LVL1 » synth

DIY Isomorphic Keyboard

Christopher — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:09:35 +0000

This is a velocity sensitive MIDI isomorphic keyboard. 192 total keys. The project came out of Louisville Soundbuilders, a fortnightly meeting of circuitbenders, synth engineers and experimental musicians. After seeing a couple of my failed variations of a single-bus isomorphic keyboard, Tim was intrigued enough to design one even better. He designed multiple PCBs that sandwich together with multiple switch types for velocity sensitive keypresses.

More development on the way! We’re working on molds/methods for making hexagonal keycaps. And I’m working on an Arduino-based controller as an alternative to the midibox controller Tim has working already.

Watch the progress at http://soundbuilders.lvl1.org

Teletron Composition @ Louisville Soundbuilders

Christopher — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:36:35 +0000

Video of the Teletron Demonstration. This was performed at the 1st meeting of Louisville Soundbuilders at LVL1.

Score by Robert Schneider (The Apples in stereo). Performed by Robert Beatty (Hair Police) and Robert Schneider, September 20, 2010, at LVL1 Hackerspace (Louisville, Kentucky), using two Moog MG-1 synthesizers with two Teletron mind-control interfaces. Conducted by LVL1 president Chris Cprek (Pax Titania, Nzambi).

From another angle:

Post demonstration Q & A:

Louisville Soundbuilders Meeting

Christopher — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:01:36 +0000

This Monday Sept 20th we’re starting a Louisville Soundbuilder’s group that will be meeting every other Monday. We meet to talk shop about analog and digital synthesizers, circuit-bending, electronic noisemakers, computer music, etc. You are encouraged to bring equipment and show off some sounds. The focus is DIY and is a great resource for people that want to learn how to get started.

This first meeting will feature demonstrations from Robert Schneider of Apples in Stereo, Elephant 6, et al. He will be demonstrating his Teletron, a hacked Mindflex device for completely mind controlled synthesis experimentation. Some video here:

I will be demonstrating my homebuilt analog synthesizers, including exotic interfaces like the Klee sequencer (a bit shifted analog sequencer) and some experimentations in isomorphic keyboard design.

The meeting is at 8pm sharp, free to anyone who wants to attend, learn and contribute.
Help out by promoting the facebook event page:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=127615557287197&ref=ts

LVL1 Events this Weekend

Christopher — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:37:39 +0000

This weekend is filled with awesome events LVL1 is a part of.

Friday is Actor’s Theatre of Louisville rooftop concert. We are labeled as AWESOMENESS on the flyer. Several members of LVL1 will be showing off projects at the event. There will be bands, art, music and a cash bar on the roof of the Actor’s Theatre parking garage.

Saturday afternoon between 1pm and 5pm we will be hosting Mitch Altman and Jimmie Rodgers for their traveling electronics workshop. Mitch and Jimmie are currently touring Midwest hackerspaces, teaching electronics and soldering to anyone interested *for free*. Mitch is the inventor of the TV-B-Gone, Trip Glasses, a founder of Noisebridge in San Francisco, widely regarded as a pioneer of Virtual Reality and all around cool guy. Jimmie Rodgers is a full time hacker, maker and circuit bender. He sells kits for Open Heart v2.0, Atari Punk Console and LoL shield. Instruction is free and they are selling kits for attendees to build *at cost of materials* in the $10-$30 range. LVL1 is excited to have them!

And this Sunday night at the Rudyard Kipling I will be performing my homemade synthesizers in my band Nzambi.

Synth Resurrection

Christopher — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:07:32 +0000

Last thursday night, a tragic event occurred. My bandmate’s Nord Lead 2 synthesizer darted in front of a car and was run over. Crushed, mangled and inoperational.

Before:

He brought the wreckage over to my place Friday night. I worked a little synth triage and was able to get it banged out and functioning. Some hammering, superglue, resoldering to a busted power supply and it lives again!

After:

I’m calling it the Nord Bleed. It’s completely operational and playable. The high C key was pulverized beyond repair, so I left it off. I need to source some replacement potentiometers and knobs. The are all 100ohm pots, but have an uncommon 4mm D-shaft I haven’t found a replacement for yet. Once the bent and snapped pots are replaced it will be 100% tweakable again. I have much respect for the Swedes at Clavia and their roadworthy (literally) engineering.

Finishing the custom front panel Klee

Christopher — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:33:04 +0000

Here’s some video of the Klee sequencer in action. Along with details on finishing up from previous posts. Continued from

So we left off with a PCB ready to go. I used my trusty tin snips to cleanly cut off the excess board. It’s a tight fit underneath the panel.

You can’t really see it too well in this photo, but there’s an LED soldered onto the board. A clear-shaft potentiometer goes over the LEDs. So the pot you see there already has an LED underneath it.

Here’s the PCB with all the LEDs, pots and switches soldered in.

Whoops forget something here. Because the top traces would quickly run over each other.. And because I need to run wires to the main PCB anyway.. I’m running wires off this board back to the PCB. Rather than running on these wires out the side, I’ve drilled some holes to thread them through the center where there is ample room.

Here’s the crazy mess from the back.

I started testing and sure enough I had plenty of screw ups. Lots of pots wired backwards. Lots and LEDs going into the wrong connector ends. A pinched cable inadvertently, grounding to the panel… The usual stuff! But one thing I missed when making the PCB was to connect my inner grounding bus to the outer. So the inner grounding bus was actually floating, causing all kinds of bizarre issues! Here’s the quick fix.

So my initial idea was to leave the clear shaft potentiometers exposed so they’d light up. But the small LEDs diffused too much light to my taste. I picked out a fairly high lumen value for these LEDs, but you never know until it’s done. However, it gave me an idea to salvage some aluminum knobs from another project!

Slap on a 1/4″ bit, place them up against a piece of MDF and bore out the centers!

And here’s the finished panel! The inkscape layers matched up so precisely, it took a little work to get the PCB flush with the drilled out panel. But it works and it looks great! Fun to play too.