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Synth Setup for Maker Faire Milwaukee 2022

For Maker Faire Milwaukee this year I was not a producer, crew, volunteer, or even a Maker… I signed up as a “Performer” and asked to be placed in the Dark Room where I could make synth & drum noise as much as I wanted to. I signed up under the moniker NoiseMaster 3000 which I used (along with Maks and Dustin) back in 2017.

Now, originally MFMKE was supposed to be at State Fair Park again, and in the past the Dark Room was filled with all sorts of crazy things. Noisy things, light up things, weird things, etc. So I figured I would fit right in. (Note: Back when I was a producer I would get local modular synth people to come and make noise in the Dark Room. I figured this time it was my turn.)

Well, the venue changed to Discovery World, and I was told there would still be a Dark Room. And… there was. Sort of. It wad a theater, and the only other exhibit was Mark’s Sand Table, Arrakis. (And that was a last minute addition!) So it was really just me… in the Dark Room… alone.

It was fine. The second day Matt convinced me to bring Overhead Makey (one of my most successful exhibits) and I did, and it was grand. I also realized the Dark Room used to be full of stuff because I’d add at least a half dozen exhibits to it in the old days!

Anyway, I’m here today to talk about the setup, so let’s get to it!

I mentioned to someone that I’ve never taken all of this stuff out of my house before, and I’ve never actually connected it all together at once. Saturday was okay, but after screwing around with things all day I wanted to change a few things, so at the end of Saturday I ripped everything apart to reconnect it frsh Sunday morning.

What you see in the photo is what I had set up on Sunday when the Faire opened, and it pretty much remained that way all day. If Saturday was about figuring things out, then by Sunday I had things pretty well figured out.

In the photo above you’ll see the Behringer RD-6 Drum Machine, the Behringer TD-3 Bass Synthesizer, and the Behringer Crave Analog Synth. I sync’d these three together with the RD-6 setting the tempo. The RD-6 can very much be played/tweaked on the fly while it’s running, but the TD-3 not so much. I basically chose between patterns I had created and stored in the past. The Crave was connected to the TD-3 via MIDI so it was getting notes from the TD-3. That worked out fine since the Crave is all about twiddling those knobs to adjust the sounds coming out of it. And twiddle I did. I also invited others to twiddle.

Those three each had their own channel on the mixer. This made it easy to isolate then to explain to people which was making which sound, and I could set it to just output one of them, then show how that one worked.

Next up is the Korg Volca Sample 2, which was on mixer channel 4. (Note: The first day I did not have a cheat sheet to tell me what was on what channel, and mistakes were made.) Since the Sample is sort of a “budget groovebox” it can do quite a bit all on its own. I think on Saturday I had it sync’d to the RD-6for a bit, but honestly having it separate was a good idea because I could have a totally different thing going on with it, and it was my “Second Setup” after the Behringer Trio above. The Sample 2 is definitely a thing that you can play live and perform with. In fact, that’s pretty much the only way I use it now, to build up a beat over time, slowly adding to it, and playing live by knob twiddling and button pressing.

We’ve got the Korg NTS-1 which is a fine little digital synth and effects box. I connected up a small device I made that generates 16 step patterns and then sends them out via MIDI. So basically this was running spacey sounds and every now and then I would generate a new pattern. I tend to mess with the effects and add chorus, flanger, delay, and other weird stuff.Sometimes I would run this on top of other things, like the output of the Behringer Trio, other times I would just run it on its own.

I forgot to mention the Monotrons! The Korg Montron Delay and the Korg Monotron Duo fed into a splitter (in reverse, so a combiner I guess) and joined in with the NTS-1. To be honest I didn’t mess with the Monotrons too much. They are fun, and the Delay is a nice little effects box, but I guess I just focused on the NTS-1 more.

We’ve got the Pocket Operator Crew in the lower right corner. Those feed into a Bastl Dude mixer, which I love using with the PO gear so I can do punk-in/punch-out and adjust levels individually. I pretty much just ran four sixteen step patterns on the drums and then messed around with the bass, office, and factory live. (Note on the Factory, I need to make a 3.3v power supply because batteries suck in that thing and constantly die. Rechargeables do not work, and Alkalines do not last.)

All of the Pocket Operators use a Sync Splitter so I can plug each output into the Dude mixer. I’ve explained the Sync Splitter before

Here’s a Moukey 6 channel mixer that everything ran into. I then had a splitter coming out of it so I could run to the amp and to my headphones, and to the old Zoom recorder I had to record everything. (Yeah, I’ve got over 10 hours of audio!) I wasn’t able to lower the input to the Zoom on the Zoom so I set the output from the mixer to a good level and then adjusted the master output volume on the amp. (Note: There is an 8 channel Moukey mixer. I should consider getting one of those for the additional two channels.)

Speaking of the amp (if you can call it that!) I used an old car amplifier I had lying around, paired with some old stereo speakers that had been sitting in the basement for years. Everything is mono so stereo is a bit of a misnomer here. This setup worked pretty well. I didn’t need to be super-loud but could get plenty loud for the quiet theater I performed in. Oh, I managed to fit all of my gear into a suitcase and the speakers took up half the space!

You can’t run all this gear with a lot of POWER!!! Just kidding, I do have a lot of wall warts but I was probably pulling well under 5 amps, maybe under 3 amps. (And all the Pocket Operators and the Dude were battery powered. I did plug in the Volca, though it could have run find on batteries) It’s a bit of a mess, of course, and there’s another power strip out of view for the light, battery chargers, and one synth.

I did bring the Arturia BeatStep and tried to use it a bit on Saturday but by Sunday I just put it to the side. I sort of ran out of room and I didn’t get it connected in a way I liked. I may need to make note of how some things get connected for the future. I do like the BeatStep for screwing around, as demonstrated in this video.

Finally, there was a small scrap of paper to remind me what devices were on what channels of the mixer. With all this gear, I got confused a few times on Saturday, so the cheat sheet worked well. I basically had four sequences running at once and could switch between them which made things a lot of fun. If I ever do this again (?!?!?) I’d probably do something very similar.

Okay, I hope you enjoyed this (very) lengthy write-up about my set-up. As I mentioned this is my first time doing this, and overall I pleased with how it went. It was a super-low pressure gig where I could just have a good time. Cheers!

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Fan Noise Synth

On a recent trip abroad the wife and I ended up taking an overnight trip for two days & nights and needed to drown out some of the noise at the place we were staying. At home we use the Sleepy Noise Machine which actually plays an audio file of a fan running to create some white noise. We don’t travel with the machine though, so my first thought was to use my iPad to play one of those 10 hour long YouTube videos of a fan running…

Problem 1. The hotel said “Free WiFi” which, you know, there was, but it was not actually connected to the Internet. Whoops. Problem 2. I could have tethered my iPad to my phone for Internet access but since we were traveling abroad the slow data rate and roaming data make that a bad idea. So…

I fired up AudioKit Synth One, screwed around with customizing a square wave, set it to hold the note, and pressed a few keys to get a (satisfying?) imitation fan noise, which you can hear in the video below.

I think I’ll probably just load some suitable audio files onto the iPad before the next trip abroad just to be safe, but I was pleased I came up with a solution when needed.

(When playing the video below you might think “That sounds nothing like a fan!” and, it sort of doesn’t, but trust me, in a hotel room where you want to drown out the noise from the next room… it’s close enough!)

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Adafruit NeoTrellis M4 808 Drum Machine

A while back (umm, last year?) old pal Kirby gave me an Adafruit NeoTrellis M4 with Enclosure and Buttons Kit Pack which I believe he got in an Adabox. At the time I was like, “Hey, this is neat!” and put it aside because I was busy with work. Well, I finally found it when I was cleaning the office and decided to dig a little deeper and discovered the demo code it shipped with was already running a minimal drum machine! They had some samples loaded up and it was a super-basic tracker. Fun!

The provided samples were not that great so I grabbed a kick, tom, snare, and hi-hat from the classic Roland TR-808 which, well, you probably know. As for the Adafruit NeoTrellis, it’s is a fun little drum machine! A bit challenging, and definitely minimal, but worth spending some time with. The audio is running out of the NeoTrellis and through a Bastl Dude and filmed/recorded to an iPhone.

Note: I found this guide to Trellis M4 Beat Sequencers which should prove extremely useful! It’s way more capable than I imagined, which shouldn’t be surprising since it’s from Adafruit.

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Sync a Behringer TD-3 to a Pocket Operator

Last year I wrote up Syncing a Behringer RD-6 to a Pocket Operator via a Pi Pico which was more of a “wow, this works!” thing than a good explanation. I say that because a few people thought it was nice, but didn’t quite understand it, or wanted a diagram, so here’s a diagram…

The 1/8″ stereo jack on the left is where you plug in the Pocket Operator, and the 1/8″ stereo jack on the right goes to the device you want to sync up. (A Behringer RD-6 or TD-3 for example.) The ring/red is the audio side of things, the tip/orange is the click/sync signal put out by the PO, and sleeve/black is the common ground.

As previously mentioned, the Pocket Operators are awesome, and they can sync with each other, but can’t always sync with other devices. They put out a 1 volt signal for the sync track (the “click”) and most other electronic devices want something higher, like 2.5 volts, or 5 volts. The Behringer RD-6 wants over 2.5 volts, so you cannot sync it to a Pocket Operator, but now you can with this device!

This basically reads the 1 volt from the Pocket Operator, and then outputs 5 volts that the Behringer RD-6 can recognize as a sync in signal. While the RD-6 has a sync out port, there are reasons you may want to have the PO be the primary and the RD-6 be the secondary. There’s also the Behringer TD-3, which (oddly enough) does not have a sync out port.

A guy named Oscar got in touch and asked if this worked with the TD-3 and at the time I didn’t have one. Well, I have one now, and it works great. And since the TD-3 does not have a sync out port (!?!?) this is the only way (without additional hardware) to sync a TD-3 to a PO.

I built one (using a Nano, not an Uno) and I’m sending it to Oscar to test out. He’ll need to provide a USB power source and a splitter cable to get it working. (He’s got both already. Most Pocket Operator nerds probably do.)

I did make one mistake on this device… I actually incorporated labels into the enclosure. I for “In” and O for “Out” and when assembling it I didn’t notice I had it backwards until testing. Oops! So I just stuck some labels on the top, and now In is on the right and Out is on the left. If I make another, I’ll do it right next time. Oh, I also realized I could probably just build a splitter into it by adding another jack, so I may do that as well. (Though that will increase the size of the enclosure a bit.)

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Korg NTS-1 Preventative Maintenance

The Korg NTS-1 is a $99 digital synthesizer and effects box that is just straight-up awesome. It’s cheap, but packed with features, including the ability to load custom oscillators and effects, and there are a bunch of them out there for free and for a price. I’ve had a blast making noise with this thing, and there are a few groups online for discussion of the NTS-1.

The NTS-1 is a kit you build yourself. Don’t worry, it just requires a screwdriver (which is included) and it’s really just assembling the enclosure around two circuit boards. Takes about 15 minutes if you go slow. Where the NTS-1 does not shine is in its durability. This is not a device you just toss into your bag, or that can easily travel to a gig. It is… fragile. The main fragility (as many will attest to) is in the connectors. So I’ve tried to strengthen them a bit.

I started by taking the unit apart. Well, just removing the top panel and top PCB. The rest of the pieces of the enclosure can stay put together.

The 1/8″ jacks are soldered on as surface mount components. This is pretty terrible, as they really should be through hole components to help provide a solid mechanical connection to the PCB. I’m sure it was done this way to keep things cheap. The problem is that if the jack pulls off the board it will probably pull off the solder pad as well, so you can’t really replace it. Sigh. I added a bunch of hot glue around the headphone jack. Some have questioned if this will do anything. I figure it’s better than nothing.

Here’s the same treatment to the other jacks. (MIDI in, sync in & out, and audio in.) Just lots of hot glue. Basically the more you plug and unplug things with these jacks the more stress they’ll be under. I’ve seen at least one person build a larger case around their NTS-1 and then use panel mount plugs so they aren’t repeatedly plugging and unplugging from the jacks on the unit. It’s a good solution but does increase the size of the unit.

I also added a laser cut overlay panel to mine. (Mostly cosmetic, though it does keep the top surface a bit cleaner.) I did have to grab some longer screws to hold it in place. If I remember correctly they were 2.5mm machine screws about 8mm long. (The stock ones were a bit too short to catch enough of the threads due to the increased height caused by the overlay.)

The file I used was just a slightly modified version of one that Korg provided. Since black and green are two of my favorite colors this looks great in my opinion.

Oh, one thing I forgot to do was put hot glue all over the Micro USB jack! I will need to open it up and add more glue to that.

Here’s a little sound demo of the Korg NTS-1 which has a built-in arpeggiator.