Atari Noise Board 1.2, WSG Filter, Fruit

Cavan Fyans sent me a pair of PCBs for his latest Atari Noise Board.
I housed one in a "Little Miss Trouble" tin that I found in a charity shop. After connecting potentiometers I put sockets into the solder pads marked for touch connectors, then plugged in a few connection wires (usually used for breadboard prototyping) which I jabbed into a mandarin and a banana. The results sound like this:

My second Atari Noise Board isn't housed yet, but I added four copper touch pads to the LM380 which adds some Crackle Box like action to the sound palette. There's always something playful to be made from bench scrap!

I also built a pair of WSG resonant filters. These are the smoothest sounding of all the filters I have made so far. I've enjoyed adding a force sensor/FSR (thank you Ian McCurdy) to squeeze open the vowel sounds.

BUILD/CODE/IMPROVISE/PERFORM

 

A series of free hands-on workshops as part of UNDERCONSTRUCTION,

a collaborative exhibition taking place at Catalyst Arts throughout April.

Learn to build and bend circuits, make an instrument from

your laptop and take part in a public performance at QUB's

Sonorities Festival.

BUILD

Saturday 6th April 10am – 5pm, Free

Develop your own playable musical device with circuit bender

and instrument builder Barry Cullen.

CODE

Sunday 14th April 10am – 5pm, Free

Explore programming as musical performance using networked

laptops with Graham Booth. Mac laptop required.

IMPROVISE

Wednesday 17th April 6pm – 9pm, Free

Monday 22nd April 6pm – 10pm, Free

Develop a live performance with Kevin McCullagh & Tullis Rennie

using the instruments from BUILD and CODE.

PERFORM

Thursday 25th April 9.30pm – 12.30am, Free

The performance will be presented at the EARS showcase night 

as part of the Sonorities festival.

To reserve a place, please contact catalystarts@gmail.com with

your name and details of the workshop(s) you would like to attend.

Venue: Catalyst Arts, 5 College Court, BT1 6BS

(+44) 028 90 313 303

catalystarts.org.uk  /   facebook.com/qub.ears   

twitter.com/qubears   /   sonorities.org.uk

Fab Lab Belfast 200812

I've had a quick vist to Fab Lab Belfast in the Ashton Centre, North Belfast.

I had a chance to chat with the technician, check out their great tools, see examples of other makers work, and get suggestions on helpful homework to do before booking some time there to work on prototypes. Inspired.

I was told there are links to useful project PDFs and FLOSS software on the Manchester Fab Lab site. I had downloaded Sketch Up and Eagle CAD oonly a few days before, with the addition of Inkscape (best compatibility for vector based projects) I now have a ever growing amount of things on my to-do/to-learn list.

Have a look at what they do, and think about what they can help you do.