More onehander

I made another little onehander circuit today. It relies on a combination of electronic feedback and waveform sequencing to achieve quite a high degree of variety using only one parameter for real time performance control.

The sounds that can be made with this circuit are harsh but at the same time organic and the changes over time can be quite fluid in nature. This circuit represents an enormous, unexplored sonic landscape as the potentiometer control is extremely sensitive and the circuit itself appears to have some sort of memory effect (in that the previous position of the potentiometer, in certain situations, helps to determine the sound outcome of the current potentiometer position).

The list of electronic components is relatively small: a potentiometer, three resistors, five capacitors and seven low-level integrated circuits.

I am very pleased with the outcome. By replacing one of the resistors with various other resistance values, it is possible to achieve quite different results.

You can listen to some line-out recorded tracks here: http://www.milkcrate.com.au/_other/onehander/. The files in question are labeled 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3. The only difference in the circuit is the value of one of the resistors. All of the tracks have been in recorded in one pass per track. None of the tracks have been edited apart from having been normalised on a track by track basis. Note that all of the files are encoded in mono, hence relatively small file sizes.

Onehander

I have been working on a circuit i call 'onehander'. The idea is to have a linear, one dimensional parameter space (for example, a potentiometer) that someone can play with one hand. And although this simple parameter space changes only one parameter (in the case of this breadboarded example, the speed of a control oscillator), the amount of variety in the audio output of the circuit is relatively large.


You can listen to a direct-input recording here. Please note that the audio has not been edited and has been recorded in a single, continuous take changing only the potentiometer. You can also watch a video of the thing in action here.

You can see a schematic here. Choose values from 22kΩ and above for R2 - R16.