MOADS revived (not really)

Lately my daughter had to do a workshop at school about media (ab)use, media types and content creation. I then mentioned a bit proud that a really long time ago i also had a blog, which received a certain popularity in a niche topic... this blog. That's probably one of the reasons for me to reconsider blogging by - sort of - closing the MOADS chapter and opening another blog which will be a more mixed bag of content. 

With many interests and not necessarily more time than before i found that i tend to dig in and reflect on many different subjects. Not with the same depth and detail as MOADS though... Also, a good friend of mine encouraged me to write down thoughts and about music, tech, society and various other stuff in a blog, that was the second reason for me to reconsider blogging. The third reason is rather obvious, innit? After almost a year of pandemic and, except maybe for the initial shock, an emerging lethargical habitus originating from home office work, resulting in little physical activity and cancelled leisure activities, the urge arised to re-explore once-known fields. 

The last decade i switched from a student lifestyle to a steady job in transportation industry, a flat in the suburbs and family life!. I still don't (probably never will) own a car and a tv set though. However, from a "free-thinking", or however you want to call it, perspective it hasn't been that bad. On the musical side i played (and still play) in various bands ranging from funk over rural blues, electronica-flavoured punk to, most notably,  the inclusive project Tabula Musica . The latter covers a lot of personal interests on the technological and social side too. Here's a snippet of my latest project: Aergera, Swiss-german Shoegaze.

 On the tech side - there's almost certainly gonna be a lot of tech stuff in the blog - i've been pursuing many smaller project in the past, such as building headpieces for the cyberpunk group Revolting Puppets, various small software projects (see https://github.com/StoneRose35) and a foot drum/amplifier set used to perform as a one-man-band with ever-changing names. Besides doing little projects in the fields of electronics/mechatronics and software i've been working in IT industry in various roles, slowly but constantly moving away from die-hard tech to the management side for almost a decade now. This also left some traces and shareable notions. 

The mixed bag of blog content is probably rounded off with content on cycling and general outdoor activities. 

 

Ok, now it time to say goodbye to MOADS and to welcome the new blog Sounds, Tech and Bikes

Modular Synth

It's been a while since i last posted something in this blog.. I haven't been passive in that time though. I started with something that every synth-diyist starts at some point: a modular synth! The first module is built was the PolyAVR, which is now rehoused to fit the modular rack. That was a nice start since i could already play chords with only one module installed. Then i added two analog vco's, a filter (yusynth minimoog filters, mixer and vca's (lower cabinet) and multiples. The upper cabinet contains two envelope generators MFOS, a LFO (alsoMFOS) and a voltage controlled LFO.

new old site

dear readers,

Partly because of the drum synth project being more or less finished, partly because of missing flexibility i'll gradually move my content from this blog to my new website, be sure to check it out!!
if you have question you can always send me an email to - now comes a small riddle (because i hate spambots..)
fuerholz AT 'the abbreviation of Global Message Exchange'.' swiss domain identification (two letters)', should give 3letters, one dot and two letters after the @

AVR-Based Synth

After finishing the Drumsynth Prototype i started another little synth project. It consisted in turning an atmega16 microcontroller in a simple 4-voice polyphonic synthesizer.
I've been working a lot with microcontrollers so i was curious to see if i could turn an atmega into a polyphonic synth. Another reason for this project was a lot of spare time at my dayjob since this project is much about programming which can be done ver easily in the office ;-)

By simple i mean that it only contains one oscillator per voice, no filter and a ADSR envelope per voice. Of course there are some other avr-based synth projects (http://www.jarek-synth.strona.pl/,http://www.avrx.se/), in contrary to these projects i tried to focus on polyphony, with the aim of including it in a modular synthesizer.
What came out until now is a very cheap, cheap-sounding and cheap-sounding box. Technical data:
wave sampling rate: 31,25 kHz
resolution: 16bit
envelope (and possibly lfo) sampling rate: 244 Hz
midi: note on/note off
Extensions: basic wavetable capability, lfo


here is the video of this synth(sorry about the sound)

PCB layouting

lots of thing have been going recently. I've started a new project: a digital polyphonic synth based on an atmega16 ic (pics and vids soon). I was looking for a good schematic and pcb designer software. After a long search and much hairpulling i finally decided to use an open-source package called gEDA. Although it has some small bugs it's much easier and less complex than many commercial options.
I've now (nearly) finished the layout of the sequencer master part. Here it is. I've noticed that (clever) layouting pcb's is a quite demanding task..
Please don't etch boards with that layout yet (that's why i didn't put the resistor values..) i have'nt checked and tested the layout yet

Synthesizer Treffen

One of the most important personal goals regarding my home-built instruments is to make music with them, so i did recently at the swiss synthesizer meeting in zurich. It was whole an deeply satisfying new experience making electronic music in a large group (8 musicians). The largest part of the session was ambient stuff with very minimal beats. Coming originally from drone/stoner rock i really liked this slow and spheric, but not so hard-n-heavy part of the session, simply magic!!
Here a video of the session, i was there with the soundlab, electric guitar and, of course the drumsynth, in the video i'm playing guitar


picture and audio files can be found here , if you want to hear the sound of my drumsynth check out track 'Jam teil 8'

Schematics (finally!)

Here they are, i put them on a real website as pdf's, currently without explanation. I hope they understandable and helpful. Since many people were interested in building the entire or part of the project i'll definitely work on pcb's and make them available on the net as well. Once working flawlessly i'll publish the source code for the sequencer part too. At the present state it still crashes from time to time but i'm working on it..