Update time! It’s a shorter blog post this week, just to recap whats been going on since Monday.
Soldering
My first ever time soldering! It went alright, just soldering 3 wires onto the connectors of the touchstrip, so that it can interface with the breadboard.
It’s a bit messy, but it gets the job done. Thanks to Alister for his help! Except for the part where he melted the plastic holding one of the contacts, so that lower wire is just jammed into the enclosure, and held in place with a crocodile clip. It’s very temperamental, but it’ll do for this project. And a bit of extra noise added into the pitch control signal adds character, I say.
In relation to the title…
So, an update on my attempts to add pitch control. It works? but it also doesn’t. Lets recap what everything was supposed to do, and what it actually does.
The faders were supposed to control DC offsets: they generate PWM signals instead. The touchstrip was supposed to control pitch. It controls a registry entry, which may or may not be the PWM oscillators speed. I’m not entirely sure, because the sound that comes out is so chaotic, its hard to tell. It’s also quite dependent on the position of the feedback knob, which does apply feedback, so I suppose that’s one point for ‘things that went according to plan’.
But, as stated in the title, it makes noises! Cool noises! And that’s fine. Despite its flaws, I do like this instrument. It’s chaotic, wild and unpredictable, and I love it for this.
That’s all, for this post, but stay tuned! Monday is the day we film our demos, and I have some surprises in store.