Dante's Inferno done live by Chris Rooney and Public Disturbance

Chris Rooney and Public Disturbance

I've got a gig! Performing spoken word poetry and electro-noise at the Summer Dreams Reading Festival

Saturday August 22 2009
starts at noon
I'm on at 1:15pm

Lumbermans Arch Stanley Park
Vancouver BC

If you live in Vancouver and you want to come out it will be awsome I'm on the Main Stage!!

Watch me rip it up with a Little Boy Blue and a few stomp boxes, the volume on this one should go up to 11!

more info here

Square Waves and Square Knots: time to write a blog entry

So it's almost 7am and I'm tired and a little buzzed and I've been awake all night listening to music and learning how to make a hemp necklace with spirally square knots it's time to write about what I did yesterday.

First of all my wife found a cat! we weren't looking it actually found us, his name (according to the tag) is Stewart, and from the look of him he's been outside a long time. I've decided to name him Stewart Nagasaki Squarewaves at least until his rotten negligent family insists on having him back.

Nagasaki because yesterday was the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki and Square Waves because it was the day that I was supposed to go to the Square Waves electronic music festival at the local library.


I was lucky I remembered what with the new cat-guest and all but I got up and went out to see music and meet up with friends.

I'm not a very competent reporter so I'll just describe what were, to me, some of the highlights of Square Waves and my impressions of the event.

first of all I missed th first two acts. I found my way down to the Alma VanDeussen Room at the library and when I got in there were three ladies playing home made synths and lots of guitar pedals. Finally I was in a room full of people who understand me! Seriously after over a year of disinterested relatives, friends and a saintly-tolerant wife being in a room full of real live not on the intertube synth geeks was a blasy of exciting and headdy fresh air.

At the interval I met these ladies and found a couple of my friends. The next act was one of the highlights for me, a dance troupe called Prophecy Sun did a composition of modern interpretive dance to really penetrating ambient vocal music and tape noise. I think of all the performances this one was my favourite.

I finally got a chance to hear Andrew Short's project Vedic Space Program do a tongue in cheek set consisting of samples from a hypnotism record and other interesting sounds including James Brown and clips from the riots after Martin Luther King was assasinated.

The next group, Stimulus Package played some really amazing electro-accoustic stuff featuring a Tenorion, the first one I've ever seen in real life. I might have to get one.

and lastly a group called Spectrum Interview, composed of members of the other acts and others got onstage for an eery and beautiful experimental synth oddessy. After the show I introduced one of my friends to the rest of them and mingled a bit, there were people filming the event and I'm hoping to get some footage to share with you soon.

If this is the experimental music scene in Vancouver then I want to be right in the thick of it. It felt a bit like coming home.

Xposted at Wiresource

squarewaves & such

here you go, a link to the site by the fine folks at squarewaves in Vancouver.
it appears these people have set-up some sorta website for possibly an ongoing series of performance around town. have a look & support them if you can.... i know i will.

http://www.squarewaves.ca/

oh yeah, it appears there are 2 shows listed right now, 1 tonight, 1 next Sat. i'm definitely going to next Sat. provided i'm not called into work as this one is happening in the afternoon.

d.

Synthy Fun

Hey people, been awhile. Just starting to get back into it now the summer (?) activities have died down. Here's a pic of my modules going into a cabinet with the truly mind blowing Klee sequencer at the top. I have about 2 rows of modules now.

Wondering if anyone is going to the Synth DIY event this year in Renton Wa. here's the lowdown from down south.

In an e-mail exchange with John Marshall he confirmed the upcoming PNW synthesizer meeting:

Saturday, October 25th
10:00AM to 3:00PM

Renton Technical College
3000 NE 4th St
Renton, WA 98056

Different room this year, possibly H-203/204. More info to come!

Would be great to meet you guys down there.

George, Victoria.

New to Group 2

Well if Dave is going to play show and tell, so am I. My name is George and I've recently re-activated my love/obession with music/electronics. Not going to give my age but i'm old enought to know better.
I live in Victoria and I decided to build a modular, something I always wanted to do. Analog electronics is having a huge resurgence these days, so it seems like the right time.Here's some shots of my fledgling modular. I went with frac format to keep the size down and while there is some issue with getting my fingers to the knobs, I can live with it, 'cause you can pack a lot of noise into a small space.
No cabinet yet, just some rack rails to hang things on. Modules built so far include PAIA Midi2cv8, Thomas Henry VCO and ADSR, both rock, an EFM VCO and VCF, both junk, VCO doesn't track and VCF has limited cutoff, motto: stay away from EFM stuff, poor service and docs and they don't seem to work too well. Also a couple of utility modules, a multiple and an attenuator. I have lots more to go with a Thomas Henry Super Controller and MAnkato filter in the works.(I like T.Henry stuff as you can tell).
The EFM power supply works ok, but a simple p/s is easy to build, I just went with them for the distribution board, which provides 16 power connections for modules.
I have spent at least the same as Dave, so figure on spending double what you thought if you decide to join the madness. If you do, you will find it very rewarding to build and fiddle/troubleshoot a module and you will always be able to fix it in the future and have a good idea on how it works.

I've included a pic of the Klee sequencer panel that has been a pain to get right. I'm going to give it one more go, if that fails, on the backurner it goes!

George

New to the Group!

Hey everyone. My name is Dave. I'm 24 years old and absolutely obsessed with modular synthesis. I come from a very musical background and started on piano way back. I soon after went full force with guitar. I've picked up other instruments such as tenor sax, violin , bass, drums, larynx among others but guitar is still my main thing. I'm a bit if a gear-head. Before we get to the modular stuff, this is my main gear I'm currently rocking:

-'65 reissue fender twin reverb (for sale.. thinking a Dr.Z stang ray and 2X12 instead)

-'61 reissue gibson sg 

-home-made distortion (couldn't stand crappy tonebone switches). 

-home-made digi-delay

-home-made fuzz

-keeley compressor

-line6 modulation modeler

-boss tu-2 tuner

-univox microfazer

-boss dd-20 giga-delay

-roland re-150 space echo tape delay

-akai s5000 sampler with maxed polyphony/ram and full sampled mellotron/rhodes etc...

-macbook pro

-axiom61 midi keyboard

-altoids mintbox theremin

and......

-An ongoing diy modular synth. This is really all of you care about! haha. Let me explain a bit before showing you the pics. I've always loved synths and mainly analog/modular synthesis. I always wanted to buy one but to get a nice oldschool moog style big knob/1/4" jack equivalent.. i was looking to spend at least 3 grand which i simply could not afford. at ONE point, it seemed like it would be less expensive to build my own.... oh what a fool I am. I am only 2 modules in and have spend well over a grand thus far. Either way, it's fine since i'm learning alot, and have something truly unique. I also decided to go a direction that would cost more since i wanted bigger jacks and whatnot. After making a few stompboxes and getting some decent power tools, safety equip, soldering workstation and whatnot, i was ready to start the modular. It's not meant to look great or anything like that. It's a hobby for me and It may never see the light of day. The cool thing, there are no rules. It can get as insane as I want it. I followed the synthesizers.com diy cabinet and made a crappy barely workable cabinet. Made it from inexpenive "knotty pine" from home depot. I had panels cut at a local metal shop. All are moog specs. I had 1/2/3 length panels cut. Just using 1/8" thik aluminum plates. Nothing is properly measured out on the front. Everything's been eye-balled and has worked out this far. Theres so much to do that sometimes I just opted to make a quick decision and press on. I made a paia midi2cv8 for my midi-cv converter. I had to cut a gross hole in the panel since the kit wants to use 1/8" jacks and needed the dip switch to be accessible. My first/only other module past the midi-cv converter is an mfos vco. I purchased the pcb's from their site since they are actually cheaper than me doing it myself. I'm also in an apt. now so less chemicals the better. I bought their vco, 4-pole lowpass vcf, vca, adsr. The other 3 have yet to be created. All parts are in my hands as are all necessary tools. Just need to get it put back together since the move from nan-vic and away she goes. I am using 2 motm distro's. Only 1 connected at this time. I'm just using the 960 right now since the mfos modules are +-12v only and will work off of +-15v. I have the 990 as well setup so if i get my hands on any modules with the additional +5v, I'll have it all ready to go. I know there are other ways to go about this, but i'm still quite new. I'm using a power-one triple output linear power supply. their biggest one. It's rediculous. +-15v, +5v. I generally would run it to the 990 first, then to the 960. So i have groups of connectors for either the dual or triple power needs. I decided to go with mate-n-lok connectors. Connected wires from the +-12v, g, g on the pcb's to one end of the connectors. (they are free hanging but through a hole in the pcb to keep slack on them so they don't get tugged). The other end is the motm style connector to the distro. I had to hack one end of the cable off to create the mate-n-lok. that way i can unclip easily and they all have uniform connectors.... what else... I tuned the converter to 1v/oct using my multimeter and actually used a computer based scope on my mac for the oscillator. I had spent so much already that i wanted to try a free equivalent before buying more hardware. I ended up using the bram and sean smartelectronix s(M)exoscope and it worked like a charm.  had great visuals. I shaped the waves using that tool and listed with my own ears to eliminate sine distortion and whatnot. The synth doesn't do that much yet, but it works and plays in tune. I went for the temperature compensator on the vco as well so it won't slip. Soon enough, i'm going to piece it back together and start on the next module. Probably the vcf. There's alot I'm forgetting right now but it's been about a year of research (never soldered before that) and a year of collecting parts and building. here are a couple of pics. I left my digital cam in Nanaimo by accident so there are better pics on that for later. This is all I've got so far:

So there you have it. Questions/comments/ideas/thoughts? I live in Vic so you guys probably won't see me much at meetings but I'd love to be a part of the community. Bye for now. 

Dave