I had a chance to present, and play, my simple square-wave synth at the Handmade Digital Music event, a collaboration between Create Digital Music, Etsy Labs and Make magazine. Lots of interesting projects on show, and it was great to meet a community of like-minded individuals, all kinds of people coaxing the most unusual sounds out of a mixed bag of components.
It was great showing off my project: many people came up and played with it, getting new and interesting sounds out of it. I was really inspired, even more motivated to take it one step further. I learned two things from the experience: letting people play with your projects is always a valuable learning experience, and practicing how to use it gives much better results. I performed a short (<5 min) set, but would like to do something more ambitious.
The synth has been slightly modified in the past two weeks: I’m now using diodes for mixing in the output stage, instead of resistors. This leads to a choppier, more percussive (“crunchier”) sound. Listen for yourself here: sample of synth with diode mixing and compare it to the samples on the blog page.
Many thanks to Peter Kirn and everyone involved for putting together such a great event!