Slashdot Mirror
Tech Toys Become Modern Instruments
Anonymous Coward writes: "A classmate of mine is making analog instruments out of, and/or interactive mods to tech toys and voiceboxes. Check them out at carrionsound.com I'm not sure this site could survive even a slight slashdotting, which is why I may not have found it in the archives." Well, there's only one way to find out. We'll try the "early morning" timeframe and see if it survives.
this blather added to escape lameness filtering.
* Please try to keep posts on topic.
What manner of crap is this that is foisted upon us unsuspecting /.ers in the wee hours? Okay, the site couldn't handle a good ol' 5pm slashdotting, but why post it at all? It's meaningless drivel, less important than even an electronic, 802.12-enabled, linux-based, diesel-powered dog polisher. All this on top of the fact that /. is going to paid subscriptions... honestly, I'm losing my faith in geek-kind.
I stole this sig.
Sorry. Don't get this one.
Perhaps it'd be a little better to change the main story link to:
http://www.carrionsound.com/menu.htm
as that'd mean everyone isn't loading the 40K image on the homepage, and goes straight to the text menu page. It might give the poor server a fighting chance!
you forgot the beast.. 5, 4 ,3, 2 ,1 .... Hmm it's dead.. :) .. the guy was asking for it..
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
If the site has a problem serving up content (and I sure see that it does) why not link to the Google Cache instead? Ok, so maybe the links on the cache don't like back to the cache, but you don't have to work too hard to get the links added to the URL.
Wheeeee
This post should have an LEGO icon,
this stuff isnt anything but old toys,modifyed or not.
Nothing wrong `bout toys though, i love my linuxbox,which is just at toy, or ?
This is my sig. Other people have one too,but this is mine.
Well, either my IPS is using RFC 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers"), or that site's getting Slashdotted at 2 in the morning. From what I can see so far though, at least it's got a good background image.
you might as well add lynks, links, amaya, xbrowser and konqueror while you are at it...
but why?
Early morning in the nordic countries means a whole lot of people checking slashdot out at work or at home ^_~
what about Galeon ?
While it may be morning in the US over here in Australia it's 6pm. Everyone is just getting home ... can us Aussies bring it down?
Any EE will tell you that analog electronics is basically black magic. Any idiot can do digital electronics but it takes real skill and understanding to do anything analog. Furthermore analog is far more powerful than digital -- in terms of speed and complexity of the computations possible (if not accuracy). But it's harder to control and more difficult to understand. Analog synth is an amazing area and this guy's a real wizard. Some of the posters here will complain that this guy's site is lame because they have NO IDEA what's involved. This is a true melding of Art and Science, not simple hackery.
And before any strong AI freaks slap the Church-Turing hypothesis in my face remember that analog circuits (through non-linearities) have sensitive dependence on initial conditions and are basically computationally irreducible. Sure, you can simulate digitally to any desired degree of accuracy blah blah, but while your simulation is clunking out two milliseconds worth of output the analog synth has been going in real time for an hour. I call that *effective*.
http://ps6mirror.hypermart.net/www.carrionsound.co m/
download speeds at low modem speeds, even on a dsl line.
This at 4 am east coast us time. Too bad he didn't mirror it someplace like geocites or some such other free site with bandwidth.
while you are waiting for that to load, check this out:
In other news, Satire wire is reporting that the Anti Terrorist bill just passed will require people to install Windows XP
Totally off topic, but just as weird.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Completely Slashdotted site.
However, I have high hopes, based on some of the interesting project titles that were listed on that site (didn't wait for them to load), that we'll soon see an entry on that site called "How I run my site on a modified "Tickel Me Elmo" doll. Too cool.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
Mission Accomplished.
My email addy? should be easy enough.
Perhaps instead of sending troops to Afghanistan, we just should have /.'d them.
-----
jonathan barket
perhaps slightly off topic but does anyone happen to know how u could modifiy an analogue synth (or create a device that controls it via cv) to give it a thing like the ondes mortanot? ie instead of a keyboard (actually the ondes mortanot has both but nevermind) there is like a bar that you slide over to change the pitch...ie you have to pitch with your ear since its not just simply a matter of hitting a key and being in tune...radiohead have used it a few times, and messian liked it alot. only problem is to buy a real one costs thousands...any ideas?
Slashdotted already.... could that possibly mean that there is life outside of the USA?
The hypothesis: I'm not sure this site could survive even a slight slashdotting, which is why I may not have found it in the archives
The test:We'll try the "early morning" timeframe and see if it survives.
The result: hypothesis proved
The hypothesis: I'm not sure this site could survive even a slight slashdotting, which is why I may not have found it in the archives
The test:We'll try the "early morning" timeframe and see if it survives.
The result: hypothesis proved
dave wright is a genius. he's been modifying analog syths for a couple years now. met him years ago when i did the layout for one of his albums. check out not breathing for info on the music he makes with his modified synths.
Buzz is free (as in beer) and Reason is free (as in it doesn't have full functionality) both downloads are well worth the time.
Go to "Preferences", then "Misc" to disable the OSDN bar.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
Just a thought - If the House of Congress passes legislation that classifies DoS attacks as terrorist activity - how would they view a site being slashdotted?
Will we see a day when the Feds come knocking on Taco's door?
Dear Slashdot,
I am a complete asshole and want to waste space on your front page to see if I can completely fuck up my buddie's server. It will be kewl.
Could you please arrange to have everyone click on this link?
Thanks
AC
If you look hard enough, and know where to look, one can find an amazing set of "toys" that could be easily modified and/or mass-produced into something useful.
... including do-it-yourself for some rather old computers.
... PAiA Electronics ... offering user assembled kits for all sorts of electronic products for hobbyists, musicians, education.
... yup ... but I suspect there is also utility for it all.
One such page I visited described research in the field of gesture capture, interfaces, and applications to sound synthesis and performance. Yes, it's for music & peformance now, but could be used for communications either by handicapped, or by individuals and situations where the human and/or NON-human voice is muted.
Vocoders are another set of techologies I personally find interesting. Here is a page that offers schematics on how to roll-your-own speach synths, text-to-speech and other goodies
Here's something for you young sprites trying to fake out mom so she thinks your practicing your paino. But remember, you're only cheating yourself !
Of course, you hardwire geeks already know about this one
Of course, having cut my teeth in electronic music back in the late 70's, in an old analog studio, we saw all sorts of home brewed devices our mad PhD professor put together. From a rubber-band articulator (a record tone arm nailed to a board with a rubber-band and nails to change pitch) to using two tape recorders to get true double-deck dealay (the more nails, the bigger the delay !-). Here is a site that lists similar do it yourself projects.
Toys
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
The classic work of "build/corrupt-it-yourself" electronica is, of course, the Forbidden Planet Soundtrack (1956). As I recall, much of the soundtrack was recordings of the home-made electronic instrumentation being overloaded into destruction.
I guess as long as your gov't does not censor it first... ;)
/me dons trenchcoat and fedora:
"Tag 'em and bag 'em, Vinny -- this stiff's been slashdotted."
Beeboy(!)
"This is my sig file. There are many like it, but this one is mine."
Circuit bending is fun. My bandmate and I used to do this back in high school.. we didn't know what were were doing really, but we got plenty of wacked out sounds.
Nowadays we're a little more deliberate, so we make VST Plugins . The VST architecture is totally simple and pretty portable, so it's easy to crank out plugins if you have crazy effects in mind. This might be a good place to start if you know a little C programming and have some ideas.
Mark Tilden (the father of BEAM) and his robots have been featured in Discovery Channle programs.
Eloquency and understanding analog electronics should not give this post a score of 4.
Sure, analog electronics are "harder" to understand and control then digital circuits. But does that mean it doesn't take "real skill and understanding" to do digital design? The attractiveness of digital design IS EXACTLY the fact that the basics of it are very easy to understand. The challenge is in the design itself - taking a real-world problem and translating it into a state machine. To me, it's analogous (no pun) to the analytical section of the general GRE - any middle-schooler can understand the problems (without having to know advanced math equations), but it takes a logical mind to solve them.
So why did this computer contraption I'm typing on end up being digital? The design is so basic, I wish they had foregone the last 40 years of advanced digital design and instead built me a 5 Hz analog computer (because it's harder).
What is slashdotting?
Man, that site has now been slashdotted to oblivion
I am very surprised at seeing this posted here, but at the same time very plesantly surprised. I dont understand why (seemingly) the majority of you cannot appreciate the geekiness in the art of circuit bending, regardless of what they use the outcome for. Furthermore the outcome can be used in quite brilliant manners, if you see the list of people that own some of these instruments, such as Dave Wright (Not Breathing) (he is also the person who constructed most of them found on the site), Meat Beat Manifesto, etc. And before you criticize, Reed Ghazala from whom the idea of modifying the Speak & ____*'s was borrowed, sells these modified Speak & * (aka Incantors) for $1200 USD.
cheers
This practice has been dubbed "circuit bending" by the pioneer of this art, Reed Ghazala. His site is excellent (but not
The idea isn't to create your own "analog synth" - it's to take formerly crappy and cheap sound-producing toys and rewire them to produce bizarre/unexpected sounds. You do add knobs and switches for control. I have an old tiny Casio keyboard and poking one IC pin will make it go nuts and play backwards drums, random riffs, grinding noise, blips and bloops, and on and on. It's amazing, and I got it for $2 at Goodwill.
The ridiculous prices fetched these days for modded Speak & * toys on ebay is evidence of their popularity.
For more info go here or here.
http://www.oddmusic.com/illogic/
http://www.anti-theory.com/
http://www.simulated.net/bending/
http://www.hollis.co.uk/john/bent/
http://www.furious.com/perfect/emi/reedghazala.htm l
http://users.ev1.net/~bantha/bending/
http://www.pansiecola.com/space/inappropriate/bend ing/
And even a news group on the topic: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/benders
I know analog is the way to go when making noise, but right now it is possible to achieve pretty decent synth sounds by creating your own digitally!. The best thing I tried was ObjektSynth for BeOS. Very small latency
If you want to try a cool Synth emulator for Linux you should download SpiralSynth Modular right now!!! (and start annoying the hell out of your neighbors).
C'mon Taco... get with the program!
As you can see in the links, they link to notbreathing.com . Not Breathing is an awesome band. If you *ever* get a chance to see them, do it. They have a small flock of cute firedancer girls that tour with them (afaik - they were there for a couple shows at least). It was one of the most intense shows I've been to (and while completely sober).
Also, there are lots of groups within the "Intelligent Dance Music (IDM)" scene/genre (some info here) that do a lot of the same fiddling about with gear and various other things. If you look, you'll find a large amount of scientific minds making electronic music these days.
Really, these are tech geeks who like to think differently (just like you guys do), but instead, they produce music when they "hack". I recently saw Matmos (at a Bjork concert) connect some kind of mic to a bird cage and proceeded to *PLAY* the bird cage as if it were an instrument. And it made pretty sounds! I've also spent time watching Lexaunculpt play with MAX so obsessively that there's no way that someone could NOT call that being a computer geek.
Don't stop at carrionsounds.com! There's lots of great music out there!
See: http://www.forcedexposure.com/artists/ear.html
Sonic Boom and collaboratuers hunker down over their wires and switches for a revolutionary new type of sound generation called circuit bending, involving the cannibalism and reintegration of the circuitry of cheap electronics (ie. Speak & Spell) and other economy effects, allowing new sounds and chance discoveries to emerge from previously unrelated circuit board points.
It's too bad that the server can't handle it. I'd suggest bookmarking it and checking it out later, it really is worth it. Dave's site has inspired hundreds to pick up their own soldering irons for the first time...
Why not try some early WARNING? Give some chance to prepare, or if the site is small, mirror the damn thing.
Ew, this guy is a total ripoff. Dave Wright is the most self rightous prick it has ever been my displeasure to deal with. He is so smug and full of crap that I am surprised that he would get any acclaim here. This stuff is justa bunch of short circuited sound ROMs, no theory, just idiotic short circuiting. If you want to check out some real modified instruments with class check out http://circuitbending.com His site is down right now, but you can check out his ebay store. The guy calls himself Tablebeast and he built my Casio SK-8 keyboard. What a sonic monster! A real unit with triggers for the sample pads and it uses a patchbay to make the short circuits in a far more thought out way. Oh, and there is a group of whiney a$$holes you can talk to at http://groups.yahoo.com/benders Larz
What an egregious lack of courtesy! Someone expresses suspicion that the site might not take the load, and you post the article anyway, under the disclaimer of being able to pull the article if you trash his server? What, you go over to help your mom get ready for thanksgiving and jump on all her furniture so you know that if you break it, you have time to take it into the garage before Fat Aunt Bertha shows up?
Punks. At least be apologetic about your complete lack of etiquette.
I'd comment on this story if I could actually download a sample, but 46 minutes for 2.75MB is code for "This download will break in 3... 2... 1..."
hello there - i run the www.carrionsound.com site - i've never been to slashdot.org before and this is weird! our server's are overloaded but this is ok with us - so hopefully it'll calm down and people can come back to visit. the site is not a business and we are not high tech - so i cant see any reasons to have a nicer server. it's somewhat of an 'art gallery' - sometimes you have to wait in line to see an art show. sometimes you have to be put on a list to get in. so maybe think about it like that. but thanks for the nice comments and maybe someone can try and mirror our site. i have just updated it as of 4pm pst - so maybe refresh that. i dont know what else to say - i am constantly working on weird gadgets for myself and friends. page is allways being updated - but is kept 'lofi' on purpose. if you enjoy how they look why not buy an album by my band, or come see us in concert. shameless plug - also someone posted some very good links to circuitbending on the web. i also recomend the synth-diy mailing list if your into this kind of thing. i dont see this as 'black magick' or 'anti-theory' at all - but it sure is fun. all the best and keep on huffing the solder dave wright www.notbreathing.com www.carrionsound.com