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.

Yesterday was the release of the first Made By Robot album Binary, it’s available for free download or name your price audiophile download from my bandcamp page or on soundcloud.  The tunes were created using a monome using a couple of custom max patches controlling Ableton, here is a preview….

Xyloduino from JP Sykes on Vimeo.

I’ll post some code and details of how it’s setup later tonight when I get home.

Spent a couple of minutes this afternoon playing around with my new SG90 servos I picked up on ebay for a steal. Initially I just wanted to get them talking with an arduino – which although initially looked easy, was a bit of a time vampire. Anyway, trick seems to be code like that attached, and ensuring you have the 5v unplugged until everything has updated and started (no idea why, but seems the loading voltage changes seems to freak the servo out.


int signalPin = 8; //servo signal pin

Some useful reference sites, but be aware that neither of these I could get the code to work, but probably more my issue than the code:

http://principialabs.com/arduino-serial-servo-control/
http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Labs/AnalogIn

Next step, aiming low, I want to get a button in max that will trigger the servo movement:

http://www.cycling74.com/forums/index.php?t=msg&goto=165203

Once I have that, I just need to replicate the action with the 6 other servos, work out how to attach hammers to them all, and then add some sort of step sequencer in max so I can have a 6 note analog drum kit.... that is until my xylophone arrives.

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.

At the moment I’m just playing around and seeing what comes out of my Monome’s, Ableton, BCR2000 experiments.

Also available on last.fm ( Made By Robot – Nothing Bees )

And you can download all the MP3’s zipped up nicely.

Monome™ opened up sales of 128’s to the general public. Last week they finished off supplying the long standing waiting list. Brian said they had 70, and he was pretty confident given the economic climate and the fact that they were going on sale 2 weeks after Christmas that sales wouldn’t be brisk and availability would be there if people wanted on.

At 1.00pm EST the “buy it now” link was published.

At 1.02pm they were sold out.

Amazing demand. I think it’s a strong sign of the clear difference between the DIY monomes and the ones produced by Monome Inc. That even though you can build a Monome clone for less than $300 with almost no waiting time, people will still fight to the death for an $800 piece of equipment that does the exact same thing.

I’m one of those people. In fact I have an arduinome, a Monome Kit, and I still managed to scramble to pick up a legit 128 from the originators. I just had to have one. It never felt right using the other two.

I will continue to use the other two, one is going to my daughter, the other I will use as a secondary controller. My spare 40h kit, I’m selling back to the community at cost, just so someone has a chance to use it.

I can not wait to get my 128. It’s the best Christmas present I could have wished for. That’s Brian and Kelli !!!!

Having ditched the idea of making a Knobome and instead resigning myself to the possibility I’ll just have a Viewnome, I’ve now decided that I’m back in the hunt. But I’m simplifying things.

My plan now, due to the lack of space and the huge complexity that seemed to be coming from the previous discussion, is to build almost an “etcha-sketch” type of interface.

In my current state, I have two sets of 8 wires, that come from the IDC headers. I know that shorting any wire from 1 set with any wire on the other set will fire a button press in the Serial.

So my plan is simple.

I will attach 1 set of the 8 wires, to the 8 legs of an 8 position rotary switch. I will attach the other set of 8 wires to the legs of another 8 position rotary switch. I will then take the single out from the two switches and join them together at a momentary switch.

So using this little box, you will turn the two switches to the coordinates you want, and press the momentary button. That will trigger a button press at that coordinate.

Yes I know it’s simple. That’s really the aim. I can see this being useful for things where pressing lots of buttons isn’t the important thing and where change a row’s value at a time might be useful – like sliders or triggers.

Very quick tune I put together last night, whilst playing with SevenUp Live and Ableton. It’s the OOTB drum samples, 3 or 4 melodizer loops that have been processed greatly in ableton and a couple of my own loops and one from State Shirt in the MLR part of 7up (oh and an old bird sample I had in some library I downloaded). Great deal of it was improvised at the time of recording, hence it seems a bit disjointed. Consider this my very first piece of Monome music (hell you could say this is the first piece of Music I’ve ever recorded).

Those who are curious a Terza Rima is:

“a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri.”

wikipedia