so it’s been a while due to a lot of things: break happened and i got some great field recordings in brazil, computer malfunctions happened and i got the new os x (it sucks), and final semester is happening, so i’m pretty busy worrying rather than doing. i did my first senior concert last week and it went well; i plan on uploading footage here tomorrow or the next day. it was two not-really-improvised pieces and an improvisation, and the whole setup turned out really well so it sounded good. unfortunately i discovered last-minute that one of my synth’s filters has stopped working, so i have to troubleshoot that along with the “double dicer,” a cigar box thing i made and hope to post here eventually.
anyway, it always seems to be more important to be thinking about “the next thing,” so with that in mind i present a schematic that i hope to breadboard and tweak this week or next. for the most part it’s a simple preamp/distortion circuit with adjustable gain and volume (in theory), but instead of an audio out, each circuit contains four leds. prior research has told me that if you do this, then hold a solar cell connected to an xlr cable up to the led, then plug the other end of the xlr into an amp, the solar cell will reproduce a slightly distorted version of whatever is being fed into the circuit. this schematic only has two inputs, but there can be many more, with each set of leds flickering at the frequency of the input. from there, you can hook up a few solar cells and have all sorts of fun turning off the lights and moving between sounds, or, as i hope to do, play with mirrors or reflective materials like crumpled aluminum foil to get the optimal weird mixture. i may have messed something up in the schematic or may encounter a bump in the road or two, but overall this should be straightforward and cool.
