Sunday, April 26, 2015

Ghz Warrior

Judging by YouTube videos and his homepage, I really liked the Digital Warrior of Tomash Ghz.
It seemed small, elegant, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 - and by that fully tweakable :)
I considered the last point to be particularly important, since I was missing some features for the purpose I had in mind: a fully autonomous sequencer for my synthesisers.

However, at one point when I was on Tomash' homepage to admire the smart device, I noticed that he was calling for preorders of the final batch. Confirming that this was my last chance to get one of little things, I did not hesitate to order the necessary parts for two of the standalone sequencer versions of the Digital Warrior.

Since then I am in very nice and fruitful contact with him, and since he wants to focus on other projects now, decided to also work a bit on the Digital Warrior as a standalone sequencer.
In honour for the great foundation I can built upon, I will call my modified firmware  Ghz Warrior...


Friday, April 17, 2015

The Roisterer - The Beginning

So, I am into DIY synthesisers lately.

What I am missing in my setup is a small effects machine. Something that I can use to simulate (almost) everything from ocean waves, over vehicle sounds, to not-from-this-world sound effects.

Of course it should be controllable by MIDI, but also have an independent interface that is very suitable for live acts. Like some potentiometers and a touch screen to change parameters on the fly like panning, filter cutoff, etc.

Perfectly, it would also have a small footprint on my desk and (now I am pushing it) fit well optically to my other gear.

Most of my own developments so far have been with the Arduino platform, so that was the natural choice. However, for a complex endeavour like this, I have made the experience that a lot of time is typically spent on the generation of the sounds itself, writing the gui, etc.
While I have often enjoyed this in the past, this time I wanted to have something that I can use fast.

I also had a Raspberry Pi still laying around my place, and by this the idea of the Roisterer was born...


Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Hello World

Hello world,

I consider myself a maker and as such, I have pursued several projects in the past, ranging from home automation, hacked IR remote controls, fire simulations for christmas cribs, etc

Lately, I am mostly interested in building electronic music instruments and I felt that there is a part missing if I do not communicate...

...what I am currently assembling.
...what I am designing and constructing myself.
...which modifications I have added to the work of friends.
...and of course also what music I make with the devices I have built.

So here I am. This blog will mainly focus on the technical details of my work so that my projects can be freely reproduced. Consequently, my hardware developments are published under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license unless indicated otherwise. The software is of course open source and the particular licensing scheme will be highlighted in the corresponding files as published on my GitHub page. Some aspects of my work will be communicated free of all technical details through my Facebook page. And the music I intend to produce with all the DIY gear will be made available on my SoundCloud page.


, Karg