MAX FARNEA & AUDREY

DROP PATHS by MAX FARNEA

2011-08-11T09:36:00.003+02:00

Max Farnea likes to play his weird and arcane gears, making ambient, experimental, idm, electro, 8-bit sounds and grooves.

This is the last album: Drop Paths.

It is released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Download here for free

CITIZEN SCIENTISTS LEAGUE

2011-08-05T10:07:00.003+02:00

Founded in 2010, the Citizen Scientists League is a group of scientists and science hobbyists dedicated to promoting the tools and skills of science.

Mission Statement: “The Citizen Scientists League promotes responsible scientific observation, experimentation, discovery, and invention. We encourage active participation, networking and publishing by science enthusiasts at all levels of education and experience.”

CSL also maintains a group page on Facebook, for all who are interested in the pursuit of science and scientific knowledge to participate in CSL.

SIMPLE CIRCUIT BENDING

2011-08-04T14:53:00.006+02:00

I got addicted to circuit bending, even if sometimes I do improvements rather than simple random hacking.

I've decided to try some circuit bending on cheap toy keyboards, these keyboards are simple but doesn't offer many points for hacking or shorting circuits.

Usually you find a "COB" (chip on board) and the only accessible component is the external resistor for the sound frequency, the line out (usually directly connected to the speaker) and the keyboard multiplexed control lines, so the easiest trick to get are pitch variation or audio saturation and distortion.

When you open the toy search for a black bobble melted on the circuit board, this is the COB. Near you should find the external resistor; if many, you can detect the right one just putting your fingers over each resistor while playing the toy. When sound changes pitch, you have the right one. You can handle pitch variations simply putting body contacts, or a potentiometer or a photo resistor directly on the contacts of the external resistor.

Touching contacts you can raise up notes frequency or sample play speed (if your toy plays rom samples), or if you have used a photo resistor you can obtain nice effects moving a fixed or flashing light near the sensor.