Doing MIDI With Discrete Logic Is Neat, If Not Particularly Useful

September 13, 2024 by Lewin Day 4 Comments

MIDI is normally baked into the chipset of a synthesizer, or something you use a microcontroller to handle. But that’s not the only way to speak the language! [Kevin] decided to have some fun doing MIDI with discrete logic instead, with some pretty neat results.

[Kevin] had previously built a control voltage step sequencer called the Baby8, which relied on 4017 counter ICs. He later realized he could repurpose three of his old Baby8 PCBs to create something that could generate MIDI using nothing more than discrete logic. The stack of three boards generate a simple MIDI message—in this case, a two-byte Program Change command. At 8 bits per byte, plus a start and stop bit, that comes out to 20 bits in total. The bits to be sent are configured via the switches on the PCBs, and clocked out through the counter ICs via a clock running at the MIDI baud rate of 31,250 Hz.

Obviously, it’s not very practical to code your MIDI commands manually via DIP switches and then clock them out in this fashion. But—it does work, and you can do it! If you wanted to build an old-school logic circuit that just spits out simple short MIDI commands, this is one way to go about it.

We’ve seen [Kevin]’s work before, too, like this neat musical rotary phone build.

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Digital Bumper Sticker Tells Everyone What You’re Listening To

September 12, 2024 by Lewin Day 23 Comments

Bumper stickers are usually political, crude, or otherwise inflammatory. Rather a more fun example is this digital creation from [Guy Dupont], who made a bumper sticker that broadcasts what he’s listening to on the stereo.

[Guy] found a nice wide 11-inch bar LCD that was the right aspect ratio to suit the “bumper sticker” aesthetic. It had an HDMI interface, so he decided to drive it with a Raspbery Pi Zero 2W. Power for the system was derived from 12-volt lines going to his vehicle’s rear view camera. For an enclosure, he simply stuck the Pi and a buck converter on the back of the display and heat shrinked the whole thing. He also threw some magnets in there to stick it to the car.

How does the screen know what song to display? Well, [Guy] already has his Spotify listens scrobbling to Last.fm. Thus, he just made a script that scrapes his Last.fm page, which runs on a Particle Boron microcontroller, which has a cellular connection of its own. The Boron gets the song data, and spits it over to the Pi via Bluetooth. Then the Pi generates an image for the display.

Oh, and there’s also a neat Easter Egg. In honor of brat summer, the background changes to #8ACE00 green if the system detects you’re listening to Charli XCX. Neat.

It’s a neat build with a lot of moving parts. We’re surprised we haven’t seen anything like this before though, it’s really rather fun. Also, how’s about that taste of the old Internet—when was the last time you heard somebody mention scrobbling? Gosh, we’re getting old.

We’ve featured some of [Guy’s] works before, too, like the amusing Mailblocks project. Video after the break.

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Building A Subwoofer Box Out Of Decking Material

September 12, 2024 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

When you go to build a subwoofer box, wood is the most common choice. When it came to his project, though, [Startup Chuck] decided to go a different route entirely. Rather than the usual plywood or MDF, he decided to try Trex decking instead. Why? He had some lying around, and he suspected it might just sound good.

If you’re unfamiliar with it, Trex decking is a composite material made of recycled materials like reclaimed wood and plastic film. The best part, though? Trex decking is twice as dense as MDF. That makes it good for speaker box use because it flexes less and thus absorbs less energy from the subwoofer. [Chuck] walks us through cutting out the parts for the box and the subsequent assembly. Ultimately, it’s not dissimilar from building a speaker box out of wood; the material is simply not that different—just denser.

[Chuck] also puts his new sub through some quick little tests, demonstrating that minimal vibration is passed through to the enclosure itself. He reports that the final build has a “nice, deep sound.” Meanwhile, if you don’t like working with your hands, you could always 3D-print your speaker enclosures instead.

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The Commodordion Gets A Big Usability Upgrade

August 28, 2024 by Lewin Day 14 Comments

The chiptune scene is dominated by Game Boys and other Nintendo hardware, but one should never forget the gorgeous, beautiful tones that come from the hallowed Commodore 64. [Linus Åkesson] knows this well, and it’s at the heart of his work on the Commodordion. Now, he’s built an even better version.

The original idea he had was to build an accordion-like control surface for the SID chip in a Commodore 64. The device is capable of creating beautiful accordion-like music with a simple 8-bit flair. He has since dubbed the original Commodordion the “bass Commodordion,” while the new version is classified as a tenor instrument.

The prime upgrades are ergonomic. The previous instrument was too heavy, with the left hand having to carry an entire Commodore 64 on its own. It was also hard to reach the keys. The new version is much lighter, with one of the two C64s of the original having been removed. The supporting electronics have been redesigned to more neatly fit into a space behind the bellows.

The result is a machine that’s far easier to play, and one that won’t injure the user in extended play sessions. “It’s now a pleasure, not a pain,” says [Linus]. The payoff in usability is obvious, and the tunes themselves are hauntingly beautiful.

We first covered the Commordordion back in 2022, but it wasn’t the first time we saw one of [Linus]’s impressive creations.

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Jangle Box Plucks Strings At The Press Of A Button

August 21, 2024 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

There are some that enjoy the human element of a musical performance, delighting in the unique way an artist teases the desired sound from their instruments. Then there are those of us who listen to random bleeps, bloops, and buzzes tortured out of some crusty sound chip pulled from an 8-bit computer. It’s all very subjective.

It seems to us that the Jangle Box, created by [Rich Bernett], lands somewhere in the middle. A human is still playing the instrument, but they aren’t directly touching the strings. Instead, buttons and a potentiometer on the front of the device are used to control four small hobby motors that slap their respective strings with what appears to be the remnants of plastic propellers — we’d guess these motors were pulled from cheap personal fans. Standard guitar tuner knobs can be used to adjust the tension of each string, providing further control over the sounds produced by the device.

In the video below, [Rich] briefly explains the operation of the Jangle Box, and then launches into a performance of sorts. The goal here really isn’t to “play” the instrument in the traditional sense. Rather, he records the various noises it produces, normalizes them, and sorts them into a full octave of notes so he can use them in future compositions. The last few minutes of the video contain some electronic beats made up of the samples created from the Jangle Box.

If you’re one of his Patreon supporters you can download the sample pack yourself, otherwise, you’ll have to make your own version of the instrument to get your hands on that electro-tangy sound.

This isn’t the first original [Rich Bernett] musical creation to grace these pages, back in 2020 we covered his Cassettone synth.

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Get More Freedom With This Guitar Pedal

August 19, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

When the electric guitar was first produced in the 1930s, there was some skepticism among musicians as to whether or not this instrument would have lasting impact or be a flash-in-the-pan novelty. Since this was more than a decade before the invention of the transistor, it would have been hard then to imagine the possibilities that a musician nowadays would have with modern technology to shape the sound of an instrument like this. People are still innovating in this space as well as new technology appears, like [Gary Rigg] who has added a few extra degrees of freedom to a guitar effects pedal.

A traditional expression pedal, like a wah-wah pedal, uses a single motion to change an aspect of the sound of the guitar, and is generally controlled with the musician’s foot. [Gary]’s pedal, on the other hand, can be manipulated in three different ways to control separate elements of the instrument’s sound. It can be pitched forward and back like a normal effects pedal, but also rolled side-to-side and twisted around its yaw axis. The pedal has a built-in IMU to measure the various position changes of the pedal, which is then translated by an RP2040 microcontroller to a MIDI signal which controls the three different aspects of the sound digitally.

While the yaw motion might be difficult for a guitarist to create with their foot while playing, the idea for this pedal is still excellent. Adding in a few more degrees of freedom gives the musician more immediate control over the sound of their instrument and opens up ways of playing that might not be possible or easy with multiple pedals, with the MIDI allowing for versatility that might not be available in many analog effects pedals. Not every pedal needs MIDI though; with the help of a Teensy this digital guitar pedal has all its effects built into a self-contained package.

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Moonbounce Music

August 11, 2024 by Adam Fabio 7 Comments

There’s something inspiring about echos. Who among us hasn’t called out or clapped hands in a large space just to hear the sound reflected back? Radio takes this to a whole new level. You can bounce signals from buildings, aircraft, the ionisphere, or even the Moon itself. Humans have been bouncing radio waves from the moon for decades. It’s been used at war, and in peacetime. But [Hainbach] might be the first to use it for music.

Earth Moon Earth or EME communication is quite popular with amateur radio operators. With the right equipment, you can bounce a signal off the moon and hear the echo around 2.5 seconds later. The echo isn’t quite normal though. The moon and the earth are both rotating and moving in relation to each other. This causes Doppler shifts. At higher frequencies, even the craters and surface features of the moon can be heard in the echo.

[Hainbach] spent some time learning about moonbounce at a large radio telescope, and wanted to share this strange audio effect with the world. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the large microwave dish required for this. The next best thing was to create an application which emulates the sound of a moon bounce. To this end, [Hainbach] created a Moon Echo, an audio plugin that emulates a moonbounce.

Moon Echo was created using sounds from a soprano signer and a double bass. [Hainbach] had to be careful not to be too musical, as ham operators are not allowed to broadcast music. This meant all the tests had to be broken into short non-musical clips. Rolling all this empirical data into a model took quite a bit of work, but the end result is worth it.

If you’d like to learn how to moonbounce yourself, check this article out.
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