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Yeah, that's like a much cooler version of the ElectroFaustus Drone Thing I use AND hand made. REALLY cool - the arcade-style buttons you put on there are what have me GASsing.

That rules! Great work.

The angle the clip was shot at made the roll of tape (?) look like the gadget had a weird guitary shape with a cutaway - took me a moment to realise it was a roll of tape.

Great thread! Very inspirational!

I have been doing more with plugins and software during the pandemic. Nothing too technical as I don't know how software actually works; I'm just messing around with plugins.

Software I've used a lot recently:
VCV Rack - all purpose modular software
ReaCoMa - mangle audio samples in Reaper like this.
Destroy FX plugins - Jonny Greenwood buffer effects
Emergence granular synth - for evil ambient
MIDI Guitar 2 - play virtual instruments with a guitar
Amplitube 4 - amp modeling and guitar effects

A fun thing I've been doing is using MIDI Guitar 2 to send the guitar notes that I'm playing live as MIDI data to Kontakt which is running a drum module. I have a MIDI plugin before the Kontakt plugin that takes each pitch I play and randomizes it. No two notes on the guitar will trigger the same drum sample. Then I play a phrase, save the drums, erase the guitar and write a new riff to the drum track. Rinse and repeat. It's been great for generating weird grooves and ideas, though you do need a good CPU to get the latency down to an acceptable level for live use.

Any software that can help generate randomness, but with the ability to reign things in a little, are what I'm all about. I imagine MSP is next for me, I just need to sit down and experiment with it some more. If anyone has any starter tips, I'm all ears

I'm also really intrigued by Elk OS, which I found out about on this forum. I just need to get a soundcard for my Raspberry Pi.

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:37 pm
That is awesome. Care to describe what's under the hood there? If it's a trade secret I understand!

It is 8 simple square wave oscillators made from Schmidt Hex triggers (probably CD4584's but I cant remember). They are wired so you can set the volume and tune each Osc, and either let them drone free or flip a switch that sends them through the momentary switches to be played like a keyboard. They all get mixed through a master volume and master kill switch at the end. It is a box of really angry bees. Fun to build because from a single 14 pin dip you get 4 oscillators using only a single cap and pot for each OSC. Mega cheap easy way to make racket.

Dudley wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:49 pm That rules! Great work.

The angle the clip was shot at made the roll of tape (?) look like the gadget had a weird guitary shape with a cutaway - took me a moment to realise it was a roll of tape.

yeah, tape. I think it was just propping up my phone.

I'll add another for people that use VST plugins for weirding. On my last record, I used this weird plugin called Stochas to generate a bunch of weird beats and melodies. It's a sequencer that uses different if this than that setting to great rhythms and patterns. It's a fun one. Sometimes I just let it go wild for a while and make loops out of the more interesting parts. I think it is still free too.

https://stochas.org/stochas/

Kniferide wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:08 pm

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:37 pm
That is awesome. Care to describe what's under the hood there? If it's a trade secret I understand!

It is 8 simple square wave oscillators made from Schmidt Hex triggers (probably CD4584's but I cant remember). They are wired so you can set the volume and tune each Osc, and either let them drone free or flip a switch that sends them through the momentary switches to be played like a keyboard. They all get mixed through a master volume and master kill switch at the end. It is a box of really angry bees. Fun to build because from a single 14 pin dip you get 4 oscillators using only a single cap and pot for each OSC. Mega cheap easy way to make racket.

That's really cool. I'm looking at some kind of pulse generator to control a stepper motor, which spins a typewriter platen. I'm thinking arduino as the generator needs to react to some other variables, but a simple square wave circuit might be viable as well.

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 3:28 pm
That's really cool. I'm looking at some kind of pulse generator to control a stepper motor, which spins a typewriter platen. I'm thinking arduino as the generator needs to react to some other variables, but a simple square wave circuit might be viable as well.

People use these circuits as analog timers all the time.

Kniferide wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:52 pm https://stochas.org/stochas/

Thank you for this! And your dronzo is really cool too.

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 6:19 pm

Kniferide wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:52 pm https://stochas.org/stochas/

Thank you for this! And your dronzo is really cool too.

Just to go into just how interesting this thing really is...