Monday 31 August 2009

Edge of Sleep



So it was a rainy day....I set myself the challenge of making a piece that consisted of only sounds generated from my gameboy advance using my flashcart and numerous bits of software. I ended up using Pixelh8's free version of MusicTechPro, GBEdrum, the Nanovoice demo and Nerdrix the last 3 of these are classic gameboy programs so you have to use Goomba to get them working on the gba. A good source for gameboy/nintendo homebrew software is mooglecharm

Everything was played live into reaper and then the only processing I allowed myself was to use my own VST effects...its a WIP but I quite like the first draft...

<a href="http://concretedog.bandcamp.com/track/edge-of-sleep-wip">Edge of Sleep (WIP) by concretedog</a>

Saturday 1 August 2009

RoboRehearsal

So I spent some of today trying to get all the midi controlled things I have built set up and begin to make some sounds together. Since building the robocymbal player I have hacked together a couple more things including;


Above is a machine that has a couple of motors under midi control, each motor has a felt strip attached as a rotor which kind of strums the wires attached to a piezo disk..I love the effect you can hear it on the track at the end of this post coming in at around 36 seconds.

Also in the track you can hear an effected drum clatter, this was made with my second drum player here;



Opening this majestic piece (!) is the sound of my modified Amdek percussion synth, this synth that is designed to be hit by drumsticks is being triggered by a simple motor with a bit of wire and a weight like so;



So here's the track
<a href="http://concretedog.bandcamp.com/track/robots-rehearsal">Robots Rehearsal by concretedog</a>

So today has given me a big jobs list... I need to sort out better ways of being able to attach things to each other (particularly the drum/cymbal player things) I also need to sort out communal powersupplies for some of these things as at the moment everything is running on rechargeable batteries which is getting slightly ridiculous when most items are running at the same voltage.

I also want to build a few more instruments before I sit down and hopefully write a sizeable piece with all this stuff...and then write some visual stuff....then find venue....I'll get there eventually I guess!