What is all the noise about?

Something called Rammel Club...

The sounds of Wind Speed

I woke up today to an orchestra. It began with a drum roll of rain on the steel roof and shakers of droplets against the windows. There was a gentle hum from the mushroom vents and crackle of wind through the willow trees at the bank. Delia's morning cries for food were drowned out by the sloshing of canal water against the hull as the boat swayed to the rhythm of the wind.

Today it feels like things are on the move. I cast open the curtains to let the indoor plants breathe and the tiny knot of anxiety was dispelled. I saw that we are still moored where we should be, with both ends of the boat secured against the bank as it had been yesterday, the water level was a reasonable depth, however choppy, and we were not at an unusual angle. Phew.

I made the burner glow and got some porridge cooking.

It feels right today to publish my poem about Wind Speed in full. In accordance with the scale, today I would say is 28 knots...

And without further ado...

Wind Speed from a Narrowboat
after The Beaufort Scale of Wind Speed
by Amanda Young


≼1 knots. Calm - Like dry ground. Very little draw up chimney.
Canal still.

1-3 knots. Light air - Quiver of canal water. A whisper of wind.

4-6 knots. Light breeze - Towpath hedgerow rustles. Breeze
brushes face.

7-10 knots. Gentle breeze - Small leaves blown off roof.
Chimney smoke drifts.

11-16 knots. Moderate breeze - Faint whistling wind. Slight
groan of taught ropes. Tiny wavelets on canal.

17-21 knots. Fresh breeze - Tall grasses sway. Water sloshes
against hull. Cat scampers along towpath.

22-27 knots. Strong breeze - Rolling water at bank. More
throttle needed when moving. A librarians Shushsh!

28-33 knots. Near gale - Firewood burns rapidly. Mushroom
vents sigh. Ducks blown along canal. Avoid moving.

34-40 knots. Gale - Hanging lanterns violently sway. Rubber
fenders moan enduringly. Outside bungies metronomically
bounce. Bad day to move.

41-47 knots. Strong gale - Figure-of-eight movements felt
onboard. Screeching wind. Back-breaking work carting goods
along towpath.

48-55 knots. Storm - Difficult to walk length of boat. Ears
popping. Great waves towards gunwhale. Chimney rain-hat
will blow away.

56-63 knots. Violent storm - Do not pour boiling water.
Remove delicate items to safety. Severe spray and waves.
Keep a strong stomach.

≽64 knots. Hurricane - Never moor underneath trees. Drop
anchor. Seek alternative shelter.

Against the clock...

The count down is 15 minutes before I have to fly out the door to work the day and night away. The bassline generator has been completed, at least the construction side, just the modifying of the wooden box to do and it'll be ready to roll out in a gig or two of the MOLTEN GODS!

I had left last night at the point of fixing on the controls.


The buttons were in place so next up were the LED's.

The Red LED in the centre of the board can be used to trigger the photocell so this has heatshrink round the legs. Notice that one leg is longer than the other to indicate positive and negative, the positive being longer. This is generally indicated on the PCB by the silkscreen square symbol around the hole.


However on for this LED the symbols is slightly different. It is the actual symbol used for a Light Emitting Diode (LED) indicating anode (positive) and cathode (negative) with power or light emitting from the lamp. The current flows from positive to negative.






Ok, just realised the time and I have to clean my teeth. Leigh is playing with his new toy now. I has a good range of tone and he is coming up with some great melodies, sounds awesome through a delay!

To be continued...

Construction Night...

...of audio delight!


I have been scratching about the flat wanting to get making again. With the fantasy of fantastical things I am able to design and build I suddenly realise that I feel far from the electrical or engineering genius I would like to be. I have started the ball rolling again with a kit purchased by Leigh of the Autonomous Bassline Generator by 4ms Pedals.

This fancy little beaty beauty has a photocell allowing the user to 'play' with the avaliable light and trigger sounds using this component. It also features an infa-red sensor to connect several bassline generators or any other Andromeda Space Rocker units in series (not that we have more than one ASR unit but you never know...)

So step one was to check all components are there and have a good read of the instructions.


Leigh has been wanting to solder so we had a little session on 'how to', I did indeed pass on the wise words of those who have helped me from SNARC namely, John, Terry and David. Mind you looking back over these photos I think we shouldn't be soldering on top of paper, fire hazard and all - least we are still here to tell the tale!


It is easier to solder components in place such as resistors and capacitors if you bend the legs slightly out on the underside.


Leigh did a sterling job!


Here it is coming together


We were discussing the fact that the kit comes without a casing. There are plastic legs for the PCB board but aside from that there is little protection for the unit as a whole. That was when the search began for a box of some kind. And look what Leigh found.


The size is perfect and with it being wood we can easily drill the holes to fit knobs, photocell and LED's and the jack connector through.

Here is the photocell. We allowed the length of wire from the surface of the PCB board so that it would sit pretty much flush with the knobs.



And for now I have to call it a night, it's getting on for early hours and I struggle to proof read any further. Until tomorrow...

Bitumen Live at Chameleon

Bitumen at work



Jude strutting her stuff



and so it goes on...

Getting set

Bitumen are getting themselves ready for the event tonight.

8.30pm The Chameleon, map £5advance £6doors, 4 bands, aural delight.

Nocto Loco demo

This night time demonstration depicts the Nocto Loco FX pedal by 4ms pedals,hand-built by myself being sonically exploited by Leigh. The output sound is being filtered by the Sherman Filterbank and has Bugbrand's audio weevil as the input to the Nocto. Enjoy.

Phantastron video

A teaser of the completed Phantastron FX pedal in action. Here we are using the CV input on the Phantastron unit controlled by a 9v battery running along the ribbon controller. The pitch tuning works wonders and the wave form selector switch works best at certain frequencies. This is a brilliant kit to learn a lot (particularly using the turret board) and a good introduction to tube effects. Overall a very unique synth.

www.electricwestern.com

Fantastic-tron

That's right, I have completed the Phantastron, the one and only tube synthesiser by Electric Western. This little gem of an art-invention works wonders when triggered using the ribbon controller supplied by said designer. Oooh! I can't wait until Leigh returns with the video to post... tbc.

Nocto Go Go

A-Horrah! The nocto loco FX pedal is finally up and running! With the help of John at the club with his electronics knowledge, we discovered that the stomp switches I had wired up were in fact 90degrees round the wrong way. So after John patiently de-soldered and re-soldered each wire, we looked to be getting somewhere. Using a digital multimeter we were able to trace the path of current around the circuit checking for the correct voltage. So it seemed that only 9volts was required for the Voltage Regulator, and from then on the voltage is set to just under 5v through out the circuit

John came across some parts of the circuit which were not showing a decrease in value, in essence, we had 5v showing at one point but the ground (or 0v) was not appearing at all. Thus we came round to the idea that the track had a break in it. This was quickly solved with an insulated piece of wire being attached to link across the break. Then came the oh so exciting bit...

Looking at how the nocto loco acts using an oscilloscope made my heart sing! John had to do a bit of adjusting to get the waveform on the screen, brighten it up a little and make connections with the board using a couple of pointers. From the outset there was a nice small, tidy waveform flickering on the screen, however further explorations showed the curvy pattern switch to a choppy large square form (a rather sound shifting point) and then we discovered around the IC chips some very disjointed waveforms which appeared to be more like sanskrit than waveform. Oh they were brilliant!

And so knowing full well the box of tricks was working, it was time for me to pack up at the club and head for home. On arrival the soldering iron was plugged in and work began to finish off the loose ends.



The nocto loco was plugged in and given it's first test run by Leigh putting his BugBrand through it going then into the Sherman and out of the lovely sound system. It was very bendy and manic to say the least.

I was asked a question last night about what this pedal actually is, and here is some kind of explanation...

The Nocto Loco is some kind of pitch shifting FX pedal, with a jack input, you can put anything through it, though I am speculating that keys and guitars work best due to their hot sustained signal. The bypass switch means you have the ability to bypass the whole circuit to the output (so no loco) or where can switch to running through the maze of copper tracking. This then offers up the ability to move through three harmonic octaves, change waveform and the LFO (or what I believe to be LFO). There is a standard volume knob and a switch which still now I haven't quite worked out what it does. The Loco is self explanatory, it just pumps up the mania of the coarse sound.

The final result is magnificent. I am planning on getting a nifty little video on here in the near future, so keep them skins peeled!

Whispering City presents

Lllllllast nnnnnnniiiggghhttt wwwwwwaaaaasss qqqqquuuuuiiiitttte mmmeaty!



Kaya King - Wacky races and ice cream flavours looping criss-crossing drum beats and pre-recorded samples. A summer delight.



Molten Gods - Three men who fell from the skies with arms full of FX pedals, make the loudest racket of noise they can forcing blood to drip from underneath your nails.



Horatio Pollard - electronoise (or was it micronoise?) of a solo man, which has you nodding your head till it drops off.



They loved it!

This is what to do Saturday

That's right, 27th June at Chameleon (Angel Row, above Clinton Cards) £3, 8pm. Noise. Oi! will be doing the doors (or is it scores?)

Bodhi Tin

I had the whole afternoon free, why the bankers were on annual leave, see. So, pottering in the studio I decided to do a spot of circuit bending and rehouse the mini chanting box that had been around for some time, thus making a super noisy fx pedal.


I had previously opened it up and searched about inside, only finding a small PCB board leading to two AAA batteries and a small speaker. The unit has pre-programmed chanting samples which I suspect are in the black blob on the PCB. The only other components are a capacitor and resistor.I started by exploring the circuitry with a wire, and seeing what will bend the sound. I found that joining the resistor to another part had the enchanting effect of super-speeding up the sounds. This was the only possible amendment using the parts on the PCB. So simple is best.


I already has stores of odds 'n' ends so she collected together two switches and a female jack. I decided that one switch would be to turn the unit on/off whilst the other one is to switch between the bent effect and the original chanting sounds. The chosen switches were rocker ones, where clicking back is on, whislt forwards is off. With the batteries already in place from the chanting box, I detached one side of the connecting wire and ran this via the switch. The two wires from the circuit bent points were attached to the second switch.


Then, I removed the speaker and replaced this with the female jack, to allow running the unit through other effects or straight into an amp. The wires leading to the speaker were replaced with new wire as they were really thin and frequently broke when working on them. The metal travel sweetie tin was chosen due to the lovely circle shape it has and citrus fruits on the front. This was drilled and cut to make the two holes in the lid for the large switches and for the jack input.

All electronic parts were soldered together and the first test run was held in front of Molten Gods 1 and 2. I then realised that to change between chants you had to stop and open up the unit to press the tiny switch on the PCB board. So came the next adjustment. I tested out with a push to switch on button if I could simply attach two wires from this to the points of the tiny switch on the PBC board. It appeared to work, makes sense eh?! So this was soldered inplace, an extra drilled hole was made and the switch put in place.


Presenting the Bodhi Tin. Named after the tale about Budda sat under the fig tree, known as the Bodhi tree. This little sweetie is perfect for amplifiying the chants and messing with the pitch, great fun to play through other effects too.

Om...

FX pedal coming along nicely

This is the state of the matter...


Exploit one child's amplifier kindly donated by the string section of Molten Gods, one FM radio, one jack plug, three multi-functional switches and a new set of circuitry rules.


It is pieced together with a token of modification to all parts involved...