//// pictures of our sound-making machines ////

[mola]

I used to use my Freeze all the time, but I work pretty much exclusively with field recordings now and the mono-ness of that pedal has meant its just been gathering dust. I have no experience with DIY electronics so I was just wondering how easy you think it’d be to modify the Freeze so that it facilitated stereo sound?

[jasper_ryder]

I love my freeze pedal. Is there a tutorial on this anywhere?

[iain]

I don’t know how possible it would be. It’s very small SMD, and I don’t know if there’s any schematics available for it. Sorry.

[iain]

All you need to do is solder a wire to the bottom tab on the potentiometer and solder that to the tip of a jack socket (white wire in my photo). Then connect the ground of the jack socket to the ground of one of the other sockets.

Here’s a video demoing the sound:

The clean signal goes through the Freeze into a reverb
The sustained signal goes from the Freeze into a pitch shifter, a filter and overdrive so you can hear the different sounds.

Oh, yes, you need to turn the potentiometer down or the pedal will just sound like normal, but that might be what you want sometime as well. It makes the pedal very flexible

[jasper_ryder]

Very cool! Thanks for the info and demo!

[rumorazzi]

A little bit of analog dirt for our cold digital tracks.

rumo_razzi

[abalone]

[oscillateur]

What’s with the tape players fascination everybody seems to be having right now (or for the past couple of years maybe) ?

Is there a specific origin for that or is it just the usual nostalgia cycle at work ?

[Simeon]

I’ve been using cassette recording since it was a live format to record drum tracks The compression, distortion and “sound” of cassette is pretty much what I’m looking for in most drum breaks. I’ll often re-record to cassette as well, if I’ve sampled something that sounds too “clean”, I’ll get it peaking as it goes into a cassette recorder, and then record the output back into the computer.

As with other physical formats though, it’s fun and often inspiring to physically manipulate. Making tape loops, physically changing playback speed by putting your finger on the mechanism, recording the sound of the pause button… a lot of people enjoy the physicality of the medium.

As for releases on cassettes, Yup, just nostalgia.

[peanut]

There’s also some great single-format tape music being made these days. I also enjoy looking at the physical format of an album’s artwork, as opposed to a jpg on my phone.

[dermo]

Nostalgia for me. Never got into vinyl, always had cassettes as a kid, made fake radio shows with a mic etc. + everything @Simeon said.
Funny how the medium changes the way I emotionally respond to an album…I’ve bought tons of bandcamp cassettes over the past 6 or 7 months, some of which I love on tape but simply can’t hold my attention as digital files, and vice versa. Most importantly for me listening to tapes does not give me listening fatigue, as someone who has to listen to loud AF digital masters for 7.5 hours a day in headphones, tapes can be quite soothing for the journeys to and from work.

[beforeitwascool]

@suprichk

[Rodrigo]

Gonna do an all-in-one post here, combining things from a couple days.

First was a pic before a wonderful house party gig in Stockholm organized by @instantjuggler and attended by @Angela. No pics during my performance, but it was fun playing with pitched instruments, as that’s not something I normally do these days. Although it doesn’t look it, that xylophone in the center of the pic sounds fucking amazing.

There was lots of snow in Stockholm:

Also got a chance to play with my Sensory Percussion trigger finally (in a jam with @tremblap). I’m impressed with the tracking and latency. It was a quick setup, so there’s more to learn and explore, but after an initial play session, I definitely think there will be lots of tweaking and experimenting with the training step. At this point I’m anticipating making several training sets per drum I have, including a regular and various ‘prepared’ setups, as once I started putting objects on the drum, it was much more chaotic in terms of what was being triggered.

So yes, all of this happened in a jam session with @tremblap, with his portable setup making an appearance in the university’s interactive studio (with some quirky oldschool UK synth stuff in the background under cover (bonus points for identification)).

[Larry]

some quirky oldschool UK synth stuff in the background under cover

must be a VCS-3

[MatthewAshmore]

Adding some plants to the desk. Surprised how much I enjoy having them! In the future my modular will be resting on a bed of flowers

[infovore]

reaaaaally not sure how I feel about the shelf-on-speakers vibe

[rikrak]

Love the glass pots! Got to get some of those.

[MatthewAshmore]

hahaha i know. I originally did that when i was using a push and more inside the box. It’s overkill at this point. I must say it has made it 3 years with not a problem at all. but i know this isn’t the best long term solution. Im moving soon and the monitor will most definitely be wall mounted.

[ellips_s]

totally agree on the plants! i love having mine amongst my instruments. i’m also getting back into collecting minerals, which i enjoyed so much as a kid, and having both in my creative space really helps to clear my head.

quick shot i snapped before filming a new video

[MatthewAshmore]

nice setup! I was honestly surprised at how much they changed the space up for me.