Thursday, 14 January 2016

Buchla-Volca Bass

Published on Jan 14, 2016

This vid is a unedited take. The sounds are just from the hacked Volca.
I'ts not a TB303 but it's not too shabby either,,... esp considering its price.

The 208 is syncing the volca, and also provides its power.
I'm not finished modding this .. the box is too small so I will prob end up putting this into a bigger case.

Here is more information on the volca bass hack:
http://djjondent.blogspot.com.au/2016...

Buchla 100 at the Library of congress

Great post on the legendary Buchla 100.
It now resides at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
I reckon this should really be on display at the Smithsonian. 
It's music room in the American History section in shows classical European instruments for some reason.

http://blogs.loc.gov/music/2016/01/unboxing-the-buchla-model-100/?loclr=eapab

This is actually not the "original" commissioned system.
That system is at Mills college in Oakland, Ca.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkOV2v3xQm0
It was originally at the San Francisco Tape Music Centre).

Wednesday, 13 January 2016

The Hattersley Loom - NZ - a early sequencer

On a recent trip to New Zealand I came across a ancient loom that is still in use today.
It's job is to weave textiles for use in the burgeoning film industry of New Zealand.
The firm running this mill (Stansborough) is currently making textiles for the "Lord of the Rings" & "The Hobbit" films.
This loom dates from the 1800s and gives the textiles that magic for the movies.

What interested me was the method used to program patterns. Electronic music (and music in general) relies on pattern creation whether they are drum sequences, or melodies.
Weaving patterns into textiles really isn't any different.

These wooden bars with rings are a 19th century sequencer. I could probably put these patterns into a midi sequencer and "play" the garment.
I didn't have time on this visit but maybe in the future.


The Hattersley loom was developed by George Hattersley and Sons of Keighley, West Yorkshire, England. The company had been started by Richard Hattersley in 1784.
Originally, the company made nuts & bolts, but after 1834 when Richard's son, George joined the business, they started production of looms.


The very first loom was smashed by a group of "Luddites" - revolutionary hand loom weavers - fearful of loosing their jobs. (Nothing has changed today).
This didn't stop George. His company soon went into full scale production and continued to manufacture loops for the next 100 years.


Stansborough organise tours of the factory. You can book online:
www.stansborough.co.nz



This is an amazing piece of machinery.

More sequencers:





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Sunday, 10 January 2016

Buchlaized Korg Volca Bass

Some notes regarding incorporating a Korg Volca Bass into a Buchla 208 easel.
The aim is that the Easel's patch card provides all power, sync & CVs for the volca bass.
This is a progression from my earlier attempt of buchlaizing a Korg monotron Duo.
I'll update this as I do the mods.


Open from the back.

 Korg has as with the monotron labelled patch points.
VCO out, VCA out & VCF out.
Plus there are the outs for the Saw & square waves for all 3 VCOs
There are no schematics available. So there is a fair bit of circuit bending and guesswork here.
If someone out there finds the schematics could you please send me the link.
Maybe Korg will make them available over time.
A close up.


You will need to remove the battery compartment to fit the program card into the case.
And how do you sync both sequencers.???
This appears to be the point:
For it to work you need to fool the volca into thinking you have plugged in a sync cable.

These are my first patch points:
From left to right,
Orange: Sync in.
Blue: Ground
Red: filter (cut off) modulation in.
Green: Filter (Peak) mod in.

The filter cutoff seems to like the 208's random & envelope CVs.
The peak responds ok to the Envelope. Need to do more tests.
Fitting the card into the volca case .... very tight. Needed to remove pretty much everything including the speaker.... not a major loss.

The 4 resistors in the top left are simple voltage dividers.
The volca syncs nicely to 5V pulses and the Buchla outputs 10V pulses.
Though both sequencers do sync, the volca runs at twice the speed of the 208's sequencer.
One solution is to set the 208 to a 4 step sequence and use the 1st & 3rd pluses to clock the volca.

The components on the red circle are a simple DC mixer using a TL072  dual opamp.
The six 100k resistors are the inputs .

In the yellow circle are four 120k resistors for random 1 + 2 (black), sequencer (red), and envelope
generator (green) CV outputs .

Fitting the mixer into such a small box proved a challenge.
I've mounted the pots externally. The mixer is based around a Ken Stone DC mixer design.
DC mixer (CGS 04).

It's very simple - just 2 op-amps. The first opamp mixes the 6 input signals (inverting them in the process) and the second opamp reinverts them.


The mixer is being used for the 6 audio outs (3 from each VCO).
It seemed that the outputs were feeding back into the circuit so I added some diodes.


As I went along I discovered that the VCO, Filter and VCA outputs marked on the PBC also worked
quite nicely as modulation inputs.... So I decided to use these instead on the filter cutoff & peak inputs I marked out earlier (see above). Is this a mistake of the manufacturer? Are the outputs really inputs?



Useful links:
+ Ken Stone's DC mixer (CGS 04)

To be continued.
J

Friday, 1 January 2016

Durham England

 Some old pics - from 1995

A lovely city and magnificent cathedral

The city is on the banks of the River Wear.
The settlement was founded over the final resting place of St Cuthbert and Saint Bede the Venerable.
 
The Cathedral was founded in 1093,

View from the roof of the cathedral


The view from the cathedral roof looking towards Durham Castle





Prebends bridge and the weir marking the end of the stretch available for rowing.

 








New years eve. 2016. New Zealand

Happy new years eve everyone.
2015 was a shocker so i was very happy to see
The end of it.
I spent new years on a farm with 3 great djs
 dj agent 99

electronic noise

And 
 dj marty aka martian

Some more pics of beautiful New Zealand

Alpaca  farm in a secret nz location 


Tango enjoying the beautiful farm

For more travel postcards click here: