HacDC

On July 7 at 7:00PM, HacDC and DorkbotDC will together sponsor an event with a very innovative and interesting local musician, Keith Sinzinger.

Sinzinger goes under the performance name Fast Forty. He calls his genre of music Intense Ambient: "found sounds, altered electronics, scrap metal and other devices, blended to soothe and stimulate." His music is anchored by homemade tubular bells which he plays and routes through various audio effect processors.

He is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and his music reflects the industrial sounds of the Ford plant and the railroads of his early surroundings.

At HacDC and Dorkbot, he will explain how he conceived of, researched and constructed the tubular bells, and will then offer a demonstration of their sounds. The audience will also be able to play them afterwards.

Below one can listen to a full set of his from a recent Sonic Circuits performance, posted by District of Noise. Also see his MySpace site for more information.

Where: HacDC (1525 Newton St NW, Washington, D.C.)
Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Time: 7:00PM

Tonight: Diodes and Ring Modulators.

I've gotten in a bunch of XOR chips, and that lets us do ring modulation -- the key to getting that tuning-in-the-shortwave-radio sound. (And more!) It's lots of cheap, easy fun.

Once we get a handle on the XOR, we'll make variable-width pulses. This gets us a cheap phasing sound and will let us sync a bunch of oscillators to each other.

But do we dare combine multiple sync'ed oscillators with XORing?!?! Oh yes.

An 8-step bleepy-bloopy sequencer? On a shoestring budget? Impossible! (Or is it?)

This project is a fair step up in complexity, so we'll assemble and test on breadboards first. I'll try to pick some up at Radio Shark, but please bring your own if you've got 'em. Also, feel free to bring in your old noisemakers; we can splice the sequencer circuit right in.

And if you're just coming to a workshop for the first time, this is paradoxically a good time to jump in. You'll be behind on some of the "theory" but we'll catch you up quick.

Dave Vosh came to electronic music in the early 70's from a ham radio background. The "odd noises" in the music scene thus seemed familiar, and his experimentation began with test equipment, junk, cheap tape recorders, amplifiers, and cheap microphones--and was fueled by early e.m. recordings by stockhausen and subotnick; the great collections on columbia, vox, and turnabout; and nonesuch from the public library and cut-out bins. This interest grew into a passion for the analog modular synthesizer that continues to this day.

For a long time, Vosh pretty much labored in total isolation (as he says, sort of "hiding in the basement") with having fun being the primary objective, except for a brief period in the late 70's/early 80's when he was involved in producing newsletters and trading homemade tape recordings. In 2005, he discovered the dynamic rebirth of the electronic music scene in the D.C. area. Since then, he has become focused on using the analog modular in live performances: solo (originally "DaVe", currently "safe 2", and also a sub-project called "9v"); as a duo called "safe"; and recently with the baltimore/sdiy group's variable ensemble.

On Tuesday at HacDC, he will be demonstrating some interesting noise toys that illustrate and teach the building blocks of his impressive modular systems.

Where: HacDC (1525 Newton St NW, Washington, DC)
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Time: 8:00PM

Ready for round two?   (If you missed last week, we'll catch you up as quickly as possible.)

 The Noisemaker Workshop continues.  Last week, we got a single oscillator up and running.  This week, we'll add a few more, opening up the wide world of modulation. 

Bleep!  Bloop!

For the next few Thursdays at 7:30 pm, Elliot will be leading a workshop on sound hacking from the ground up.  We'll mostly focus on building our own gear, but we'll also borrow a couple tricks from the glitch/bender tradition.

April 16th, we'll start off by scratch-building a mess of raw sound sources. After that, we'll work on smoothing out the rough edges and trying to make this stuff more musical. (Or you could go for more cacophonous.  It's up to you.)  After the first two or three weeks, I'm open to suggestions.  Let's see where we can take
this.

This workshop series is going to involve soldering, (ab)use of digital CMOS chips for analog ends, a smidgen of electronics knowledge provided), and enough noise to ensure that you leave with a good solid headache.

Bring $5.00 to cover the cost of materials for April 16th.

Bring around 3-6 volts' worth of batteries if you'd like to leave the space with something powered up.  Two to four AA, AAA, C, or D cells will do.  Three if you're using rechargeables.

Also, if you've got a breadboard and would like to use it, bring that too.  Otherwise, you're going to be doing it dead-bug style like me.

Come on, feel the noise!

It seems fitting on Ada Lovelace day for our group of intrepid hackers to celebrate the life and achievements of Delia Derbyshire.  Born in Coventry in 1937, she has become a quintessential hacker  goddess and one of the early founders of electronic music.  Unsung for many years because of the BBC policy of not crediting by name the Radiophonic Workshop contributors, who were seen as simple "sound effects" people, her work was largely unrecognized for many years by the larger electronic music community.  Famous largely now for her efforts on the instantly-recognizable title music for the "Dr. Who' television show, her work spanned a wide range of electronic genres, reaching its real heights in moody, ambient soundtracks for a range of BBC shows- the best of which were science fiction.

What many do not realize is how primitive the tools used to compose this music were- often using only  banks of single-tone audio frequency generators and reel-to-reel tape decks.  Delia would carefully cut and paste beat loops of tones and found sounds, and then painstakingly beat-match the loops on banks of recorders, recording the result on other decks.  By doing this over and over, she could get remarkably intricate layered compositions.  It is this spirit of remarkable innovation and craftwork that has has endeared her to many electronic musicians, including Sonic Boom (Peter Kember,) who was collaborating with her during the 1990s until her death, long after she had left the BBC and electronic music.

Inspiration can be found in online collections of her work, and in plays ad performances about her life and times.  With a new generation of electronic musicians strongly influenced by the DIY/hacker ethic, it is not surprising to see a significant rise in interest in Delia Derbyshire and her works.  Her influence will continue to be long lived, and like Ada herself, Delia Derbyshire has proven to be a visionary pathbreaker and an inspiration to visionaries everywhere.