SOUNDBOXES WORKSHOP with DEREK HOLZER

Workshop: May 26 & 27, 2012, Time 11-19
Workshop Venue: NK Projekt, Elsenstr. 52 2HH 2Etage, Berlin Neukoelln

Presentation + live Macumbista set: Sunday May 27 2012, Time 20.00
Presentation Venue: O’Tannenbaum, Sonnenallee 27, Berlin Neukoelln

Discover the hidden sonic qualities of objects from our everyday world in this workshop, combining the arts of electronics, noise, sculpture and collage. The basic elements we will employ are a wooden box, a speaker, a small audio amplifier, and a contact microphone. To this, brave box-builders will add their own found objects, graphics, images, memories and ideas to create a unique electroacoustic cabinet of curiosities.

No previous electronics experience is necessary for this workshop. Each participant is required to bring several items to the workshop, please see below.

TIMETABLE

Day One: Introduction to simple noise/electroacoustic electronics, circuit soldering.

Day Two: Box-building, decoration and collage, experimentation with found objects as sound sources.

Final Presentation: All participants will present their finished soundboxes to the public at the end of the second day!

WHAT TO BRING

I will provide most of the tools and materials necessary for constructing the box, however there are a few things you should bring yourself:

1) A BOX: This should be made of thin wood or very strong cardboard. Plastic can be also used, but it doesn’t sound very good. And please, no metal! It is too difficult to cut and drill with the tools we will have. This box should be a minimum of 10x10x4cm, or bigger if you want to use a larger speaker or have more room to decorate and add objects. Cigar boxes, small suitcases, instrument cases or jewelry/silverware boxes are all good things to look for. At least one side of the box should be no more than 5mm thick, to allow the hardware to be mounted.

2) A SPEAKER (OPTIONAL): I will have a selection of speakers for participants to use. However, if you have something special please bring it along, but please make sure it fits in the box you have chosen!

3) FOUND OBJECTS: Please bring as many found objects as you can to decorate your soundbox or use as a sound source via the contact microphone. Bones, shells, small sticks, bells, strings, wires, springs (especially!) or anything else made out of solid yet resonant material make great sound sources. Photographs, cloth, leather, paper or any other kind of material can be useful for covering the box and making collages. Paint, markers and pens may also be useful.

4) EFFECTS PEDALS (OPTIONAL): Any kind of battery-powered effects pedals, such as distortions, filters or delays, can be very useful in creating more nonlinearities in the feedback loop.

FURTHER INFO:

The NK Projekt’s page for this workshop:

http://www.nkprojekt.de/soundboxes-workshop-with-derek-holzer/

You can see videos and photos from previous SoundBoxes workshops here:

http://macumbista.net/?page_id=1897

Or use the “soundboxes” tag to see all posts related to SoundBoxes:

http://macumbista.net/?tag=soundboxes

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Derek Holzer (1972) is an American sound artist based in Berlin, whose current interests include DIY analog electronics, sound art, field recording and the meeting points of electroacoustic, noise, improv and extreme music. He has played live experimental sound, as well as taught workshops in noise art technology, across Europe, North America, Brazil and New Zealand.

http://macumbista.net/

BASIC INFO:

Fee: EUR 35 (participation) + EUR 10 (materials) Registration is required and can be done by sending an email to info@nkprojekt.de with the subject line “SoundBoxes”

Number of Participants: Minimum 6/Maximum 14

Location: NK Projekt
Elsenstr. 52 2HH 2Etage
12059 Berlin
+49(0)17620626386

Another satisfied customer… [March 2012, Zagreb].

Been locked in the studio for days now, but the fruits of my labor will be heard soon…

UPCOMING

25-29 April: TONEWHEELS @ Radio Sonores, Guimaraes PT
16-20 May: Machine Deva @ Marfa Film Festival, Marfa TX USA
26-28 July: Solo Performance + SoundBoxes Workshop @ Norberg Festival, Norberg SE

Starting next month, I will also be taking orders for customized tabletop noise makers, drone machines and sound boxes. Please contact me if interested.

cryptography (study I) from macumbista on Vimeo.

I took a quick break from some soundtracking work to build and document this little box over the weekend. I have been interested in examining the use of simple analog implementations of pseudo-random number generators, akin to those used in encryption algorithms, for the chaotic production of sound patterns. One of the simplest pseudo-random number generators is a three-stage shift register with a non-linear feedback loop, such as that found in Rob Hordijk’s “Benjolin” instrument design.

Rungler schematic courtesy of Casper Electronics

The most interesting part of the Benjolin is a circuit Hordijk calls a “rungler” (the rest of the Benjolin being two simple oscillators and a resonant filter). It is made up of a shift register in the middle (U4, a 4021B integrated circuit), an XOR (eXclusive OR) logic gate created by one transistor and an op-amp on the left, and finally a rudimentary Digital-to-Analog converter built around another op-amp on the right. Note the feedback from the last stage of the shift register to one input of the XOR, or what could be called the “poor man’s ring modulator”. The other XOR input comes from one of the two oscillators (P1).

Hordijk writes:

The purpose of the rungler is to create short stepped patterns of variable length and speed. [...] It needs two frequency sources to work and basically creates a complex interference pattern that can be fed back into the frequency parameters of the driving oscillators to create an unlimited amount of havoc.

The rungler is basically a CMOS shift register clocked by one oscillator and receiving its data input from the other oscillator. The output bits of the shift register are used as [...] a 3 bit code that is fed into a 3 bit DA converter. This DA eight level output voltage is fed back to the oscillator frequency control inputs. The output of the DA is the ‘rungler CV signal’[...]

When the rungler signal is fed back to the frequency parameters of the oscillators it will change the triangle waveforms and pulse widths of the oscillator outputs[...]

The rungler will try to find a balanced state. In this way it behaves according to principle from Chaos Theory. There seems to be an unlimited amount of possible balanced states and when a balanced state is just slightly disturbed it can be noted that it takes a little time to find the next balanced state, with noticeable bifurcations, etc.

Now, a shift register itself is a quite simple idea; one has several stages, and information (an analog voltage in some cases, or a binary state in others) gets passed from one stage to the next every time the shift register gets a clock signal. Passing the last stage of the shift register back to the first results in a loop, however any sort of transformation done to the last stage before it gets sent back to the first (an XOR “ring modulation” in the Benjolin’s case) means that each iteration of the loop changes. This satisfies the basic requirements of chaotic syntheses: that there is feedback, that there is nonlinearity and that there is sensitivity to initial conditions. (see Slater, Dan, “Chaotic Sound Synthesis”, Computer Music Journal 22.2 19 September 1998, pp 12-19.)

Not surprisingly, analog shift registers such as the one produced by Serge Tcherepnin were often referred to as “arabesque generators”, as in this image from Synapse Magazine September/October 1976. However, we could also refer to this structure as a Lindenmayer, or L-system. An L-system is essentially a grammatical system which rewrites itself for every new iteration according to a system of rules.

Here is Lindenmayer’s original L-system for modeling the growth of algae:

variables : A B
constants : none
start : A
rules : (A → AB), (B → A)

which produces:

n = 0 : A
n = 1 : AB
n = 2 : ABA
n = 3 : ABAAB
n = 4 : ABAABABA
n = 5 : ABAABABAABAAB
n = 6 : ABAABABAABAABABAABABA
n = 7 : ABAABABAABAABABAABABAABAABABAABAAB

(Source: Wikipedia)

In Non-Standard Sound Synthesis with L-Systems, Stelios Manousakis refers to non-propagative L-systems as being similar to cellular automata algorithms in that the data produced doesn’t branch out and expand endlessly, but rather is used as rules for determining the output of each cell. In our 3 stage shift register example, the non-linear feedback applied to the last stage before it returns to the first would be the new “grammatical rule” applied to the next iteration.

Now, another term we could use to describe a chaotically-produced series of binary numbers with a high sensitivity to the initial conditions (or “seed”) of the process which creates them is a Pseudo-Random Number Generator (also know as a Deterministic Random Bit Generator). And many implementations of a PRNG use what are called Linear Feedback Shift Registers to create those bits, which are the basic building blocks of many sorts of encryption processes.

Our 3-bit Benjolin is a far cry from the 128- and 256-bit encryption algorithms commonly used for digital security today (to say nothing of the “uncrackable” 1024-bit scheme used by the RSA algorithm), and probably bears a closer resemblance to the “shuffle” feature on my ITunes, which “randomly” seems to play back the same 220 songs out of the 22,000 in my MP3 collection. Or, as quantum mechanics pioneer John von Neumann joked, “Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.” For the purpose of creating generative sound compositions in realtime, however, these pseudo-random bits appear to provide an interesting and “musical” balance between randomness and structure.

Other circuits or projects involving the potentially chaotic use of shift registers and/or pseudo-random number generators include the CGS 34 ASR (which is of course influenced by the original Serge ASR), the CGS 31 Digital Noise, the random voltage generator from the Buchla 208 “Music Easel” and the mighty Klee Sequencer.

As a footnote, I have to add that the man who first uttered the name “L-system” to me is the same man whose film is now sitting on my desktop, waiting to be scored. So with this musing on the cyclical nature of the universe, I bid you farewell for now.

Now Playing

drudkh-eternal turn of the wheel[2012 season of mist]
earth-angels of darkness demons of light II[2012 southern lord]
keith fullerton whitman-generators[2012 editions mego]
mirroring-foreign body[2012 kranky]
oren ambarchi-audience of one[2012 touch]

Sometimes when I think back, all my workshops seem to go by this fast…

The participants in Zagreb were great, super-motivated and highly imaginative. Each and every one of them made some incredibly special and unique SoundBox during the two days we had together, and even played them too… We also squeezed in an early morning trip to the local flea market to put the shop back into workshop. Big thanks to Deborah Hustic for organization and hospitality! Was also great to see some old friends around town, such as Ivan “Kliff” Marusic and Borut Savski.

I think my favorite SoundBox from this workshop was this one, crafted from the end of a trashed accordion:

TALLINN

Between 5-9 March, students of the EKA (Taavi Suisalu, Evi Pärn, Lilli Tölp, Aleksander Sprohgis) learned to make their own primitive noise synthesizers with me. Lilli made this short video capturing the essence of the final presentation plus a tiny bit of my solo set.

Evi also posted two videos, here and here.

Like the previous Neanderthal Electronics presentation, back when Ptarmigan was still located in Helsinki, this one was a complete success. Thanks to Raivo Kelomees and John Fail for organizing the workshop and presentation, respectively. Any account of my Estonian trip would be woefully incomplete without mentioning Timo Toots and Marika Agu and their Sunday-afternoon tour of the Architectural Wonders of Tartu. Aitäh!

RIGA

Derek Holzer vs Jelena Glazova live @Taka 16.03.12 pt3 by macumbista

Live set @ Taka, Riga, March 16th, 2012. Derek Holzer: analog synthesizer, soundbox, found objects. Jelena Glazova: voice, laptop.

Parts 1 and 2 plus some studio sessions can be found at Holzer vs Glazova.

Thanks to Sandis Baumanis [ULVE Agency] for organization and photos, Jēkabs Nīmanis for recording, Edgars Rubenis for the mixer and Olesja for the lovely smile.

Unfortunately, the only souvenir that RISEBA, the school I was teaching at, left me was a headache. Typical Latvian new-capitalist neoliberals, they seemed to delight in playing ridiculous games over even the smallest amount of money, making them little better than con-artists. The result: I worked twice as many hours this workshop as last year, for the same amount of pay. Count your fingers after you shake hands with people like these…

On that note…

People like these business-school asswipes make me sicker than ever of this constant freelancing life. I have been actively searching for more constant employment teaching at an art, music or design school lately. If any of my dear readers have tips, I would gladly hear them. In some ways, I am beyond caring where such a job might be at this point…

On the other hand, spring has arrived in Berlin and I have very little travel coming up. While that may make the coming months a bit lean and hungry, I hope to use the time to catch up on projects I have promised people, including two cassette releases and a film soundtrack, as well as building some new soundbox-type instruments for sale. Wish me luck!

Derek Holzer vs Jelena Glazova 19th session by Holzer vs Glazova

Derek Holzer vs Jelena Glazova 13th session by Holzer vs Glazova

Playing next Friday with Jelena Glazova in Riga. Had two really great sets, one in Zagreb last week and one last night in Tallinn, with the “new” setup: soundbox, found objects and analog mini-synth, discovering the possibilities of how they work together. Looking forward to mixing with Jelena’s amazing processed vocals.

At the Estonian gig, something in the PA starting smelling quite smokey, despite the fact that everything sounded fine, and afterward many people told me what kind of emotions that smell triggered for them. Interesting… but I don’t want to make a career out of smoking PAs!

In case anyone is curious, Holzer Sr.’s film project Kickstarter has 18 hours to go and has been a success. He flies to Marietta, Georgia on the 14th to have the film transferred to digital and after that I can get to work on the soundtrack. Should be an curious collaboration.

I have absolutely no work lined up for next month, which should make me a bit nervous. But I’ve decided to spend less time online, build some new soundbox-type instruments and get busy pushing them. Please get in contact if you would like something custom.

Somehow, I had it in my head that I was flying to Zagreb tomorrow. So today was a great day to assemble a new instrument! I was almost disappointed when I realized I have another day to spare still. This time, I set up the Macumbista Mini case with 2 x Thomas Henry VCOs, one CGS Digital Noise, one Serge Smooth/Stepped Generator and 2 x Analog Multipliers, as well as two built-in, padded line-outs and a new LED gooseneck mount. The first test-patch I made with it settled any doubts about the choice of modules. This one rocks. Incredible chaotic feedback possibilities from what I would like to (lovingly) think of as a cross-modulated-cluster-fuck. Roll that one in your textbooks of academic electronic music and smoke it…

Machine Deva: An Experimental Art Film

“Machine Deva’s gonna be an unusual experience, it’s someplace between looking at cave paintings in a hand-held home movie that I’ve brought into my dreams.” –Steve Holzer

A distinguished gentleman who I happen to have known my entire life is busy creating his latest camera-less film, and has invited me to help create the soundtrack. He has a Kickstarter page for the project, with a very reasonable goal of $3000 set. He’s halfway there and has only 11 more days to do it. So if you are one of those aspiring patron-of-the-arts-types, you could do worse than to get on board this project. Please drop by and have a look!

Travel & Upcoming Engagements

03-04 March: SoundBoxes workshop + Concert @ Student Center Zagreb HR. Practice your Hrvatski here.

06-09 March: Neanderthal Electronics workshop @ Estonian Academy of Art New Media Dept, Tallinn EE

09 March: Neanderthal Electronics workshop presentation + Concert @ Ptarmigan, Tallinn EE. Read it and weep.

12-16 March: Sound+Space/The Art of Field Recording workshop at RISEBA, Riga LV.

16 March ???: Derek Holzer & Jelena Glazova live set… date and venue to be confirmed, watch this space!

In what seems to be a time-honored tradition, I’m staying up all night before a 6am flight to my Electric Spring gig making new instruments. These I have named after both the festival and the resonant coil microphones they employ. Each one is a beautiful drone machine by itself, and when placed together they have a natural tendency to harmonize. This time I actually managed a line-out to connect to the mixer as well.

The performance is likely to be a live version of Nonlinearity III, as seen in this video, using all three SoundBoxes instead of clever editing to make the polyphony. My first SoundBox from Nonlinearity I may also make an appearance…

These three new Electric Spring SoundBoxes became available for sale after the concert in Huddersfield, 15 February 2012. Number one of three is already sold. Inquire via the Contact page.

[Macumbista modular at CTM Touch night via CTM Fest Twitter]

I had the chance to rescue an artist whose work I appreciate immensely last night at the CTM Festival, when his gear ended up in Tel Aviv instead of Berlin. I knew I kept this heavy metal monster around for some reason….

All in all, it was a wonderful festival. Personal highlights include Chris Salter’s Just Noticeable Difference installation, Anke Eckhardt’s Between You and Me, Supersilent + Stian Westerhus vs Joshua Light Show, two works and a talk by one of my hugest inspirations Eliane Radigue and of course the entire Touch Spire closing evening program.

Big thanks to CTM organizers and artists for an awesome week!

SoundBox performance at Proximos Festival, Tenerife ES in June 2011. Thanks to Simone for passing these on, I have great memories from my visit there!

Now Playing

daniel higgs-say god [2010 thrill jockey]
eli keszler-cold pin [2011 pan] + live at NK project berlin [29.01.12]
eliane radigue-naldjorlak & psi 847, live at ctm festival [30.01.12 - 31.01.12]
john wiese-seven of wands [2011 pan] + live at NK project berlin [29.01.12]
nicholas szczepanik-please stop loving me [2011 streamline]
supersilent + joshua light show – live at ctm festival [01.02.12]
oneida-absolute II [2011 jagjaguwar]

UPDATE: SOLD the whole edition to a collector in the States. I will be doing future runs of SoundBoxes soon, watch this space or get in touch to reserve yours.

I wanted to remind my dear readers that the three SoundBoxes of the Ghost Lockets series are still for sale. Price is EUR 120 each plus shipping (and USt for German buyers). The Ghost Lockets are enhanced SoundBoxes, incorporating a circuit based on a fancy boutique guitar fuzz with a spring-mounted contact microphone, 9V battery, 1/2 Watt audio amplifier, transparent speaker and audio-responsive lighting. Each one also contains a Danish ghost.

You can see more detailed photos of each here. Videos of two other SoundBoxes can be viewed here (similar design, no distortion) and here (different design, but recorded with distortion pedal), and these should give you an idea of how they can be played and what they sound like. I can shoot specific photos and videos next week for interested buyers. Handstamped nameplate on request.

Contact: macumbista AT THE DOMAIN gmail DOT com

Currently teaching a workshop for the TAIK Media Lab in rainy Helsinki after an amazing New Years trip to MOKS in southeast Estonia, where I walked, cooked, sauna’ed, ate and drank with friends and worked on some sound with Jelena Glazova from Riga. Her processed vocals vs my feedbacking soundboxes… Perhaps some glimpses of this project will make it online later on when I’m back in Berlin and have time to edit them.

I just confirmed two gigs, one Macumbista live set for Electric Spring in Huddersfield UK on 15 February (along with a two day workshop preceding this) and one TONEWHEELS performance and lecture for Sonores in Guimaraes PT on 27 April. I’d be very interested to hear from London people about activities around 16-19 February… pls get in touch!

Now Playing

hive mind-elemental disgrace[2011 spectrum spools]

nonlinearity III from macumbista on Vimeo.

Q: So what do you do?

A: Well, if no one’s ever seen one before, how can they tell if I’m playing it badly or not?

Triple soundbox-drone nonlinearity study, constructed and recorded during my 2011 residency at the Danish Institute for Electro/Acoustic Music, Aarhus and edited during a shorter residency at MOKS, Mooste. Glam-rock, audio-responsive soundbox built for KT.

aluk todolo-ordre[2011 ajna offensive]
asva-presence of absence[2011 important]
barn owl + jefre cantu-ledesma-live at levee berlin[may 2011]
barn owl & the infinite strings ensemble-the headlands[2011 important]
ben frost-live at berghain berlin[feb 2011]
bohren and der club of gore-beileid ep[2011 ipecac]
charlemagne palestine-live at tuned city tallinn[july 2011]
corrupted-garten der unbewusstheit[2011 cold ashes]
crippled black phoenix-live at festsaal kreuzberg berlin[may 2011]
cut hands-afro noise 1[2011 very friendly/susan lawly]
diamanda galas-live at wundergrund copenhagen[oct 2011]
earth-angels of darkness, demons of light I[2011 southern lord]
eleh-radiant intervals[2011 important]
eliane radigue-transamorem, transmortem[2011 important]
ellen fullman-through glass panes[2011 important]
evan caminiti-when california falls into the sea 12″[2011 handmade birds]
falls of rauros-the light that dwells in rotten wood[2011 bindrune]
lasse marhaug-live at wundergrund copenhagen[nov 2011]
master musicians of bukkake-live at festsaal kreuzberg berlin[may 2011]
mika vainio-life (… it eats you up)[2011 editions mego]
motion sickness of time travel-dreamcatcher cs[2011 hobo cult records]
oneohtrix point never-replica[2011 software]
pharaoh overlord-out of darkness[2011 ektro]
pj harvey-let england shake[2011 island]
the skull defects feat. daniel higgs-peer amid[2011 thrill jockey]
thomas ankersmit-live at tuned city tallinn[july 2011]
tim hecker-ravedeath 1972[2011 kranky]
trevor wishart-talk and concert at DIEM aarhus[dec 2011]
various artists-brass pins & match heads: international 78s[2011 mississippi]
valerio tricoli & thomas ankersmit-forma II[2011 pan-act]
wolves in the throne room-celestial lineage[2011 southern lord]

During my last couple weeks in Aarhus, I worked on three small instruments with various degrees of success.

INSTRUMENT A: LAKRITS-KALIMBA

I have always loved Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Instrument-a-Day project, so when time came to bring a small, throw-away gift for the traditional Danish Julefrokost at DIEM, I took an hour to whip up this lakrits-box kalimba. The keys are made from streetsweeper bristles found in the gutter. I have no idea who ended up with it.

INSTRUMENT B: SOUNDBOX(GLAM EDITION)

Quite a few of these SoundBoxes have been rolling out of my studio lately. This one in particular was made for my friend KT, and was played at the 09.12 gig with Krishve. It has a sound-responsive silver-lining, so to speak. Some really incredible drones happen when using the spring-reverb-contact-mic, and I’ll be posting a sound-video soon of what that is like.

INSTRUMENT C: SERGE GATOR CLONE

Slightly more complicated than the previous two, this is my attempt to clone a Serge Gator synthesizer module, mainly using circuit boards provided by Ken Stone. The Boolean Logic and Pulse Divider sections work perfectly fine, the Divide-by-N Comparator section works about half-way, and the VC TimeGen Clock section doesn’t really function at all yet. However, I ran out of time so the next free moment to look at this will be in mid-January when I return to Berlin from Helsinki. Expect updates and sounds then…

Current Location:

Happy New Year from south-east Estonia!!!

Now Playing

ättestupa-begraven mot norr[2010]
barn owl-lost in the glare[2011]
barn owl-shadowland[2011]
sunn o)) + nurse with wound-the iron soul of nothing[2008]