Cricket part 2: Robot --> drum synth

One of my earlier posts detailed my abandonded plans for a kids' robot I called Cricket. But the brain module worked just fine and featured a bunch of pots for real-time control, so why not turn it into a drum synthesizer?? It already had a sound system (amp and speaker) and a big yellow arcade button as a trigger.

Cricket the drum synth: The Cricket brain module with more pots, no motors.

The brain module was packed full of cables, controls, and LED diffusion pods, so my first goal was not to modify any circuitry. (I added pots and switches to the front panel, but they plugged into existing headers.)

Second, I didn't want it to take forever, so I kept the feature list simple:

• Two digital oscillators with selectable waveforms (saw/triangle/noise/50% square) and independent pitch controls
• Two-stage (attack and release) amplitude envelope
• Global pitch LFO with controls for speed, depth, and waveform (same choices as the oscillators)
• Osc 2 -> Osc 1 frequency modulation, with adjustable depth and a high/low pitch range switch for Osc 2
• Selectable AND/OR/XORing of the oscillators with each other
• Digital wrapping/clipping distortion with adjustable depth  

(Yes, there's no filter. Deal with it. :) 

I had a switch left over, so it selects the direction the LEDs light up while Cricket is running. There's also an "in" jack that I might in future use as a footswitch or external trigger input. (The MIDI jack isn't functional.)

I'm really pleased with the sound! It's digital and raw, but also organic and surprisingly varied. You can get kicks, snares, metallic plinks, noise bursts, bass sounds, and even vocal-like screams and yawps. I got what I wanted and then some... pretty good for 8-bit waveforms pumped out of a single pin of the dsPIC using 6-bit PWM. The video below is pure multitracked Cricket -- no processing except for a bit of autopanning:

 

Here's another video with a more detailed exploration of the features and sound:

 

Music gear hacks: ugly but fun

Contrary to what you might think from the photos on this site, I do care about aesthetics. I get jazzed about great industrial design, I love a good clean interface, and part of me always wants to take a working project and sculpt it into a beautifully finished product that anyone would be proud to own.

The other 90% of me really likes the "junkyard whirlwind" look.

I was going through old files last week and found some photos/videos of music gear I modified, then sold when I got bored. These were all cool little hacks, some more labor-intensive than others - but they're all pretty ugly.

Circuit-Bent Casio SK-1 Keytar
By far the coolest SK-1 you'll ever see. Unfortunately since I made it around 1998, the only evidence left is this crop of a highly embarrassing snapshot.

Of course I'm not making a "rocking with my keytar" face.

Yes, that's the handhold from a kid's keytar bolted on an SK-1. Yes, that's a full-size guitar strap. Yes, the yellow buttons are wired up as circuit bends. And there are others you can't see - switches, pots, and body contacts - to modify the already crazy SK-1 sample magic.

I loved this thing and only sold it because I thought I could make bank at the height of the SK-1 craze. Which I did. Maybe I sold a little piece of my soul too. 

Check out the rest after the jump...