I/O Dock
I/O Dock, originally uploaded by Black Heart Industries.
I have started to make noise again. It’s been a long while. I’ve always wanted a noise tricorder, this is close. The first thing was to get some interesting apps. Then get my sources into the iPad. Years ago I digitized my 4 track tapes to load them into my 2 SP-808s. I loaded 112 sources into the iPad. The third thing was to add professional I/O. That would be the Alesis I/O Dock. It’s bigger then I thought. Sure it’s plastic, but not cheep. The only strange thing is the iPad must be turned on first or you’ll get some strange results. The app on the screen is Curtis by The Strange Agency. It’s a granular synthesizer. I’ll be reviewing some apps in the future.
Accordion sheet music
Accordion sheet music, originally uploaded by Black Heart Industries.
My friend Barbara was nice enough to lend me her accordion books that she used as a child. Playing the accordion is harder then it looks. Sure the keyboard is short but the act of pumping the bellows in time is quite demanding. Muscles hurt that I forgot about. The chord buttons, of which there are 120, are very difficult to push. More so for me then most since I’m missing a couple of digits on my left hand. This is going to take awhile, but no one is more stubborn then me.
Old noise video
This is an old video of me and some others doing an in-store performance at Auricular Records, now defunct.
Toys
Toys, originally uploaded by Black Heart Industries.
As I await the parts for my clock to arrive in the mail, I feel a bit anxious, so I thought I’d work on some toys. I have over 200 toys that require hacking. I striped the plastic and useless parts off of 30 of the simpler ones and put them in envelops. They fit nicely in the lower right drawer of my desk. “The hand” is unfinished. It needs a button switch that will be located above the speaker, and will be disguised behind an eye. Also, an output jack will be added. The two boxes in front of “The Hand” are examples of finished noise boxes. I have many more and should probably put them all in one place. The circuit board on the right is in the process of being reverse engineered. It was a very cheap ray gun made from discreet components. It might be interesting to rebuild it from electron tubes, but first I want to tweak and improve it with less lethal components. Vault Boy continues to encourage.
Show-N-Tell: Turntable parts
Turntable parts, originally uploaded by Black Heart Industries.
20 years of collecting. Before you ask, the answer is “NO!” Some of these parts were used in the Metagraph, R.I.P. The red tin was used to house one part of what is now the Zulu Box. It was then used as a rotating platform to hold marbles and nails through the holes on its edge, for the purpose of making electro-acoustic noise. Can’t believe I still have that piece of junk.
Metagraph No.2
Metagraph No.2, originally uploaded by Black Heart Industries.
Never to be finished noise machine. There would have been a platform at the top to hold eight turntable arms, four for the top of the record, and four for the bottom. The arms would be lock grooving, making eight loops, and destroying the record in the process. The first Metagraph was built in the early 1990s, and lived for about eight years. It is now dismantled, like this one. It had seven arms, three of which where motorized, scratching the record against the grooves.
