Obscurity Stunt
How I made my own synthesizer
Dec 27, 2015
Years ago as a college student I took a class in electronic music which included some study of electronic additive & subtractive synthesis. In the lab was a giant Buchla synthesizer which to me seemed more like a Radio Shack project than a musical instrument. It had banana plug patch cords and dozens of modules which I could not readily comprehend. The few hours I was able to spend with it yielded little more than sine wave frequency sweeps and some voltage control beeps.
Recently I had been introduced to Silver Apples and was impressed with how they bridged the gap between the weirdness of musical artists like Morton Subotnik and Karlheinz Stockhausen and more contemporary late 60's psychedelic rock and roll. The live drums are "it" man. I was fascinated by how Simeon of Silver Apples crafted a monster synth with scientific test oscillators and guitar effect pedals, triggered by a dozen or so telegraph keys. Very unique and perhaps prone to drifting out of tune due to unstable electrical current, but Simeon typically played sweeps, drones and oscillations rather than traditional western scale note melodies.
Inspired by that chaotic set-up, I returned to studying basic electronic synthesis and found a book by Delton T. Horn called "Electronic Music Synthesizers" from 1980. The book is written like an electronic project guide on how to build your own analog synth with a couple dozen different modules. The promise of 30 year old science project analog synth technology was too alluring to resist.
With parts list in hand I went to Mac's Electronics who set me up with the components needed for a rectangle wave synth for about $30. If you've never been to Mac's it's this electronics store that has been there for so long, it seems like one part swap meet, one part guy living in his basement.
I opted for the "deluxe" model which uses 2 555 timer chips combined as 1 in the 556 model. This allowed two knobs, one for pitch and the other for rectangle wave shape. Yes you heard right, "deluxe" means it does more than a square wave pitch sweep. Some lessons learned: electronics are confusing and my solder game is sloppy, I was able to structure the circuit correctly on the bread-board, but somehow it took a few hours of manipulation and multi-meter testing to get it to work once soldered. It probably didn't help that I cheaped out on the trigger buttons and salvaged those from some other electronic device or that I insisted on squeezing it into an old modem case. Somehow through all this nerd struggle, I ended up with a second trigger button which added a mean noise wave through circuit bending.
The final result is an instrument which is played by holding it in the right hand with fingers on the 2 triggers, while the left hand can rotate the pitch and rectangle wave length knobs. It begins to change sounds as the battery wears down. For some reason it sounds different when plugged into a passive speaker versus how it sounds when plugged into an active mixer. Like I said, electronics are confusing.
While my little 556 is pretty useless as a consistent performing instrument (goal achieved?) it makes some sick noise and provided most of the samples featured in Public Service Announcement.
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"All You Talk About..." is trending...crazy!
Mar 22, 2015
Right now "All You Talk About is World Destruction" is #12 in the Alternative charts. I am super stoked and can't believe that it is getting so much play. Just so random that the song is taking off now.
THANK YOU so much to all who have clicked!
I have a new project called the Obscurity Stunt which is post punk | industrial electronic | dance. Hit me up on twitter @obscuritystunt
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I don't know about art...or music apparently
Apr 18, 2012
KSDT the radio station from UC San Diego hosted a contest called Fortiate. The challenge was to create a song in 48 hours. At midnight on Sunday they announced the genres: Blues & Hip Hop and the topic "evolve."
So I took my beat sample from the Minor Threat song "Stumped" which isn't really punk but in no way sounds hip hop...unless you cut it the right way. I got a little blues inspiration from the Blues Brothers and laid down a funky bass line. I took what seemed like forever to write enough words, compared to the 48 hours I had. The song is fast and has 3 verses of 8 bars each and I ended up repeating some lines rather than including weak ones. Although I did not really talk much about evolution, I did make a conscious effort to avoid hip-hop cliches' as it seems like almost every song in hip hop follows the same formula: I'm a bad ass rapper, I have lot's of money and fame, lots of hot women and maybe throw in some drugs and guns and there you have it.
I was happy that the bass and vocals each were straight runs, no editing. That fit in well with the spirit of Fortiate. What I apparently did not calculate was that the rules simply suggested the genres and topic rather that requiring them. Guess I have seen too many chefs get "Chopped" for not using all the ingredients in their basket and felt compelled to include a 12 bar blues segment in the song. I could have won the "most true to topic" category...
I think the blues section is a horrible addition to the song. It is out of place, cheesy and includes an anemic blues guitar solo. It was a good learning experience though since I do not play lead guitar and had to learn and execute the riff in short order. Perhaps this was the albatross around my neck that cost me votes.
The voting was only allowed by the participants, not the general public. So while this was not a pure popularity contest I am aware that I was the only participant not still in college and that some of the musicians already knew each other. My kind of odds! Categories included, catchiest, best production, most true to topic, most creative and best overall. Three of these I agree were very good entries, but one I must disagree with. The "most creative" and "overall" winner went to Submarines and Astrophysics. The song was a 5 minute clip of some talk show guy discussing why evolution and survival of the fittest does not mean that species are improving in any way except for survival (i.e. stupid people may out breed smarter ones). Lay this over an average hip hop beat and a 1 minute guitar section that at times sounded like he was a roadie, but then got kinda bluesy. I was disappointed that it sounded like it was going to finally launch into a song, but then the guitar disappeared and the talk show dude went on for another 2 minutes.
Am I a hater? Yes in this case because I was doing avant garde crap like this in the 90's and know how easy this was. I didn't think it was creative at all in that the artist did so little in writing a song. Perhaps the voters thought creative meant least mainstream or most unusual. I did vote this song most true to topic since it seemed like the only other entry that included both genres and the topic. I can't fathom how this won best overall.
Catharsis attained! Ahhh. Lessons learned for next year: don't worry about including both genres especially if this would result in a train wreck for the tune. Stick to your strengths (no learning a new skill such as guitar solos). Upload your entry as early as possible: mine was the last one uploaded and was therefore on the bottom of the list, perhaps hurt my voting result.
Overall it was a good experience and I now have a demo of a song I might never have made otherwise. Thanks to Kenny Katayama and KSDT for doing it up!
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New song "Impolite"
Feb 12, 2012
Another song that seems to have taken me a famously long amount of time to complete. The lyrics definitely have had plenty of time to be tested for the fun factor. If they are still fun for me to sing months down the road then they pass. I had an opportunity to try something new on this track. I don't really play keyboard but this song seemed to be begging for some campy, 60's sounding jazz organ. So I wrote and practiced the hell out of the solo at the end. I was able to bang it out on the first take. Yeah!
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