Red Five reporting in

Posted on 14th December 2010 in Something Daily

The semester is over. I mean, I still have finals to take in the next two weeks, but I don’t really have to go to any of my classes anymore apart from those. I’m free, sort of. I can do what I want now, which largely involves blogging and gaming. But that’s not all! I do other stuff too, sometimes! More on that later.

As I mentioned yesterday, I only got four hours of sleep Sunday night due to mitigating circumstances, so I was, as predicted, completely toasted by the end of yesterday. I was essentially falling asleep during our film mix session, and I actually did upon trying to watch a skate video with London when I got home. Actually, we were both totally exhausted. We went to bed at eleven, which was awesome. I really need to do that a bit more often. It feels so good today, like I can stand up and face the problems of the day like a champ (for example, the ridiculous 20 degree weather this morning that had my fingers falling off inside my gloves). It’s ok though, I have a rad rocking awesome pea coat, a sweater, gloves and a scarf. Problem solved. We’ll be presenting our film mix tonight at the class, and I’m hoping it goes smoothly. Unfortunately I can’t post it here, because it’s part of a larger project that’s not mine. But instead, here is a photo of my completed electronics project!

That’s my MIDI controller, “Red Five”! It’s an Arduino and a PC board encased in a tin Star Wars lunchbox that I found at a comic book store on St. Mark’s. In auto mode, it sends out a constant stream of MIDI note-on messages, with pitch, rate, and note length determined by the knobs. Also, every time it sends a note, the Death Star blinks. In manual mode, it’s the same except that instead of sending a constant stream of MIDI notes, notes are only sent while the blue button is pressed. The cables coming out of it are a USB (for power) and a MIDI connector (for data). I’m also going to look into using a normal wall wart for power instead of a USB cable – it seems a bit annoying to have to have a computer present whenever this thing is used. But yeah, it’s rad, and it actually works exactly as I intended it to, unlike last semester’s fiasco of a “Darth Compressor”. I’ve tested it with PureData notein patches as well as my Alesis Ion – the latter is especially cool because of all the physical sound controls it has that let you warp the synthesis in crazy ways.

The great thing about this project is that, since it only generates commands and not actual audio, I can connect it to any old instrument with a MIDI in and demonstrate it for people. As long as that particular instrument sounds cool, people will assume that “Red Five” is the one making the cool sounds, when in reality it’s essentially just “telling” the instrument what to do. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that here. Never mind, there is no “should”, anyway.

I just got another letter from my good friend Monica, who’s doing a gap year in France, so I’m going to go write her back. As an epilogue to this sweet Tuesday morning post, I would like to share with you the current state of the paper recycling bin in our apartment.

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Life Electronic

Posted on 12th December 2010 in Something Daily

Yesterday and today were both very much electronics-themed. I went in to Steinhardt (again!) at 11 AM yesterday to help a classmate with her final project. I thought helping her was going to be pretty easy, but it ended up being a big pain due to the lack of barebones MIDI equipment available on the 8th floor. I spent about 2 hours banging my head against a wall over the apparent absence of MIDI note reception by the Arduino, finally managing to pinpoint the problem. I think it has to do with the fact that the MIDI controllers available were sending more than just note messages. Either way, she thought I was quite helpful and took me out to lunch – a place called Cafetasia that has a lot of different types of Asian food. I got something called Gyo-Za and it was nuts. Not that it actually contained nuts, but it was just awesome. Crazy delicious and covered in soy sauce. Also, this was around 3:30 PM. So once again, I succeeded in spending most of my day in the Music Tech department. That’s why I’m staying far, far away from that place today.

Also, last night was the Charlie Brown christmas special viewing in our room! I made everyone hot chocolate and we watched the special…it was awesome. It’s great to have everyone together like that, and I liked feeling like the “mom” of the situation, as odd as that may sound.

I woke up at around 9:30 this morning and got immediately to work on finishing my own electronics project, which is due on Thursday. I had originally intended to use a multiplexer to increase the possible number of controls for MIDI note sends, but upon trying it again this morning I sort of got over that idea. So I got some knobs and a PC board, as well as another star wars lunchbox to use as a case, and soldered the whole thing in about half an hour. Once again: first try, no mistakes. I’m pretty much the man at soldering. I don’t know if you knew. So apart from putting the whole circuit in its enclosure, I’m done with the project. And after that, it’s just a few more final exams and I’m good to go. I was expecting to work on this project all day, but now I have time to do whatever (that is, play TF2!). Good times. And I’m going to the Upright Citizens again tonight, hopefully it’s as good as it was last week, if not better.

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Bagel MIDI

Posted on 4th December 2010 in Something Daily

My recent weeks have been marked by a marked lack of concern for the impending wave of school work that’s going to come with finals week. The projects that I have to do by then have been weighing on me slightly since before thanksgiving, but I haven’t been worrying about them too much. Specifically, the Recording Tech project of recording a “Get Low” cover, the Audio for Video postproduction sound for a film, and the Electronics MIDI controller are the big ones that I haven’t been freaking out about. I woke up this morning and realized, though, that while my audio projects are far enough along now, the MIDI controller wasn’t really started at all. I still haven’t even bought all the parts I need for it, in fact. But at least I woke up this morning wanting to get something done. I spent about two hours configuring everything needed for MIDI transmission and reception with the Arduino, successfully generating MIDI output from the Arduino with a series of potentiometers that determine repetition speed, MIDI note, and note length, and then playing MIDI notes in Pd. So it’s going quite nicely as of now. I’m going to try and incorporate the multiplexer into the design a little later to allow for more comtrols. This thing is going to be bristling with knobs. I need a creative case idea though. Last year my compressor was inside a darth vader lunchbox, and I need something equally awesome this time. If I had that project here with me, I’d totally take a picture of it, by the way. It’s fantastic.

Here’s the MIDI controller project right now.

So that project is due in less than two weeks. Honestly though, I think I’ll be done with it by tomorrow evening. At least the design part. Soldering is another story. Which reminds me my soldering iron is a piece of crap! It’s Craftsman, so you wouldn’t expect that. But the tips it came with are slowly melting under the heat of the iron. When I was making the compression circuit last year, every time I touched the tip to a bit of metal, part of the end would just slough off. Now there’s a little horseshoe shape in the end of my once-square iron tip. Lame! But I used it today and it still works, it’s just a bit of a different technique now. So yeah, I’ll try to modify the code for the multiplexer tonight. But right now, I’m playing Nintendo 64 with Eric. Mario 64 and Ocarina, namely. These games will never get old even though they’re two of the first I ever played.

On an unrelated note, today was the first day that I bought breakfast food from Food Emporium in about two weeks. I’d been subsisting on Dunkin’ Donuts bagels and paper-tasting cream cheese for that interim period, and it’s amazing not have to do that anymore. And real orange juice! Tropicana Pure Premium forever.

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Project Rundown ’09

Posted on 8th November 2010 in Something Daily

These last few days have been a bit crazier than usual, as you may have been able to tell from the posts. First off, I didn’t get a chance to make post on Friday, as I spent basically the whole day in motion: either at work, on a bus (with no internet), or with my family – I was completely exhausted. The weekend was  hectic in general, as I was running all over the place doing family things and trying to squeeze in some time to hang out with Quinn. I braved the arctic climate of Phoenixville to watch my sister’s soccer game (she lost, unfortunately) and I think I may have picked up a cold as a result of not wearing enough layers. I got back to New York late yesterday evening and stayed up late jamming on Pink Floyd songs with my roommate, and as a result accidentally slept through class this morning. Oops. That doesn’t usually happen.

We’re entering that period of the semester where the work starts to get really crazy with all the various deadlines for different classes. A rundown of some of the projects I’m currently undertaking: a class of mine called Audio for Video requires that we do complete audio postproduction on a five-minute video clip. We’re doing a student’s experimental film – a very interesting experience, one that I haven’t really been exposed to before. We’re foleying sound effects, recording music and ADR, the whole thing. Another class, Recording Tech, requires that we record a song on 2″ tape by the end of the semester – we’re doing a bluegrass parody cover of Lil’ Jon’s “Get Low”. And you can be sure that it’ll be on my soundcloud once it’s finished. Oh, and Electronics Tech: I’m building an Arduino MIDI controller that will hopefully work nicely with Logic (or Ableton, or something). That one’s just in the beginning stages, but all of these will necessarily be done by the end of the semester.

Apart from those, I have a bunch of my own projects that I’m trying to fit in when I get the chance. Work on the game has slowed down a bit, as I’m finished most of the heavy programming work and have now come to the design segment. For that, I’m working on improving my drawing and computer art skills. But the game will be finished…eventually. I’m composing music for that as well. Additionally, whenever I get bored or feel uncreative, I’ve been learning new programming languages, just to familiarize myself with them. I want to make myself a website. And I’m thinking about doing some carpentry over Christmas break. Does anyone else have this kind of addiction to productivity? Seriously, I’m wondering why this happens. I couldn’t even visit my family without having something to accomplish when I was there (see the previous post).

So that’s what’s going on in my life right now. I’m seeing Sufjan Stevens this weekend, too. His new album/EP are both so cool and different for him – what else would you expect after five years though? His use of synthesizers is crazy.

I read this article from Newsweek circa 1995 today about how the Internet is a fad that will never catch on. It’s crazy how much of a difference 15 years can make.

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