Thing 2 vs. Steam Drone

In this video I do an improvisation using my Thing 2 NAND/APC/Noise drone box and Steam Drone box.

The Steam Drone is on the left.  The system combines a NAND synth with a resonant low pass filter based on the LM13700 OTA.  The LEDs use two transistors and capacitors to do flashing lights (yellow and red). The knobs control the frequency of the three NAND oscillators as well as the level of audio sent to the filter.  It turns out the filter performance depends somewhat on the input level.  the next set of knobs include Q, filter cut-off, and output volume.  The knob on the far left is a potentiometer that the input voltage passes through.  When this is all the way to the right it passes the voltage unaltered.  As you move it to the left the input current has to pass through more and more resistance essentially starving the circuit of voltage.  Starve is one of my favorite effects because the circuits get into a mode where they don't behave like they are supposed to, before they shut down completely.  Three of the switches control are used to link the NAND oscillators directly to the output, the other switch turns on the power.

The box on the right is the Thing 2 system.  This is a board I made by combining the following circuits: NAND synth, Atari Punk Console, low pass filter, zener diode noise source, blinking light circuit.  I had a bunch of layouts drawn up so I decided to combine all of these on a single board.  The noise part of the circuit was not making any noise so I kept increasing the resistor value over the op amp to increase the gain but it still would not make noise for me.  I noticed however that the whole circuit was producing noise so I settled for that.  This box has additional inputs for the control voltage of the 556 which basically controls mod and pitch.  I also added an input for the filter to process an external signal since the noise wasn't working.

Something interesting occurs on the Thing 2 when you starve the circuit.  The noise starts to become enhanced and the LEDs start having a big impact on the sound.  I was originally disappointed with the flashing light part of the circuit because the flashing of the lights is not related to the sound the device makes.  As you starve the circuit though, each time the lights flash they make a sound.  So I ended up really liking this circuit.  It was sort of a whim to combine all of these circuits on one board but I like the results a lot.  I ended up with two other indicator LEDs, yellow and green, in addition to the flashing ones, blue and red.

I had photo cube from Michael's which was big enough to hold the circuits and the knobs and I had used a photo cube for the Thing 1 device.  I came up with the idea to cut pieces of Fresnel lens and mount them on the inside surface of the photocube.  This gives a really cool effect when the lights are out.