Spirit of Gravity is Brighton’s longest running (and best) night for experimental music. I was honoured to return, this time with a streamed performance. I can’t wait until I’m able to attend SoG again as a punter when Covid restrictions relax.
I’ve been working on an STM32 granular processor on and off for about a year now. It’s called Sands, and if you follow my instagram you’ve probably seen some of its development.
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I’ve managed to get the hardware working (based around an STM32f446 with a WM8731 audio codec), but I’ve hit a bit of a brick wall with it sonically. Everything is working as expected, but I’m not as excited by the sound as I am with my Glitch Delay, which I use on pretty much everything!
I had an idea to port the firmware to VCV Rack, so I could easily try it with lots of different modules (with one or 2 exceptions, I only really own modules I’ve built myself). Here is a very simple example (ironically I do own Rings and a Turing Machine).
If anyone interested in granular wants to try Sands on VCV Rack (Mac only currently), then email me. I’m keen to get feedback, and suggestions, or even see it working in a patch you’ve made.
My new EP, “The Days That Remain And Those That Follow” is available now! This EP was recorded in the first half of 2020 and reflects at a macroscopic scale, on the insanely tumultuous events of the year, but on a more personal level it echoes the anxiety and joy of impending parenthood.
The somewhat immovable deadline of my son’s birth provided a power motivator to finish the tracks, even though he arrived slightly before the tracks were totally completed. The pieces were created using my DIY instruments and effects, starting off as live improvisations, and slowly polished into finished pieces.
I plan to do some track breakdowns, to dig into how these were put together. Check back in the following days.
Thanks to all of that ‘attended’ our performance last night. Combining a fairly involved audio setup with a 2 camera visual setup was quite tricky, and I was a little nervous about it all, but it all seemed to go down ok.
Gear:
Everything in this case is DIY (including the case itself). It all starts with the Befaco Instrument Interface, that’s the pre-amp for my guitar, and all the other instruments. After that, everything is going through an effects loop of guitar pedals (DOD volume pedal, Devi Ever Shoe Gazer, EHX Memory Man with Hazarai, Digitech Hardwire Reverb) via a Syinsi pedal i/o 1U tile. I was originally using my Khronos module for the delay->reverb, but actually the Teensy DAC was just too noisy, and seems to be noiser now than ever, possibly because I’m running a lot of modules from a cheap power supply board. I will make something similar using a module with an external audio codec at some point. After that the sound is routed to the modules I’ve designed, Glitch Delay, Audio Freeze, and 2 Looper modules. These form the core of my sound. I have the Foxfield Gearbox as the master clock. The Music Thing Turing Machine with Pulses is sending triggers to the looper to randomly cut up the loop. My alternate RadioDrum firmware for the RadioMusic, is providing all the drum sounds. The Befaco ADSR is responsible for that pulsing distortions at the end of the set. Everything is then routed to my 2 mixers, a passive one that I designed, and the Rakit 5 mixer. Ideally I’d like to get a eurorack mixer with some EQ, I’ve got my eye on the Befaco Hex Mix, but it looks like quite an involved build, so need to find the time. See here for more details on the modules I’ve designed and the piezo noise boxes.
R.Dyer and myself were supposed to do a live show last month at the Rose Hill, but it was cancelled for obvious reasons. Why not watch us from the comfort of your own sofa instead, perhaps with a warming glass of Brandy? Playing Saturday 23rd May 8:30 UK time.
Over the past months I’ve been investigating moving away from Teensy to another microcontroller ecosystem. I love Teensy, and I wouldn’t have made the majority of my projects without it, I’ve learnt so much from it, and I still think it has the best libraries of any of the alternatives. It’s always the first thing I recommend to get people started on doing digital audio electronics and I’m sure I’ll use it again in the future. But, it has a few, in my opinion, major downsides, once you get a bit more advanced.
Development Environment – Teensy uses the Arduino IDE, which is fine for writing small programs to flash leds, read sensors etc, but is a little basic for larger scale projects.
Debugging – This is the big one for me, Teensy doesn’t provide a method for debugging (other than using Serial Monitor). I’ve spent literally hours trying to debug audio glitches that would have been relatively straightforward to find if I could just set a breakpoint and step-through. I have seen people exposing the JTAG pins on the Teensy and using these, but I wanted something supported by the vendor.
Manufacture – If you want to do a manufacturing run of your project with Teensy you have 2 options. Either mount the Teensy itself on the board, which can become quite expensive if you’re doing more than a couple, or buy the bootloaders directly from PJRC and use the specific microcontroller to match the Teensy. I wanted to be able to make small runs of my boards (still less than 10), without the expense of buying many Teensy’s, and choose a chip specific to the needs of each project.
STM32
After chatting with Alex Evans, (mmalex on Twitter), who had already started working with the STM32 range of microcontrollers, I decided to check them out. They have a huge range of chips, ranging from arduino level all the way up to Teensy 4 capabilities. The Eclipse based IDE supports debugging, and they are fairly easy to include in your schematic (requiring a bunch of power-filtering caps but not much else.)
STM make their own range of dev boards, similar to Arduino and Teensy, called Nucleo. There are lots of them, and it takes a while to filter through the STM range and find the chip and associated Nucleo you are looking for. They’re very reasonably priced (I suspect they are sold as a loss-leader) and are the best way to get started. They have a fairly large form-factor, so it’s unlikely you’d want to include them directly in your project, like you would a Teensy. But they are perfect for experimenting with the hardware before you start on your own PCB.
I strongly recommend checking out mmalex’s youtube channel, where he has live streamed a series of videos explaining how to get into STM32 eurorack module design. They are super informative and well worth watching. Also this series by DigiKey on getting started with STM32 is essential viewing if you are interested in developing with them.
STM32CubeIDE
First experiences with the IDE weren’t great, unfortunately it’s plagued with a number of small bugs and glitches. It really didn’t like me working in C++ and kept defaulting my project to C, which I then had to unpick in the project settings each time. Actually that bug has been fixed, and it does seem to be slowly improving, although each new update seems to introduce some fun new issues. It works ok-ish though, it’s free to use, and I can FINALLY debug!
The work-flow involves using the IDE to visually configure your chip, you can set which peripherals you want to use, and which pins to connect them to. This will then generate (lots) of code, which basically sets the correct registers to initialise the peripherals and provides you functions to use them. They use something they call HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), so that the functions look the same regardless of what underlying chip you are using. Beware though, I’ve heard that different chips seem to have their own foibles in terms of setup, and some of the code requires manual tweaking. I’m using an F446, and so far, the generated code seems to be fine.
Once this code is generated, you can start adding your own code. Any code added in the auto-generated files needs to exist between specific comment lines that the generator marks out for you. My first project was a PCB which connected the STM32F446 to a WM8731 audio codec, was powered by eurorack +12/-12V, and broke out many of the STM32 pins onto header. The intention is that this board will be coupled with another (module specific) board, which will add interface components (pots, jacks etc) and route them to the breakout pins. You can see the code here which initialises the STM32 and configures the WM8731 via I2C.
The SMT32 board with solder paste applied and components placed ready for the reflow oven.
I’ve just sent out some gerbers (PCB files) for manufacture, I will hopefully have them in a week or so, so look out for more news on my latest module!
I sincerely hope this post finds you healthy. I’m sure, like me, you’re feeling your fair share of existential angst. Being on lockdown is vitally important, but it can be very difficult. It does give us all a bit more time to focus on some indoor creative pursuits, so this (Good) Friday, myself and a few friends did an Immersive Music Session. The premise is simple, you isolate yourself (already on brand), and try to write 20 pieces of music in 12 hours. I’ve been occasionally doing these for more than a decade. It’s based on an idea from this book, which I highly recommend. It’s an emotional and physical trial, but the results are often surprising. Once the day is done, you come out of isolation and meet up with the other participants and share your tracks over a few beers. Obviously that was replaced with a video chat this time around, but it worked surprisingly well. It’s lovely to hear and discuss everyone’s original material that didn’t even exist the day before. The idea of the process is that you are under such time pressure to create that you have to turn off your ‘internal quality filter’ which can sometimes filter ideas before they have time to develop. By the time you get to the end of the day, the tracks you composed in the morning seem like a distant memory, and listening to them again at the end of the of the session, it’s almost like they were composed by another version of you.
I managed 11 tracks (I’ve never managed more than 12). I started the day trying to work exclusively with my live rig in preparation for a live stream performance I hope to do later in the month. As time progressed I decided to try different approaches, including sitting in the sun with my laptop in the garden. Including the tracks below, unedited from the time they were recorded, so bear in mind some of these tracks were made in less than an hour!
IMM 1: This was recorded live (pretty much), with spring box and guitar being processed by my DIY eurorack effects.
IMM 2: This piece was inspired by my anxiety about my asthma given the Covid situation. My breathing has been a bit worse since I had a cold recently, so it’s on my mind.
IMM 3: This was made using a music box I bought cheap from eBay where you can feed in paper, which you hole punch to make the notes play. I wanted to make use of the fact that I’d made up another one of my looper modules, so could have 2 loops running at once. I didn’t quite get the counter-point between them I was hoping for.
IMM 4: This was made by processing a kalimba which I’d hacked to add a contact mic and jack socket. This was processed with glitch delay and audio freeze, as well as reverb and delay. I’m quite pleased with this one.
IMM 5: Wanted to make something with a bit more energy that I could play live. These drums were done in Logic after the fact (worked out the tempo from the recorded file). Not sure how I can do these drums live. Might see if I can achieve something similar with RadioDrum.
IMM 6: This was the first track I made sitting outside. My laptop doesn’t have any of the sound packs for logic installed, so I had to make everything with the built in synths. ES2 is actually a great little synth I think!
IMM 7: Just wanted to make something quick and fun, at a much higher tempo than I normally work at!
IMM 8: Wanted to try my own version of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase using Logic’s Piano in EXS24 and a simple piano line. I bounced it down, and duplicated it, panning left and right, and slightly stretching the right channel’s audio to achieve the phasing. I like the result, but obviously can’t really claim credit for the idea!
IMM 9: Back in the house again (temperature had dropped a bit), and using the DIY eurorack live rig to record again. The main sound here was a contact mic taped to a singing bowl, which I scraped and struck.
IMM 10: I had in my notes (I normally jot down some potential ideas the night before), “Create a sample as if sampled from vinyl”. I made a loop with drums and strings, bounced it out, and then degraded it to sound more like an old record (ran it through an amp simulation). I then cut it up, and made a new loop. I was running out of time at this point (had about 30 minutes left). I wanted to accompany it with the Hyve synth, but the 2 didn’t work, so I did a little jam for the last track.
IMM 11: Hyve synth run through some reverb and delay, and also, Valhalla Shimmer.
Recently, I’ve been working on a new firmware for the RadioMusic by MusicThing Modular. I wanted to get some drums into my case using as little HP as possible, so came up with this. The drum patterns are stored as text files on the SD card. Currently it only supports one pattern, going to be working on multiple patterns next. Some of the samples were recorded from a vintage adding machine I found. You can use your own samples, but they have to be compiled into the hex executable file. You can find the source code on my GitHub https://github.com/cutlasses/RadioDrum if you want to check it out.
I’m going to be doing another workshop on using the Teensy to work with digital audio. Come along and build and program circuits, and make some NOISE. It’s at the Sonics 2020 festival in Hastings. I’ve been involved in the festival for the last few years, it’s great, and I really recommend checking it out. Lots of lovely pubs in the old town part of Hastings too! Sign up here.
Thanks to everyone who came to my ‘Digital Audio with Microcontrollers Workshop’ last weekend. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did! The first workshop sold out pretty quickly, so we ended up running another one back to back. A pretty exhausting day, but definitely a rewarding one. I was pleasantly surprised how far the groups got in 3 hours. Everyone got the Teensy to make sounds, and some people created some amazing noise-scapes! For anyone interested in what we covered, the workshop is on GitHub here. Thanks to Brighton Digital Festival and Platf9rm for making it happen!
