Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Tech Details on SolderSmoke's Theme Music

This will be discussed in the next podcast, so I thought I'd share some tech details on our theme music. From the artist, Maestro Moj:

Geeky details about the music:
In the homebrew spirit, I tried to make all the sounds with instruments which I had soldered
together myself. These were a Formant music synthesizer designed by C. Chapman from the Dutch/British "Elektor" magazine, circa 1977, and a FatMan synthesizer kit from PAiA Electronics. I play them through an ancient Kustom 200 guitar amplifier, which I've caused to smoke at least twice. The beginning is my K2 being powered on and tuned across 80 meters. I cheated and used a real gong at the end which a good friend went to the trouble of finding and buying in China, but I fed the sound through a PIC Polywhatsit designed by John Becker and described in Britain's "Everyday Practical Electronics," December 2001.
If anyone wants to sing along, it seems to me that the words are: " - Sol-Der Smo-Oke, - Sol-Der
Smoke (repeat over and over) "
Music, like all home-brew, is never truly done. Next time I'll try to get a theremin working
again - there's a radio-circuitried musical instrument!
If my grandson has kept the site up, there may be garage band music of his and mine on MySpace
under Mikeandtheceiling.
Enjoy!
Mark "moj" Johnson
W8MOJ

5 comments:

  1. Speaking of homebrewing musical instruments, check out Raymond Scott, a man who definitely had the knack.

    http://raymondscott.com/ (especially look at the photos page)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Scott


    73,
    Nicholas LaPointe, KB1SNG

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  2. Nice! Ditto the Raymond Scott and Harry Partch references.... ..

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  3. For those of you who might wish to venture into the world of computer music...http://www.csounds.com/
    A bit off-topic..but you never know. 73
    XE1GXG

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  4. Sadly John Becker is no longer with us, he became a silent key a couple of years back and is much missed by those of us that followed his articles in EPE, and communicated with him through email and on the EPE forum.

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  5. Tom Polk, a radionut, built a Tannerin for Brian Wilson's live tour:
    http://www.tompolk.com/Tannerin/Tannerin.html

    Gil

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