Circuit bending Alesis HR-16

Circuit bending Alesis HR-16, originally uploaded by recompas.

Sick at home all week and bored to tears I've been trying keep busy doing what work I can from home, writing music, and tonight - building this.

The HR-16 is extremely easy to circuit bend if you stick to the 2 pcm sample chips. There's 25 patch points on this one, and using stackable banana cables the combinations are pretty much endless. Been meaning to bend this one to use in my set for Bent Fest 2010. Sounds samples coming soon, click the flickr set to view a few shots of its guts.

Progress...

Voice of Saturn LFO CV Mod!

Making CV1 more useful by routing it to the LFO speed. Documentation to come on the Curious Inventor site.

New Custom Modular

I'm working on a small custom modular system for a good friend (in trade for his MS-20!). It will consist of a Voice of Saturn Filter, as well as the panel below which has a Music From Outer Space OSC, Thomas White Buchlas LoPass Gate clone + 2 x Voice of Saturn Modulator (LFO, and AR section only). It'll be all banana jack...should be a really fun little unit. I'll get a pic up of the panel when it arrives next week from FrontPanel Express.

modular sounds

Modular by recompas

Done using roland space echo (reverb), custom modular, and blacet modules.

The Voice of PBR

Voice of Saturn + PBR art entry from Travis Thatcher on Vimeo.

Modified Voice of Saturn Synth I made for the PBR Art show tonight in East Atlanta. There's a speaker in the can and it makes lovely noise.

JH Polymoog Resonator with Voltage Control + Voice of Saturn

JH Polymoog Resonator + voltage control and Voice of Saturn from Travis Thatcher on Vimeo.

Recently finished my J.H. Polymoog Resonator clone and stuck it in a temporary case until I find time to make a nice panel for it. The module is great for changing the harmonics of a simple input signal and the multiple filter modes are very useful. On its own, a very nice module, but I wanted to try to add some simple voltage control to make it more interesting. This was easily accomplished with the use of some vtl5c/3 vactrols. You need two vactrols per frequency band. They are basically used the same way that the frequency pots are used, and are soldered in parallel with the pot connections. I used the holes on the board that are meant for the board mounted pots, since my panel mounted ones were soldered into the jumpers. In this configuration, the pots act to offset the voltage control. I soldered the 2 neg legs together, and then ran a wire from that to the ground of the cv input jack. The 2 positive legs of the vactrols were connected, and soldered to a 1k resistor for protection. This was then soldered to the signal pin of the cv jack. All three inputs were done this way, and I normalled the cv inputs jacks, so if a signal is inserted to jack 1, it goes to all 3.

Voice of Saturn Voltage Controlled Filter - Frac Format

Finally got it finished - the VoS VCF, modules and kits will be released within a week or so on curiousinventor.com. The video quality kinda sucks, as I think I screwed up the lighting, but you get the idea.

Voice of Saturn Voltage Controlled Filter (Frac Format) from Travis Thatcher on Vimeo.

Zoroaster Shoutout

thequietus.com has an interview with Atlanta doom band Zoroaster about their new album "Voice of Saturn". They give us a nice little shout out (I recorded some noises on the record), and they're awesome.

Voice of Saturn on the Make Holiday Gift Guide 2009

Yup, pretty awesome. Check the link here. Also, big up to Wire To The Ear for making the Vimeo video they wound up using!

Win a free Voice of Saturn Synthesizer!

Yup, this Thursday at the Star Bar in Atlanta, is a benefit for the Marcus Autism Center. Our good friends over at 4th Ward Heroes and Whynatte will be raffling off a ton of cool prizes including one of our very own Voice of Saturn Synths. Also, check out the great lineup of bands. It'll be a good Thursday.

Voice of Saturn Sequencer music

analog sequencer experimentation by radiophonic

Click here for the blog post on cosmic country noir.

The League of Automatic Composers

Just got my League of Automatic Composers anthology from alku. Awesome packaging, wooden usb drive with tons of music. If you aren't familiar with the League, read this. The League and later the Hub were pioneers in early computer music, with an emphasis on networked devices and interaction. This is proper nerdy stuff, and a big influence on some of my work.

Voice of Saturn Filter in Blacet/Frac Format

Coming in 3-4 weeks, we'll be selling the VoS VCF in Blacet/Frac format.

Click here to go to the Curious Inventor website for more info

80017a

80017a, originally uploaded by recompas.

Repairing an HS60 (Juno 106) - had to make some new legs for an old 80017a...

More Voice of Saturn videos

From the Curious Inventor website

Voice of Saturn fun.

Art Project

Circles 2009 from Travis Thatcher on Vimeo.

Recompas

Recompas, originally uploaded by John!!!.

Last Friday recompas played on the patio outside Eyedrum. We need to do more outdoor shows!

DANCING Pt. IV with E-Squared 4-25-09 at 529

This Saturday, Eric Archer will be joining us with his buddy and performing as E-Squared for a crazy diy techno dance party! These guys are really interesting, and Eric has documented some of the incredible projects he's made on his site. Here's a video from Handmade Music up in Brooklyn on 4.16.09.

As always, Judi Chicago will be performing and then presiding over the freaking crazy ass dance party!