Week 1
Today, we were introduced to DIY electronics. In an exploration of the ‘Victorian Synthesizer’, I immediately developed an interest in working with physical circuitry as I had worked with it a bit in the past. Displayed below is a photo documenting a Victorian synthesizer I made with some items in the speaker. When the circuit was completed, it caused the paper and beads inside the speaker to jump up and down in quite an aesthetically pleasing manner.
This allowed me to think of some ideas regarding the presentation of my gallery work, potentially building speakers that could somehow visualize the sound that was coming out of them.
Week 2
In today’s session, we were introduced to Puredata; a visual programming language that is capable of many things, one of which is synthesis and much more. Learning about this open-source software was very eye-opening to me as I had tried to learn various types of programming in the past but never got the hang of it- though learning Puredata was quite intuitive for me to pick up. It was also quite eye-opening to learn about the software’s capabilities, such as video processing, 2D and 3D graphics, input devices, and much more. As someone who wants to incorporate visual elements into my sound work, this was very exciting to learn.
Week 4
In this session, we dove deeper into Puredata and explored more of its capabilities, real-world applications, and a bit more about how to use the software. Learning more about the software really made me keen about working with it for my hand-in to come.
Week 6-7
Today, we revisited DIY electronics, and I was extremely keen to get back into it. While trying to build a synthesizer, I began to realize that circuitry maybe wasn’t for me- I found that the notation used in the diagrams was extremely difficult to memorize and therefore read. I also couldn’t exactly manage to get my soldering technique perfectly, leading me to need to repeatedly shave down oversized pieces of solder. After two weeks and three different attempts, no matter how much I enjoyed the act of putting everything together, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it and decided that creating something in Puredata might be a better option for the hand-in.
Week 7
The Hand-In: The Plan
Having decided that I wanted to create something in Puredata, I now had to decide what I wanted to create, as well as a plan for that project. I had initially thought of doing something that incorporated visuals, however, I could not manage to download the plugin that I would have needed to do so.
I then stumbled across the idea of making an interactive drum machine in Puredata- which I had already previously done in my free time following a tutorial I had found online.
I learned a lot through following this tutorial, however, there were a few things that I didn’t like about it- things I wouldn’t want to include in my final project. The first thing that I didn’t like about it was that the rhythms themselves were not customizable, and the drums were sequenced through a random object. Another thing was that it felt a bit unclear to navigate from an onlooker’s perspective, that was something I definitely wanted to avoid with my finished project.
Week 8
Idea Development & Research
I knew I wanted my finished project to have somewhat customizable rhythms, but still maintain its user-friendliness. I thought that this could be achieved by somehow creating pre-arranged sequences that the user could select in real-time. Upon further researching how I would have been able to do this, I came across arrays, ‘array get’ commands, and ‘array set’ commands, which when structured correctly, allowed me to do exactly what I wanted to be doing in combination with a step sequencer.
Week 10
When it came to piecing everything together, everything was quite intuitive, however, I did run into a problem. I wanted it to be that the user could input the BPM rather than some other (commonly) unfamiliar measurement of time. After a bit more research into metronomes in Puredata, I created a sub-patch for a counter which allowed the BPM to be displayed to the viewer through one of its inlets (pictured below).