I seen to be suffering from project overload, as I’m reaching a point where I’m not finishing anything and yet I have a million things going on. Currently on my active projects list (active as in things with hot solder on them):

• PAiA Fat Man Synth – needs soldering finished
• Where’s the party At 8 Bit Sampler – needs finishing and an enclosure finding
• Casio SK-1 Midi Conversion needs desolder and resolder in reverse (silly error)
• Penguins – next album, needs finishing (mainly mix and remaster)
• Touch Screens (I have a PSP sized one with a 8×8 matrix, and a ds one with a 8×16) still prototyping
• Midi Thumb Piano – still prototyping (this one I love the sound of)
• Build housing for Xyloduino
• Resolder my arduinome (currently sat in pieces)
• Cubeduino – cube shaped arduinome (still on drawing board, but I have all the bits)
• Circuit Bend my TR-626 and 505
• Open and Clean my Moog Prodigy and install the midi retrofit I have
• Start work on the Seven Seas DVD project
• learn all the goodness that comes in Komplete 5 which should arrive at the weekend

I then have dozens of note pad sketches of things I haven’t even started. I really do need to be independantly wealthy, or super crazy focused.

Been a while since my last update, but I’ve not vanished off the planet just been busy with some “life” things and experimenting with an influx of new toys.

Recently added a Roland Sh-32, tr-505 & tr-626 an Alesis Micron and a Moog Rogue to the collection of musical junk.

The sh-32 is a knob twiddling synth I plan to use as a backup to Ableton and for some support roles.

The tr-505 I’m planning on circuit bending, although I’m sorry to say I’m not a huge fan of how most circuit bent instruments sound, (the whole 8-bit scene still confuse me). But I’ve found some more subtle tweaks I can make to just make the drum sounds more interesting and less chaotic and noisy.

The tr-626 I got silly cheap, so I don’t have a reason to have it other than I’m a gadget collecting freak.

Micron was a present from my wife, and I love it already, amazing analog synth, capable of so much, I’m going to use it extensively with ableton and retrowave (on osx). It needs some serious time investment.

The moog was the cheapest I could find, that still seemed to have a genuine sound. It sounds better than I imagined. I guess it’s age and condition have resulted in something that sounds amazing. Like an old leather faced tuscan farmer, their faces are not pretty, but they have such amazing character. My plan is to add midi in with midiJack, and then use it as a character bassline generator. While open to add the midi, I’ll give it a good clean.

Oh and I almost forgot I picked up an 80’s icon the Casio Sk-1. Which again, I had no reason to get, but the price meant I couldn’t say no. Planning on adding midi in to that as well using the highly liquid system.

Add to all of these the fact that I still have a sx-150 I’m supposed to be midi retrofitting, all the bits for another arduinome, a xlyoduino that is 95% finished (just needs the stands), and a set of 4 joysticks I need to convert into a midi input devices. Busy busy busy.

I also need to move my office into the basement, but that means adding a new wall and 30 power outlets. More news on all these projects as soon as I have some. I also really need to get back into the music making habit – since this is what it’s all about.

RPM Challenge

10 songs in the month of February, I’m 2 songs in with 3 days down, so I’m ahead of schedule.  The album will be called Binary, and is a mish mash of stuff (so far at least).

Ableton to Max to Arduino to SX-150

I’m working on finding a way to make my sx-150 a black box synth.  The aim is to end up with a box with only a phono out and usb in, no knobs, buttons, or input.  First step will be trying out Mrbooks arduino control setup for the sx-150, the second step will be using a few digital potemtiometers to allow the arduino to control, what used to be controlled by the rotary knobs.  Then all I’ll need is a little max patch with those controls and I’ll have a digitally controllable analog sythn, for less than $50.

Ableton Midi clock to Max to Arduino to Music Box

This ones a little more adventurous.  The aim is to get a punch card music box, with a motor controlling the turning of the handle, this motor would be variable speeds to match a midi clock from abelton.  The music box will use something like guitar pickups to get the sound back into the computer for tweaking.  This project is largely influenced by Mapmaps awesome music box setup – just with an additional twist.

Unsped Shield Parts.

LED Matrix from Sparkfun, and 8 pots.

The idea is to use the OOTB unsped shield. Wire the LED side of it to the matrix, which I am assuming should be fairly straight forward. Then find a way to wire the 8 pots so that each one controls a row with the full left to full right turn being equal to columns 1 – 8.

One issue I’ve already thought of is the serial is expecting button press and button releases, the pots can only register a single value, unless I can find some way to “fire” an on/off signal, this might need a tweak to the serial (which may or may not (I expect may) be a show stopped for this project).

I have finally decided that sitting on the edge of the Monome world watching really isn’t going to get me anywhere. I’ve been lurking on the main forums, reading blog posts and watching video snippets of people playing with these intriguing devices for over a year. Enough is enough.

After some recent research and discovery that I probably won’t find an authentic new Monome of any size until well into 2009. I attempted to look on ebay and the monome trade forums. After seeing the base 40h model go for $1000 (well over twice) and 256 models on there at buy it now price of $2,500-3,000 it all looked very bleak.

So I’ve decided to build my own.

This blog will document my steps, the process and hopefully the wonderful outcome at the end.