Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Around and Around


My good friend Jesse Brew was recently featured on the iso50 blog by Scott Hasnen. Iso50 is a blog I've long time viewed which focus is primarily design in its many outlets. Jesse from when I first met him, was a talented graphic designer, but as the years passed, he is becoming known for his photos.
Jesse Brew : Around and Around
Iso50: feature

Monday, August 23, 2010

Sound Design

I came across this video about hand built motorcycles and was absolutely blown away with the quality of the piece. Not only was the sound amazing with is mixing, details, and contrast. The overall editing, picture quality, and shots where great. I want one of his bikes.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Herbie Hancock jams with his Fairlight CMI

Pretty sweet video of Herbie Hancock rock out on the Fairlight. There also many other great synths to be spotted in the background.

Casio Vl-Tone

As you can see from a few post down, this is not my first attempt at bending my Vl-tone. The first time through was OK, but glitchy. For my top panel I used a piece of stainless steel that unfortunately conducted the current from my potentiometers dropping the pitch. Also at the time, the only wire I had was too thick and stiff to work with. So I decided to rip it all apart and start over. This is what I did:

So here are the mods. I used a little help from Casper electronics, he has a mod sheet that gives you a few patch points and three pots. I ended up only using four of the patch points and all three of his pot mods. I also added three extra pots by externally replacing the VLs internal pots. Then I tested and tested and found twelve other patch points that I liked. So that is from the left all the pots and the black RCA jacks.

As for the white RCA jacks, they function as a switch bay triggered by the switches to the right. The smart observer will notice there are nine switches in the array. One turns the bay into a multiple, the top row (on-off-on) engages the bay or sends it to the switches below. Those switches a attached to capacitors and diodes to further change the sound. The pots about the switch array are part of a home made low pass filter with frequency and resonance. Then there is a volume and reset button.

Video to come.