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Music Media

Tech Toys Become Modern Instruments 110

Posted by michael 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.
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Tech Toys Become Modern Instruments More

Tech Toys Become Modern Instruments

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  • 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!

  • Google Cache? (Score:3, Informative)

    by heliocentric ( 74613 ) on Thursday October 25, 2001 @02:43AM (#2476513) Homepage Journal
    If the site has a problem serving up content (and I sure see that it does) why not link to the Google Cache [google.com] 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.

    • And don't forget thumbnails from images.google.com [google.com]

      (for some reason, even when you look at the google cache version of a page, google still tries to source the orriginal image, instead of the cached versions)

    • If the site has a problem serving up content ...

      It would have to actually HAVE some content in order for it to have a problem serving it up. This is just a total waste of 1's and 0's. The page was only partially /.ed when I hit it, and I still couldn't get a freeking piece of content. (And yes, I saw everything the site had to offer.)

      Welcome to the /. Server Stability Testing Service!!
  • 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 ?
    • i have a great amount of respect for the man who created and/or modified these products. imitation is the greatest form of flattery, isn't it? and in the days of mass-production, and digital media, an imitation is unnecessary... we can just have a copy.

      i think turning a speak and spell into an interesting noise instrument is rather interesting. but, i also enjoy noise as a genre of music.

      and if you cant appriciate the electronic experimentation, they still look pretty cool... so, if the icon shouldn't be for music, then it should certainly go under art(is there one...?).
  • Well, either my IPS is using RFC 1149 [linux.com] ("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.
  • Early morning in the nordic countries means a whole lot of people checking slashdot out at work or at home ^_~

  • World wide (Score:1, Informative)

    by natmsincome.com ( 528791 )
    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?

  • Analog is cool (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dr. Tom ( 23206 ) <tomh@nih.gov> on Thursday October 25, 2001 @02:59AM (#2476544) Homepage
    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*.
    • I have to disagree with your assumption that it takes real skill and understanding to do anything analog. I was taking apart my electronic toys and making various sounds with them by placing bent up paperclips on various parts of the curcuitry when I was 12. There was nothing digital about the sound, and there is nothing special about me (i.e. I wasn't some kid genious EE type). I just accidently found that by shorting out certain circuits on a toy calculator designed to teach me math that I could make screaching noises, and the frequency would go up and down based on how tight I held the clips. This annoyed the hel! out of my brother, so I kept doing it. Now granted, I never took the time to solder a rheostat on any of the places I put the clips, but I very well could have (yes, even when I was 12). I just never thought it was cool enough to make any of it permanent. And I still don't.

      • I have to disagree with your disagreement. Granted, anybody can start sticking in pieces of wire or certain devices into an analog circuit, and see what kind of cool noises or smoke they can make, but to actually understand why the circuit does what it does usually requires a bit more skill.

        Do some reading on deriving Bode plots, complex analysis, sinusoidal steady-state analysis, transfer functions, op amps etc. etc. etc. and then tell me that analog circuit analysis is easy.

        It doesn't "take real skill and understanding to do anything analog", but those things are generally required if you're not doing amateurish hacking.

    • Re:Analog is cool (Score:3, Interesting)

      by torpor ( 458 )
      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 [access-music.de], I can tell you this:

      These are very exciting times.
    • Or maybe he's just really good with Photoshop :-)
    • I agree that analog can be voodoo involving lotsa math. However when I think of digital, I think computer engineering. Caches, branch prediction, compilers are voodoo too.

    • As an EE, I am really quite tired of people saying that analog design is "an art" or "black magic", as compared to digital design. This is just not true. As I see it, the problem is this: when people (non-EEs) see a block diagram for a digital device, it's quite easy for them to say that they "understand" it. If you take a similar, high level approach to your "black-magic" fields (analog circuit design, signal processing, etc.), they seem just as simple.

      If you look at digital design as nothing more than shoving together some well-behaved ICs, then you're all set. But try designing one of those ICs - you think transient effects and device non-linearities are not a factor? Think again.

      Don't get me wrong - I love analog circuits - they're just more fun - but if you're going to describe something as black magic, try saying "real world implementation is black magic".

      -Peace

      • I've got a book at home titled something like "High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic". What's that quote that basically says that anything complex enough is indistiguishable from magic. Maybe analog and digital are black magic to people who can't understand it.
    • Black magic is reserved for those fields you know nothing or only a little about. Analog is pretty simple to me. Digital is pretty simple also. But trying to do analog functions with digital (aka: DSP - digital signal processing) is black magic. Which is why I'm trying to re-learn the stuff. I didn't pay enough attention when I took those classes. Which is a shame since I had two of the profs most noted in the field: Dr. Ronald Shafer and Dr. Jim McClellan (of Parks-McClellan fame).

      -tim

  • Mirror as it becomes available... (Score:3, Informative)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Thursday October 25, 2001 @03:00AM (#2476546)
    http://ps6mirror.hypermart.net/www.carrionsound.co m/ [hypermart.net]
    • The navigation is a list of links from a central home page. NOT A SINGLE ONE WORKS IN THIS MIRROR. It is totally useless, and a waste of time. Please Mod down parent.
    • i tried doing a mirror with wget, but the results are not good:

      --16:06:23-- http://www.carrionsound.com/mp3/dd6jam.mp3
      (try:18) => `dd6jam.mp3'
      Connecting to www.carrionsound.com:80... connected!
      HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 206 Partial Content
      Length: 3,389,255 (225,812 to go) [text/plain]

      [ skipping 3300K ]

      16:37:29 (126.52 B/s) - `dd6jam.mp3' saved [3389255/3389255]

      reconnects all the time and slow as aol
  • which is a pity.

    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 [satirewire.com]

    Totally off topic, but just as weird.

  • 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.
  • Perhaps instead of sending troops to Afghanistan, we just should have /.'d them.

  • Gee.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by rant-mode-on ( 512772 )
    Slashdotted already.... could that possibly mean that there is life outside of the USA?

  • Scientific Experimentation (Score:3, Funny)

    by joenobody ( 72202 ) on Thursday October 25, 2001 @04:50AM (#2476671)

    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 [notbreathing.com] for info on the music he makes with his modified synths.
  • An interesting couple of sites for analog music fans are propellerhead software [propellerheads.se] (You MUST download the Reason demo - it has to be seen to be believed) and also Jeskola Buzz [buzzmachines.com] its a kind of wierdo build your own synth kit.

    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.

  • 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?

  • Do it yourself Gesture Research (Score:3, Informative)

    by beanerspace ( 443710 ) on Thursday October 25, 2001 @06:50AM (#2476764) Homepage
    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.

    One such page I visited described research in the field of gesture capture, interfaces, and applications [ircam.fr] 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 [nl.net] that offers schematics on how to roll-your-own speach synths, text-to-speech and other goodies ... including do-it-yourself for some rather old computers.

    Here's something [pianomation.com] 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 ... PAiA [etc...http] Electronics ... offering user assembled kits for all sorts of electronic products for hobbyists, musicians, education.

    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 [syr.edu] projects.

    Toys ... yup ... but I suspect there is also utility for it all.

  • The classic work of "build/corrupt-it-yourself" electronica is, of course, the Forbidden Planet Soundtrack [scifi.com] (1956). As I recall, much of the soundtrack was recordings of the home-made electronic instrumentation being overloaded into destruction.
  • /me dons trenchcoat and fedora:

    "Tag 'em and bag 'em, Vinny -- this stiff's been slashdotted."

  • Easier path to DIY synths/effects (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Thursday October 25, 2001 @08:34AM (#2476965) Homepage Journal

    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 [smartelectronix.com] . The VST architecture [steinberg.net] 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.

  • BEAM (Biology Electronics Aesthetics Mechanics) is a robot design phylosophy based on analog design (About BEAM [beam-online.com]) and advocating scouring for parts in old/broken equipment. Much of the designs use digital parts (inverters, NAND gates, etc), but exploit the analog properties of those parts to achieve intelligence. Some designs are extremely non-deterministic, and, arguable, show imergent behavior and learning. Many designs are also solar -powered, which makes the creatures self-sufficient.

    Mark Tilden (the father of BEAM) and his robots have been featured in Discovery Channle programs.

    • > Mark Tilden (the father of BEAM) and his robots have been featured in Discovery Channle programs.

      ...and Hasbro toys [yahoo.com] for this Christmas.

      My jaw dropped when I saw these things on TV and heard the word "nervous network". Very cool, for those who don't want to build their own.

  • Man, that site has now been slashdotted to oblivion

  • Circuitbending (Score:4, Interesting)

    by uqbar ( 102695 ) on Thursday October 25, 2001 @09:46AM (#2477472)
    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/ [oddmusic.com]

    [anti-theory.com]

    http://www.anti-theory.com/ [anti-theory.com]

    http://www.simulated.net/bending/ [simulated.net]

    http://www.hollis.co.uk/john/bent/ [hollis.co.uk]

    http://www.furious.com/perfect/emi/reedghazala.htm l [furious.com]

    http://users.ev1.net/~bantha/bending/ [ev1.net]

    http://www.pansiecola.com/space/inappropriate/bend ing/ [pansiecola.com]

    And even a news group on the topic: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/benders [yahoo.com]

  • 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 [objektsynth.com] for BeOS. Very small latency

    If you want to try a cool Synth emulator for Linux you should download SpiralSynth Modular [pawfal.org] right now!!! (and start annoying the hell out of your neighbors).
  • 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 [hyperreal.org]) 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 [brainwashed.com] (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 [peachfuzz.net] 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!
  • 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$$holes you can talk to at http://groups.yahoo.com/benders Larz
    • Yep. Whiney a$$holes just like this jealous jackass. Let us know when Jesse puts out an album, instead of simply capitalizing on other peoples ideas...jerk.
      • Jealous? Hardly. Since buying my SK-8. Tablebeast has helped me modify a couple of other things on my won (an SK-10, Talking Teacher, Noname Animal Train). If anyone is stealing ideas its not Tablebeast (Jesse). His mods are far beyond what is commonly called circuitbending. He uses analog style patchbays to make to connections, this is very original, unlike anything else the people copying him can produce. He has CV/Gate triggers, MIDI (if you bug him enough about it), and soon a custom setup that lets you control the connections with an external device. Dave may have some original stuff on his site, but his bending is far from original. His stuff is sad Q.R. Ghazala wannabe stuff and he even has the gall to call his units by the same names as the 'inventor' of circuitbending. As if you could invent short circuiting and artfag names. While circuitbending is something that any yokel can do, it takes a lot to do it with class and to break away from the *yawn* Incantors. These patchbay synths are truly unbeleiveable. Oh, and as far as Tablebeast recording an album, he has one already and its not that good. He is NOT a musician but a tinkerer. He is also very friendly and helpful, completely unlike the JERK Dave Wright. I wonder what Reed, Jesse, and Dave think about all this talking behind their backs, hehe.

        Larz
        • That's great that Jesse is helpful with the instrument he sold you. It's called customer service, part of running a business. As for Jesse's mods being far beyond circuit bending, I completely disagree. It seems that you're whole argument weighs in on the fact that Jesse uses patch bays instead of switch bays, which would fall under the category of added interface. Part and parcel of the bending concept, as Ghazala has spoken about over and over again. There is no rule that says patchbay != circuit bending. As far as all the other mods Jesse does, well I fail to see how that sets him apart either. Dave and many other benders add CV/Gate triggers to their devices. Adding Midi to a circuit bent toy is something I have yet to see, even from Jesse, though I'd love to see it happen. As for Dave calling certain instruments by their ghazala given names, he does this out of respect for their originator, it states this clearly on his site. Ghazala as well has said that he prefers they continue to be called by the names he gave them. Calling your instrument the SPK-101 or whatever variation of the Roland naming scheme does not make it any less a descendent of the original ghazala creations...regardles of whether or not it has a patchbay or a few more buttons. What's so hard about making a patchbay anyways, mount a bunch of jacks in a grid connected to different bend points. simple. All this "who came first", "who's stealing whos ideas" crap is really obnoxious. This overly defensive attitude is very transparent. Maybe Jesse is friendly and helpful, I don't know I've never met the guy. Maybe Dave ran over your dog or something, i don't know but he has been nothing but friendly and helpful to me. Bah, I've made my point...
  • "...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.

    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.

  • Ick (Score:2)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 )
    It's mildly interesting and all, but I can't believe this article was posted and my Cuttle Cart [schells.com] story wasn't. Maybe I'll be able to get it accepted when I can load Space Invaders from my Rio MP3 player onto it...

    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

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