It's Sat afternoon and we are feeling pretty good ...having each just consumed half a Kangaroo and two bottles of red wine.
The wine on the right is a 1990 vintage port from Steins in Mudgee NSW. If I remember correctly, they have a fabulous motorcycle museum there.
And on the left is a Tollana Cabernet Sav from 1995. (Eden Valley, South Australia). Both excellent wines !!!
In such a frame of mind there seems nothing better to do than hack a perfectly good Mutable Instruments
module.
Paul (Cobramatic) tells me it's a easy one and he won't even hold me responsible if I mess it up :-)
He must have really liked the wine I served.
Anyway, it turned out to be dead simple and I highly recommend this if you own a MI Grids.
There are 3 points on the back of the module: Random Gate, Clock & Ground.
Solder a wire to each and the other ends to two jacks.
The ground of course is shared by both jacks.
Deciding where to mount the jacks is a bit tricky ... Lots of SMD components .... decided to place them
between the bottom two jacks on the left.
There you go!
We now have two new outputs ... for clock and random gate. Very useful.
..
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more Euro DIY builds click here: http://djjondent.blogspot.com.au/2017/12/diy-index.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was very fortunate to attend the premier of the "CellF Project" last weekend (Sat/Sunday 3 Oct, 2015).
CellF is pronounced "Self". This was held on the campus of the University of Western Australia in collaboration with LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore.
This is cybernetics applied to synthesizers & electronic music.
Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics in 1948 as "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine"
This pic was taken on the Sat arvo during the setting up phase.
Guy Ben-Ary, Nathan Thompson, Andrew Fitch (NLC), Darren Moore (drums & patching the synth), Douglas Bakkum, Stuart Hodgetts, Mike Edel. Nathan's brother Mark Thompson, welded this together.
The organic design of the CellF synth is care of Nathan Thompson.... a bit like the tail of an insect or scorpion. I think it reminds me of a old school gramophone or a cochlear implant. And notice how the end loops back. ... alluding to feedback loops which are part of the performance.
This is a printed sculpture of the CellF Synth.
The very top of the central square tower houses the live human neurons. It's an incubator which maintains a constant temperature & atmosphere The cells look like this:
The neurons are grown on an array of 60 electrodes which connect the cells to the synthesizer.
The arrays are two way. That is they both detect electrical signals from the neurons and send signals back
(about 1V p-p) from the outside. "The neurons give off a constant chatter called 'neuronal
noise', something like white noise but it seems a lot easier on the
ear.....maybe more organic ;)" (Andrew Fitch).
Some of the neurons give off spikes called 'action potentials' . These
occur in various ways, sometimes erratically and sometimes with
patterns.
The neurons themselves were once skin cells harvested from Guy Ben-Ary over 3 years ago.
They were converted into stem cells & then into neurons.
Below the cells, is the amplification section. Of course the neurons themselves produce very tiny voltages.
These need to be amplified (about 100 times) to get synth level (5V) neuronal noise signals. The action potentials are extracted using comparators to get synth level triggers. Another circuit converts synth signals into triggers (approx 7ms trigger, 1Vpeak to peak) at a voltage and shape pleasing to the neurons (large falling edge). They seem to like this feedback, without it they tend to get bored and inactive.
To prevent feedback
loops there are 60 analogue switches to momentarily turn off the
processing circuits when a stim signal is sent
To the left & right of the centre console is the synth itself. They appear to float on two wings.
This amplifier section sits just below the incubator. The cables patch control voltages from the neurons to the synthesizer itself.
The synth is composed of two CellF voice, two CellF action panels, two multiband distortions,8 Frigates (frequency2CV and frequency2gate modules)
and lots & lots of VCAs ---- made up of 4 voltage controlled matrix mixers
(32 VCAs in each so 128 VCAs).
I paid a visit to Fremantle over the weekend. It was an opportunity to catch up with some old friends.
& check out the CellF synth project that my mates Andrew & Nathan of NLC have been so involved with lately (more about that in the next post).
While I was there I decided to spend a night in Fremantle Prison. No, I haven't been arrested for being out of tune. I actually paid to sleep here :-)
This is the entrance to the Youth Hostel - It was once the women's section of Fremantle Prision
Fremantle Prison was built by convicts. First opened in 1855, it was only decommissioned in 1991.
It is the largest and most intact convict built prison in
Australia and is Western Australia’s only World Heritage Listed
Building.
The prison had very poor sanitation in the 19th century and things didn't improve much into the 20th century. This culminated in a 1988 riot
with guards taken hostage, and a fire that caused $1.8 million worth of
damage. When the prison closed in 1991 it was replaced by the new maximum-security
Casuarina Prison.
The roof above is all Jarrah timber ... built by convicts.... much went up in flames in 1988.
Some art left by prisioners in their cells.
More than 40 hangings were carried out at Fremantle Prison, which was
Western Australia's only lawful place of execution between 1888 and
1984.
43 menand one woman were hanged in this period. Martha Rendell was the only woman. She died in 1909.
The last person to be hanged was serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke who was executed in 1964
Capital punishment was formally abolished in Australia in 1967. Ronald Ryan was was the last ... he was hanged in Victoria.
Over the last 140 years there have been many escapees. These included Moondyne Joe and John Boyle O'Reilly. Also famous were six Fenians who escaped to the United States in the 19th century and Brenden Abbott in 1989.
This is a part of the women's section which is now the YHA.