A broken string instrument into a sound generating electronic instrument

By JyKang in Electro-Acoustic, Ji's, [EA]ComputerMusic, [EA]OtherTools 0 Comment

These days, I am more interested in building something  that I can contribute myself, put more of my taste into it. In other words, I love analog synths and some other devices that are already designed by someone. I buy and assemble them because they are worth, and they are ones that I don’t have enough time and knowledge to design myself. It’s a whole different world. But I can probably build something much simpler, yet it is more what I want to do with.

So I grabbed the arduino again after few years. First time when I picked up the arduino, I thought I had lack of understanding in general. I could follow the instructions but I didn’t have enough ideas what to do with it. Now after assembling and building few electronic devices, I kinda wanted to go back there and see if I could do something more interesting.

Then I also had this broken string instrument that I got from a second hand market for 2 euro. The string is simply metal wire, and I could imagine that the electronic current can flow into it, and make something, just something!

So, I tried to feed the voltage into it. The feeding tool is the Arduino. I used the 330k ohm resister in between and simply let the voltage flow. Then I put a piezo into a body of the instrument and it is not to detect the sound of the instrument body as in general use of it, but I connect the wire of the voltage into the piezo, and it more works like buzzer.

Most important element is the human body : this works only with the human body as the conductive object, like a switch, -or could work with any conductive material-. Any part of my body needs to be wired as well (one hand attached to the wire, and the other hand touching the instrument), otherwise there is no current flow between the body and the instrument.

I am very happy with the result. Now I am on the stage of feeding some various voltages into different strings to make some different sound pitches, and so far it works. I put a metal in between and connect that into the ground. By this grounding, it can cancel the voltage, meaning that it can also reduce the voltage in time to generate some glissando effect, or a very distorted noise.

After finishing this design, I am going to make it as a performing tool, connecting with the computer to process the sound as well. This is already on going.

 

Time Folding Live Album release

By JyKang in Arts, Ji's, SuperCollider, [EA]ComputerMusic, [EA]OtherTools 0 Comment

I am very happy to announce the release of the digital album Time-Folding.

Time-Folding Live Album

The Album consists of 7 selected tracks from my Live Performances in Den Haag for last couple of years, with the combination of Analog synth, Digital synth and acoustic Instruments. Its version varies by the change of instruments and live set.
Every track is recorded during the live performance, no additional editing involved.

 

Hope many of visitors listen to it and wish to give my any feedback!

You can buy the album, but you can listen to them for free on the link (click the image above)

Enjoy. 🙂

 

 

Time-Folding V.3.4, Solo Live Electronics

By JyKang in Electro-Acoustic, Ji's, SuperCollider, [EA]ComputerMusic, [EA]OtherTools 0 Comment

Somehow, I think that the direction toward my solo live electronics set has been built up for last few months. Considering my previous experiences with the electro-acoustic music for conventional instruments, I believe the world that those acoustic instruments and their tradition have brought, the values on themselves, the fact that they ‘still’ shine as they are, with enormous amount of possibilities that they can do, different from the digital sound, the power of acoustics. Again, they are different, and I don’t prefer one among the other. My point is that I’d like to use them both, in my own way.

Those analog synthesisers are the same for me. I simply would like to use them all because they are amazing as they are. So I am currently developing the way to combine those three worlds: analog, digital sounds and acoustic sound together, and I believe that this is not my first attempt, but the one that I was more aware of what I’d like to do with all the instruments.

So here it comes: Time-Folding V.3.4 for Gong, Benjolin, 16step sequencer, 555 timer, 4096 NAND atari junk, and laptop with Supercollider.

The main instrument here is the Gong, ‘Kweng-ga-ri,’ one of the most representative metal instruments in Korea, vividly in use with other percussions, and it creates very un-defined loud noise, as well as a soft resonance. Normally the instrument is played by a person holding vertically with one hand, and use a mallet to hit the surface with the other hand. The hand that is holding the gong is controlling the resonance too using fingers.

I wanted it to have all those qualities, but by playing in a completely different way. What I did is to use a loudspeaker underneath the gong and give a overloaded impulse to the speaker so that the speaker can hit the gong. I use an object to bounce inside too. It is much easier. Since I am using a speaker, I use the feedback too to create some sort of melodic(?) noise, which I love in this system.

Since this instrument carries mostly the rhythmic part, all the rest do some other jobs: like more linear motion, adding some weight into the musical drama. But mostly I wanted the Gong to be the main actor of the drama, and all the others can support this role. Nothing is less important.

One can probably say that I use too much equipments. That might be true so that I can’t carry them all by myself anymore. -I am too small for such music.- However those are very clearly categorised: The gong with speaker+mics for the sound input, The analogue devices are having its own network, and The laptop with Supercollider, controlled by midi controllers, are the effectors: again, acoustic+analog+digital respectively. Those three are very much bound together, especially by the system of Supercollider. The effector sometimes differentiate what to treat -either from the Gong or from the synthesisers. But often the effectors apply to both and create feedback too. Then they are equality treated at the same time. But still it is an ongoing project, and I am enjoying finding a number of possibilities from all of those.

Well, I hope you enjoy watching the video. I’ll see how many version of this Time-folding series will last. I hope it goes further.

Liveset @ HetNutshuis, Test Extra:Tele-li(f/v)e 31/Jan/2014 from Ji Youn Kang on Vimeo.

KANG, solo Live Electronics @ Noodlebar, Rotterdam from Ji Youn Kang on Vimeo.