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

[electret]

there’s https://soundcloud.com/electret/north-finchley-festival-sneak-peek-19th-may

I didn’t bring the wormed voice but it’s sampled in the machines

[mdtz]

[philmaguire]

All of this is ace! Thanks for sharing

[delmerdarion]

Last weekend I put together these wooden end cheeks with a built in 4MS row power for my Make Noise skiff. The wood is Wenge and has been bookmatched across the two sides. Frees up an extra 4hp and brings a touch of personality to the case!

Relitively simple project if you have experience with a router. The original side panels make for perfect cutting templates. Happy to elaborate on the process if anyone wanted to give it a go!

[Starthief]

That looks fantastic!

[slopstream]

twenny chars of

[caelmore]

Nicely done with the Row Power integration on the side.

[dan_derks]

Row Power integration on the side

Happy to elaborate on the process if anyone wanted to give it a go!

@delmerdarion – would love to learn how to do the faceplate-less install! have read on the 4ms site that it’s possible, but haven’t found a walkthrough anywhere. any info you’d be willing to share would be awesome!

[delmerdarion]

The row power install was done before cutting the panels to size so that I had a bigger piece to work with and more margin for error. The steps went something like…

1. Use the existing skiff ends and the row power panel to draw the shape onto the wood.
2. Masking tape the row power panel to the wood, mark the 6 hole positions, then drill the holes. The holes are all standard sizes so it was easy to find the appropriate drill bits.
3. Route a recess the length of the row power to take the thickness of the wood down to ~2mm so that the power connectors, LEDs and switch would stick through enough for the nuts to fasten. Since the original wood thickness was 10mm and the switch height is ~7mm this also means the switch is completely recessed and protected. Easiest way to route the recess is to mark the centre line of the 6 holes then clamp a guide block of wood a set distance from this line depending on the router used.

It needed a bit of filling and sanding for the row power to sit comfortably. Once it was working nicely I moved on to cutting the shape of the panels.

Hope this helps!

[35c414nt3]

I added an Ambika to my family of walnut mutables. Man this synth is amazing! It was a pain to put together, but totally worth it.

Beautiful work! Could you elaborate a bit on the icon design under the buttons? Some of them are very easy to read (oscillators, envelopes), but I’m curious on the ones that are less conventional, what do they mean?

[barnaby]

Thanks! Here’s a close-up of the icons. Some buttons can be pressed multiple times to reach different pages.

1. Oscillator settings, Mixer. I’m quite happy with the mixer graphic, I like the way it represents different things all going to the O for Output
2. Filter page. I tried various different visual representations of a filter and wasn’t really happy with any of them. I wanted to do something less sparse and less similar to the envelope/LFO glyph than just a resonant LP filter curve, but on hindsight that might have worked better
3. Envelopes, LFOs. Nothing too complicated there
4. Modulation matrix! This is my favourite
5. Keyboard/scale settings, step sequencer settings. I think this button actually cycles between more than two pages, but they split nicely into kb and sequencer settings. I went with a simplified keyboard symbol as a traditional piano keyboard would have been a bit too dense, and I always find that when playing synths with traditional piano keyboards I always end up getting trapped in a world of traditional melody playing, so try to avoid explicit references to a piano keyboard
6. Voice+part allocation, clock+tempo settings. The Ambika has six voices, which can be freely assigned to different “parts” (with completely different synthesis settings) so you can have a 6 voice polyphonic patch, two 3 voice polyphonic patches, a mono bass, four voice chord patch and mono lead, etc. I’m not so happy with the clock settings page symbol, on hindsight I guess a metronome might have worked.
7. Performance page. This page allows you to assign arbitrary parameters from any part to the eight knobs for easy control during performance. Representing the relevant ambika UI, with emphasis on the knobs, seemed an obvious choice
8. Patch storage — just a representation of the six voices/parts inside an SD card shape.

Not shown here, and only just visible on the photo, are the two button+encoder shortcuts. Holding the first button and turning the encoder switches part regardless of which page you’re on, holding the last button and turning the encoder jumps the value by 8 rather than 1. I was really happy with how I was able to incorporate graphics for these shortcuts into the overall aesthetic and visual structure.

[philmaguire]

Thanks for this! Would you have any tips for a simpler install for those (i.e. me) with little/no woodworking skills?

[whyihatetexas]

You could do it a bit simpler by routing the recessed area all the way through the wood, then mounting the original 4ms panel from the inside with a couple of small wood screws. I would put a dab of hot glue (or something similarly non permanent) in between for added stability.

If you don’t have a router, you can drill a few holes in a line (I would recommend a forstner bit) then clean out the excess with a chisel.

It won’t look nearly as beautiful as @delmerdarion, but it will get the job done while saving you a few hp.

[Ikben]

Super photo! And a nice compact setup.

[rumorazzi]

Some random pics from my band’s drums recording sessions

[Album] La Sciarma

[1234]

Recording B-side(s)

[TomWhitwell]

New prototype containing an absolute head-slapper of a mistake

[rumorazzi]

me trying to play guitar on stage

rumo_razzi

[Justmat]

My music table and synth at the moment. Rarely is it this tidy, so I thought a pic was in order

[Abarsotti]

What speaker stands are those? I’ve been looking for some compact ones since my desk space is pretty limited and I’d only be able to fit something like Genelec 8010’s on it.