less for us when you convert it into Euro. But due to the fact that we have upgraded our basic design recently and all future units will have extra features and different construction our next models will be priced a bit higher.

Fotosis No.003 is a three in one device. It contains a simple optically controlled synth, a separate noise maker circuit and a passive ring modulator all in one box. There are ten pots, two LDR's, seven toggle switches and two momentary switches all of which control the active circuits and allow you to turn on and off various effects or sections and bypass parts of the device.

This instrument is housed in a thin sided wooden box also purpose built. Most of the wiring is point to point (in a vintage style) to reduce solder board complexity. The instrument is coated in an orange tolex like material and has steel corners and aluminum trimming around the control panel, there is also a leather carry handle on the front.

The sounds produces vary from weird drones to little sequences of chirps, bleeps and beeps and also full on noise.

There are three sections, two oscillators and a ring modulator each oscillator can be used on its own or can be mixed using the ring modulator.

It can be used as an instrument on its own or as an effect that can modulate the sound of other line level devices that are fed into the input of the ring mod.

There is a video of the instrument in action at...





It measures 36 cm long by 22.5 cm wide, the control panel is sloped and is 10 cm at its highest point Fotosis No.003 weighs about 900g.

Features:

Firstly there is a passive ring modulator comprised of three jacks, input, suppressed carrier frequency input and output. There is also a bypass toggle that switches the input straight to the output. But as with most passive ring modulators the inputs and outputs are interchangeable.

Optically controlled LFO producing a pure sine wave, with frequency switching function, low and high pitch switch and a toggle that switches off the optical function allows you to control the oscillator using two pots for when you want very slow non audible sine waves used mainly with the ring modulator as the carrier signal. Just above the main controls there is a volume knob. You can interact with this sections using the two LDR's mounted on the face of the control panel using you hands or other light sources, our favorite is to use flashing bike lights, strobes or torches for weird whining tones and intense beeps.

Next is a strange square wave noise generator that consists of two oscillators interacting with one another. Screaming high pitched tones can be produced as can low fuzz like sounds when the pots are at their max or min positions, in between you find effects similar to a simple two tone sequencer changing relative to one of the pots. There is also a low pass filter and volume control.

We have been playing around with it for a while now and have still have not discovered all the possible sounds you can create. It would be perfect for anyone into Circuit Bending, dronescape music, performance art, noise art installations, DJ's or just musicians who want a device on the side that they can use as a noise wig out machine. It is capable of plenty more subtle sci-fi effects and also when effect units like delay, phase, fuzz or pitch modulating pedals are connected between the device and an amplifier the number of potential sounds you can produce grows.

None of the controls are labeled because they are often quite difficult to describe, but we will be suppling a drawing of the control panel with descriptions relating to the function of each knob and switch to get you started.

Here is a basic run down of the controls:

Oscillator 1 Top of control panel:

High / low pitch toggle switch.
LDR switching on / off.
LDR / potentiometer select.
Kill switch.
Momentary bypass kill switch.
Volume knob.
Sine wave intensity knob.

Oscillator 2 Bottom of control panel:

High / low pitch toggle switch.
Low pass filter setting knob.
Volume knob.
Square wave 1 frequency knob.
Square wave 2 pulse speed knob.
Square wave 1 Square wave 2 mix knob.
Kill switch.
Momentary bypass kill switch.
Oscillator 1 LDR's.

Centre of control panel:

Ring mod. bypass toggle.
Oscillator 1 momentary bypass of kill switch.
Oscillator 2 momentary bypass of kill switch.
Oscillator 1 LDR's.
Power indicator LED.

Rear of unit:

Oscillator 1 1/4" output mono.
Oscillator 2 1/4" output mono.
Ring mod. input 1/4" mono.
Ring mod. carrier input 1/4" mono.
Ring mod. output 1/4" mono.
Power on toggle.
9v dc jack.

We Will All Miss You

"I've crossed the parking lot of mediocrity, walked through the lobby of the absurd and entered the theater of the ridiculous...Remember: get into the living of this life, get involved and don't forget to write it all down somewhere. Bob's your uncle..."

Miss you, we all do.

RIP October, 2007

- C

Fotosis Featured on Lijit.Com / The Power of People

A big thank you to the lijit.com folks who have featured us on their homepage (we are in rotation with some other interesting sites when you refresh the page).

I found the Lijit search tool when we first launched this blog and I really liked the idea of using our own blog and extensive blogroll as a means for people to find recommended and related searches; and being a part of a friendly network. Lijit actually provides a personalised service useful to our readers and others with similar interests - something that unfortunately gets overshadowed by the abundance of web 2.0 products launched over the past couple of years. I actually opted for Lijit over the Google search.

"Using the power of people, their content, and their connections, Lijit enhances the way your readers search for and discover information on the internet. You serve as a filter for all of the results your readers could possibly receive, ensuring they only receive the most relevant results from the source they trust…YOU."

I like that.

You can learn more about Lijit here. Thanks again for the feature.

- C

P.S. We are working hard, more fotosis creations to come.

DIY Pizza Box Scratchtable via Wired/Instructables

I am a big lover of cardboard made items. This converted pizza box scratchtable is so easy and quirky.

"It turns out that if you cut a little square hole in one side of a pizza box and a circle out of the other side, then tape an optical mouse so that its sensor faces the hole, you can pin the cutout circle over the hole facing the optical sensor and use the resulting contraption to scratch digital music using DJ software."

The how-to is originally from the great Instructables site and the blurb is from the Listening Post, Wired blogs.

Click here for the full instructions and video.

Can't wait to try this!

- C

Pure Data: Build Your Own Virtual Synth

I'm probably way behind the curve with this as this software has been around for years but I've only just started playing around with it the last few weeks and am feeling very proud of my first creation (synth / multi effects processor). The software is called Pure Data, there is a wikipedia site here which will tell you all the background you need to know regarding it.

It is free to download from the Pure Data site and is supported on Windows, Linux, Mac some OS's I've never heard of and there's even a version that works on PDA's.

Pd is described as "a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing".


Unless you are fairly computer literate or a programmer don't expect to get much out of it straight away. The best approach is to download a few simple patches created by others and play around with them for a while to get a feel for the GUI and then explore the examples that can be found in the help browser. Start by building an oscillator [osc~] then adding volume control [*~] and reverb using the freeverb [freeverb~] object. Using pd you can build virtually any sound or effect you can imagine there is even a [moog~] object that emulates a Moog resonance filter.

Pd can also be controlled using external midi devices and firmware can be downloaded which allows you to control pure data with the arduino micro-controller board so potentially you could build a reconfigurable personalized music machine with your computer creating the sounds.

The latest version called pd - extended 0.40.2 contains many of the extensions you need to make the patches sometimes called abstraction that you find mentioned on the web work.

There is also a very good forum called pure data hurleur, this community shares and develops objects and extensions for pd and offers advice and feedback to people getting started.

It is possible to play an instrument through your diy virtual effects processor using the adc object [adc~] if you have a line in on your computer or if you have one of those audio to USB converter thingys.

Cycling 74 the creators of Max/MSP which is a more evolved and expensive version of pure data have a free tool called Soundflower that allows you to connect audio packages together (Like jack but easier to use) so for example you could use Soundflower to record pd using Audacity.


Here you will find a cute little synth to play around with just download and install pd and open the file.

I haven't recorded anything yet but as soon as I do ill post it on this site.

Now if someone could just tell me how to emulate distortion of fuzz that would be great.

-J

Deviant Synth: For all your Synth Oddities

Again something from the musicthing blog. A new synth orientated site that purports to only post about totally out their electronic oddities. Their manifesto states no "links to fansites for Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, Can, Tangerine Dream, Ultravox, Gay Fairy Twinkle, or any other hideous 70s or 80s funny-haircut nostalgia keyboard act.... All tech must be ODD".

The site is called Deviant Synth and I will be checking it often thats for sure. The site creator says they are looking for contributors and anyone interested with a wordpress account can add content to the site.

-J

The Genius Of Moo Cards / Affordable and Cool

A quick post to say that the geniuses behind Moo Cards really tapped into something special.

Their premise is the production of cost effective, high quality minicards, stickers and notecards that are tiny (28mm x 70mm for minicards). Why is this clever? Well, the cards have found a cult following for their size, and for creative people, have become the object of inventive jewelery, photography projects and gifting - something we love and practice regularly.

Our second batch consisted of the standard order of 100 minicards. You can use a different picture or photo for each card if you wish (yes, all 100 of them if you want) and there is also a great selection of artist designs to choose from too. You can use pics you find online and/or you can upload from your own photo collection like we did. The flexibility and quantity make Moo alot more fun and inexpensive, it's a very good business model and a great find for artists or individuals wanting to promote something differently and offline.

We are leaving our minicards in our local haunts whenever we can afford to go out and passing them out to our friends. People really love them, they are eye catching, collectible and memorable. (We've also heard that the cards come in handy for the occasional, um, cigarette filter...)

Quite a few people are interested in buying them now too so maybe we can start a new trend in Lyon!

Check out the Moo Card site here. Their popular Flickr site is here.

- C

Yuri Landman: Experimental Luthier

I came across Yuri Landman several months ago while doing some online research into alternative guitar construction. At the time I thought information on Yuri was limited to a wiki entry on him as I somehow missed his official website hypercustom. So I was thrilled today to find a link on the musicthing blog to a pitchfork article all about this very interesting artist. The article describes the reasoning behind many of his guitars features and the logic he has applied to his instruments tuning and the materials he likes to use.

He has recently been creating unique guitars for a number of bands including one of my all time favorite groups Sonic Youth.

His guitars look amazing, I cant wait to hear the sounds these wonderful instruments produce. I love to read about other people exploring new possibilities in the realm of electro acoustic music as it makes me feel more positive about my own experiments in this area.

-J

"Electronic artists find inspiration in vintage gear" via Reuters/Yahoo! News

Well, this is something I didn't expect to see on a mainstream news feed. The Reuters/Billboard article states the obvious but it does express enough generally to capture at least the love of those passionate about analog.

"People are realizing what's missing from the sounds they're getting out of software," Phil Moffa of production/DJ outfit Vinyl Life says. "They're conscious of how everything is sounding the same, and digital replication is the same every time. The magic of analog is it's never the same, depending on the weather, where you are in the world, the electricity supply." Great last sentence.

"Moffa dumped all his digital sounds for good in 2005, going fully analog for Vinyl Life's "Flashlight" (Ultra) and each release since. Simian's "Attack" contains no samples, and was entirely made with hunks of such audio antiquity as the Korg MS-20 (1978), ARP Instruments ARP 2600 (1971) and Roland Juno-60 (1982)."

Agree with the experimental aspects and dynamic nature of analog sound, but I think every medium has its' flavour. Nothing wrong with mixing it up, nevermind the hefty price in collecting. Or better, you can always make em like we do!

The full article can be found here. Phil Moffa's site for Vinyl Life is here.

And as a bonus, here is another find from CDM on caring for your vintage synths 'How Healthy Are Your Vintage Synths?' by James Grahame. I've been wanting to link to it for ages so this post seems fitting for those of you lucky enough to have vintage gear to care for!

On another note, we are still in the building phase right now. We have more to come, thanks for your patience.

- C

(Picture from Reuters)