Digital Music Front

Seems like every bit of progress I make with the x0x i run into a hurdle. I made my first mistake this weekend, soldered one of the transistor packages in the wrong spot. Not a big deal you might think, just desolder put it where it goes. Not as simple as it sounds though… the package has 3 pins. They’re close enough together that getting the solder sucker over the joint you just heated before the solder sets again was nigh on impossible. Even when I did manage it, it left enough in the joint to stick fast, which then gave me the problem that I couldnt get the iron onto it to heat it up to get the rest out, and ended up having to put more solder on for the heat to transfer, and starting again. I tried heating all 3 pins at once, but even that didn’t really work. In the end I managed to get one pin free with the solder sucker then heat the remaning two pins enough to pull the part loose with some long nose pliers.

The problem now is that I’m not sure the transistor package survived… apparently they’re somewhat sensitive to heat, and it got pretty hot, on account of me holding the iron to the pins for extended periods of time trying to pry the package loose. The worst bit is its one of the rare parts that will be a bitch to replace if I need too….

Which I don’t know yet, because the next real hurdle I have run into is reading half way thru the build manual that I need an oscilloscope to tune the voltage controlled oscillator which generates the sawtooth and square waves to the right frequencies. I guess I should have read the whole manual before hand or something but seriously What The Fuck? An oscilloscope is not something most people have lying around. Its not even something a few hard core nerds have lying around. I know a bunch of nerdy people, even some nerdy music tech types but none of them owns an oscilloscope. Why? Because oscilloscopes are fucking expensive and they are pretty much useless except for debugging electronic circuits…

So I guess I didn’t really know what I was getting myself in for when I started this project. I figured the most difficult thing about it would be some precision soldering. The impression I got from the whole kit aspect was that this was the kind of project a hobbyist could put together with a bit of smarts. I did not expect to have to spend more on tools and equipment than on the kit itself. I paid US$400 for the kit, delivery, and pre-soldering of a surface mount IC… So far I have spent probably A$200 or so on tools – $120 on a temp controlled soldering iron, the rest on things like a rotating vice, magnifying glass, multimeter, set of pliers & cutters, solder sucker, solder, residue free tape, plastic containers for the components. A reasonable set up for a hobbyist i think. But the minute you tell someone they need a fucking oscilloscope, any pretense of this being a hobby project is out the window, because that is some fucking pro equipment right there. Right now my best option is looking like getting some special probes and some software for my laptop and using the soundcard as a basic scope… but just the probes will cost me like A$70 for a set, but there free/shareware software at least…

However, taking into account the fact I also need to get a regulated variable power supply, which is going to run me about A$100 at a minimum unless I can find a decent one on ebay for less, the bill for tools and equipment is rapidly approaching the A$500 or so the kit cost me… I dont think its the money that has me so pissed off, as much as the fact that it turns out i basically need a fully equipped electronics lab to build this damn thing….  Well, I should qualify. The manual does say that you can wait til the rest of the synth is finished to so you dont need the variable power to test, and you can tune the VCO with a guitar tuner when its finished I spose… but being that this is my first project… not testing as i go seems like a bad way to go about things…

Anyway, I will post an update once I figure out what I am going to do. In the meantime, the latest status pics:

This is the completed sawtooth generator.

The parts for the square wave generator are not on the board yet… the build manual says to test and tune the sawtooth generator before continuing.

The back of the PCB where i struggled to remove the misplaced transistor

This somewhat blurry shot shows the back of the board where I misplaced the transistor then struggled to remove it. The 3 pins in a row in the middle, you can see how the area of the board around there is a real mess now.

Sorry for the blurry pics, just got a new camera and still figuring out how to use it.

Progress is slow but steady. After a couple of multi hour solder sessions over the last few weekends, I have completed the power supply. And it works. Output voltages are within acceptable ranges. Here is what the IO board look like now :

doesn't look too bad... on this side of the board anyway....

And here’s a photo of my work space, just because….

Not as messy as it is most of the time when I'm working

Today I soldered the DIP sockets onto the main and IO PCBs. It was a little scary at first, the pins are all very close together, but once I got used to the fact that the wet solder wouldnt run off the metal pads on the PCB it became easier. My hand is still not steady enough, left hand shakes like a epileptic when im trying to hold the solder steady… still, I managed to get all the sockets in without too much fuss. dropped some solder between two of the pads at one point but I managed to clean it up, and the hot iron left some scratches in the board in a couple of places, crossed one of the traces at one point, but over all i dont think i’ve done any serious damage.

Anyway, here’s what it looks like now:

x0xb0x Main PCB with DIP sockets and LED resistors soldered on

..and the IO PCB

x0xb0x IO PCB with DIP sockets and USB connector soldered on

The USB connection and bits around it were pres-soldered, on the underside there is a surface mount UART which there is no way in hell I could have done myself.

Next on the list is the power supply but I have to go buy a wall adapter to fit the socket first. Also need to get a magnifying glass, the solder joints are actually so tiny I cant tell from looking at them with a naked eye if they are ok or not.

Once again I have left this site to rot for far too long. To be honest I haven’t done much music related work since I finished producing So Cold, although I do have a finished but unreleased track just waiting on mix down which I should get to soon.

I have taken on a new music related project though, I’m building a x0xb0x This is a pretty huge undertaking on my part. For one, I hate soldering, or more specifically, I hate it because I suck at it. Bad. My hands are just not steady enough for fine joint solder work. For two, this is my first DIY electronics project since making an LED light circuit in scouts when I was 12. This project has over 500 parts. So far I’ve only soldered one set of resistors onto the board, but I will be working on it regularly because I want to finish it by the end of the year.

Why would I take on such a project when I doubt my own ability to pull it off, you might ask? Well the same could be asked of any of my musical undertakings really, but in this instance, there’s the two reasons: 1) I wanted a hardware synth to play with; and 2) The x0xb0x is a replica of possibly the most iconic synth ever made – the Roland TB-303. Even Fatboy Slim said, Everybody Needs a 303. So assuming I some how do manage to put it together in a working fashion, I will have the satisfaction of having built a very cool piece of kit.

Wish me luck!

Well you might have thought after my last few posts that this track was never going to see the light of day… its been an extremely protracted process, as usual, but it is finally DONE! I actually played it out at a party on the weekend which I DJed at and it got a fairly good reception. I wont lie, I’m fucking proud of it. Its no Astral Projection but its easily my best work to date, in terms of musical complexity and production quality. Big Thanks to Tom for the post-prod-pointers, it really helped in the end. Anyway, you can download for your listening pleasure below – VBR mp3 or uncompressed WAV. Feedback is appreciated so if you have something to say please leave a comment.

Sack the DJ – So Cold (mp3)

Sack the DJ – So Cold (wav)

Another few months, another complete lack of posting. I have at least, not been entirely unproductive. I’ve been working on a track for a couple of months now. Actually its finished, and has been for a while, stuck in that same old post production loop. After an initially promising mix turned out to be completely gutless on a system with a decent sub, I tried cranking the bass up with disastrous results… distortion, mud, ick. So I got in a friend who is a professional sound engineer and a much more experienced producer than me to have a listen and help with the levels. He showed me a few tricks for making room in the mix for each sound and shit, but mostly he just told me to turn everything down and to cut rather than boost when trying to emphasise certain sounds.

So after a few 2 hour long sessions going thru the whole track from start to finish I’ve managed to get the levels under control. Now it just needs to be mastered, which apparently I have been going about all wrong. So I’m looking forward to getting that done, and this track being as good as it can be. As soon as I have the time that is…

Yeah, I moved house last week after getting notice to vacate my last apartment 2 weeks before christmas. Am now moved into a much nicer and more importantly larger house a bit further out of town. Sharing now, but at least its with my old housemate who I was actually able to live with reasonably easily and her new BF. Not quite fully moved in yet tho, studio is not set up as it were so it may be a few weeks before I get any more work done… who knows, maybe by the next time I post here I might have a track ready…

So a couple of weeks ago I ordered some books off Amazon:

One of the areas I’ve struggled with as a producer is that although I have a fairly good grasp of signal routing and how certain effects processors work, I don’t really understand much of the synthesis process and I think that perhaps if I did, I’d be a lot better at generating the kinds of sounds I want to make… so here’s hoping I learn something. If nothing else I’ll have some guidance into parameter tweaking and tuning and get more of a feel for how each one affects the sound shape. I’ll post a review when I’ve read them… which may tale a while knowing me.

Again with the slackness, and again due mostly to a lack of progress. I have been working on a new track lately and I’m happy with the way its coming along. I’ve been trying to modify my work flow to just put in an hour here and and hour there instead of setting aside whole days as that rarely happens and often I find when I do that I’m just not in the mood anyway. I tried to set aside some days in my calendar to work specifically on my music, but on the first day I ended up having to reinstall Logic because it was crashing on start up, and the second time I just couldn’t really get into the groove. So now I’m trying to take advantage of the mood when it strikes me, even if its only for an hour. So far the results are promising. I still have 2 unfinished tracks which need work but I think I might leave them til my new years holiday to work on again.

My plans to buy a hardware synth have been shelved for the moment mostly due to financial reasons. I have been looking into getting a DIY synth kit just for the sake of learning about how synths work better and having a bit of fun but I don’t know if my solder hand is up to the task, its never been very steady and something requiring fine motor control like a PCB might not be within my capabilities.

Yes I have been massively slack about updating this site. There are any number of excuses I could make, but in essence it all boils down to one thing: I haven’t been working on music at all lately. You would think after buying new monitors I might have lept back into it, eager to finish off some of the stuff I’ve left unmastered, but no. Its the same old story, I’m scared of it, I’m not compelled to work at it. I went out to see Protoculture a couple of weeks ago, one of my musical heroes. Every time I’m at a gig listening to great music I get this wave of motivation to get back into my own work, but i think its 9/10ths wishful thinking that one day I might be able to produce stuff as awesome as that.

Of course, my solution to this latest bout of procrastination is thinking I now need to buy a hardware synth, which I conveniently cannot afford right now, thus affording me another excuse to not do anything new until I can. Yes, I realise its getting pathetic at this point, but there is some actual justification for this new desire. As much as I love Logic and Reason, I find one of the most frustrating things about them is controlling synth parameters. Doing things ‘manually’ with the mouse is pain and it also restricts you to controlling one thing at a time. Mapping controller dials is an improvement, but I’ve found that in Logic its a pain in the ass to do, especially on 3rd party plug-ins, and in Reason the default maps it creates always seem to map to the oddest parameters (at least for my controller). My controller also only has 8 rotaries so its not enough to control a whole soft synth.

When you’re writing music in a studio environment, the less efficient means of control is less of a problem because generally you’re not trying to tweak things in real time. If you just want to jam however, its less practical. I envy The Rockstar Philosopher for his ability to just pick up his guitar and start mucking around, for me its a much more involved process which just serves as another deterrent to me actually sitting down and doing some work…

Oh yeah, Hi to all my visitors from ifeelmyself.com. My appologies about the state of the site, haven’t put nearly as much work into it as I should have. Chances are you’ve probably heard the demos already but if you want to hear some of the stuff I produce for myself then here are a couple of links until I get my shit together:

Sack the DJ featuring the Rockstart Philospher – Try harder

Sack the DJ – ninism

Come back and visit some time, read my hilarious rants and occasionally I will post a new track.