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Tech Toys Become Modern Instruments

Posted by michael on from the 2600Hz dept.

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.

5 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Analog is cool by Dr.+Tom · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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*.

    1. Re:Analog is cool by torpor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Absolutes are unobtainable...

      Which is why I'll respond to:

      Any idiot can do digital electronics but it takes real skill and understanding to do anything analog.

      ... with the statement: Even better, is doing digital work that is indistinguishable from analog work, to the point that A/B comparisons produce 50/50 results.

      As a new member of one of the leading Virtual Analog synthesizer development teams, I can tell you this:

      These are very exciting times.

      --
      ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  2. Dear Slashdot by underpaidISPtech · · Score: 0, Interesting

    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

  3. Easier path to DIY synths/effects by Tom7 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  4. Circuitbending by uqbar · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Here is a whole slew of links to the realm of circuit bending (maybe this will distribute the load among those who want to create musical circuit hacks):

    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