New Remix of 'Tiny Flesh Bell' by Pikadon

Stoked to be included on this compilation of remixes...

no part B

DIY MIDI controlled solenoid

#midi #controlled #solenoid #fun #synthdiy pic.twitter.com/e2gYpkag1O

— Neal Beard AHM (@nealbeardAHM) April 12, 2017

Midiwidget syncs Bent Beats

An experiment using my Midiwidget to trigger and sync bent gear, made entirely with circuit bent gear.

For the percussive elements I used a circuit bent Tr505 and Hot Music drum toy. The Midiwidget also triggers a home made Lo-fi sampler which is CV controlled through a Belcat analog delay with a Doepfer A101.9 Universal Vactrol Module.

Square wave broken chords from a Gameboy runnning LSDJ.

Reverb is from ehx holy grail.

Only 3 mins long coz thats about all my ears could stand!

Thanks for listening/looking...

The Midiwidget with 8x RCA cables running out to various devices.

Circuit Bent Toys rehoused in black boxes and the Belcat Delay. 

The bent Tr505. The Midiwidget turns on and off bends between points on its ROM chip.

The Hot Music drum toy which I had to re-house to fit all the connections I wanted. It features dirty kick, snare and ride samples with lots of aliasing...

Midiwidget (still!) in Progress

I still haven't finished my midiwidget build, mainly because I've been using it so much in my music, but here's how it's looking at the moment...

I decided to go for a sandwich type enclosure so the USB connection is easily accessible.

The 3.5 jacks are 8xgate outs for my eurorack. The rca's are coto reed switches which I  use for triggering my circuit bent gear, although they could switch anything.

I'm still undecided what to use the remaining 8x gates for. I think I might create a split board with 4x eurorack gates and 4x solenoid triggers as I loved John's demo here and have always wanted to try making some music in this way.

I also need to wire up the midi sockets and battery power- but like I said I'm having too much fun with it right now!

Circuit Bent Modular Fusion

Another new track up on soundcloud...



All the modular and circuit bent voices, and their modulations, were synchronised with a midi clock from a Doepfer A190.

There's quite a lot of low end activity, so for your stereo enjoyement, I would recommend a decent set of speakers, or headphones!

New NB Tracks on Soundcloud

Two new tracks up on Soundcloud...!





Both tracks made  with a Doepfer a100 played with hands and feet using foot switches and foot controller, various circuit bent toys being modulated by a combination of Midi (using highly liquids diy controllers) and 555 timed vactrols, EHX electric mitsress, and EHX Man. Mixed and aranged using an analog Mackie mixer and Logic Pro.

Recorded Portsmouth 2013.

Neal beard and his machines hope you enjoy listening to their musical collaborations.

Synthesis of a crappy keyboard

A new Neal Beard and his Machines track...

Recorded Portsmouth 2013.

Yes, it's meant to sound like this!

Bass, melody, and noise from a Doepfer A100. Drums Yamaha DD10.

For filtering I used Doepfer's A124 Wasp module, which created lots of unusual glitchy type effects. The audio was also split and overdriven through several VCA's across the stereo field.

New tracks in Progress

Two new tracks in progress:

A composition called Crappy Cat V,VI,I,ii in C (although I think I might rename this Crappy Keyboard Synthesis V, IV, I and ii in C) and an improvisation called Back to the Womb.

Both tracks created using an A100 and a circuit bent Yamaha DD10. The A112 sample was of my daughter.

Nearly, but not quite finished...

The Bells - Music in progess

A new track in progress called The Bells.

It's starting point was to explore metallic sounds in any way I could; through frequency modulation, ring modulation, delays, piezo mikes and drivers, spring reverbs etc.

This idea then became merged with my work as an illustrator on Charles Dickens short story, 'The Chimes'.

Here are the first two mixes. The beat was made by tapping a high hat with fingers and a brush. In the second mix I beefed the bass beat by making a low pass duplicate track and mixing it in, whilst also using it as a side chain of a noise gate on a oscillator making a bass tone.

The Bells - mix 1
The Bells - mix 2

Friend Giskard

Friend Giskard - a new track!

Made using a Doepfer A112 8 bit sampler, various other Doepfer modules, LSDJ midi synced with a LSDJMC2,  a home made matrix mixer with feedback loops, and home made spring reverb. All the panning and envelope manipulation was done with two VCA's and an VCLFO (with a voltage inverter).

I edited the samples using a Mac running Audacity and dumped them to the A112 using a script called MAKEDOEPFER written by a member of the Doepfer forum, which converted my Wav's into sysex files. Thanks to Zoe for this!

The track was inspired by Asimov's character R. Giskard Relentov and the sample was taken from his final speech. You can listen to the whole speech here...

Friend Giskard - The Final Mix?

On a train journey I managed to mix down Friend Giskard to a state I think I'm happy with, or as happy as I'll ever be. The whole thing was done on small headphones with train noise, so I'll sit with it for a bit and play it on a few different stereos. It's possible I might have punched the kick through a bit much, but we'll see!

It ended up being a piece in two movements. The first having abstract atmospheric noises, and even a small melody structured around the four-time kick, and the second having the noises cross into a backdrop of silence building to ambient noise (with a spring reverb fade out.)

Anyhow it's got all the elements I wanted, and I think for me at least it evokes Asimov's writing.

You can listen to it here - Friend Giskard.

Is it finished? I hope so!

Salmper Version 2 - Friend Giskard

During another early morning pre-breakfast session I had the great idea of re-naming the track 'Friend Giskard' in honour of Asimov's robotic literary creation, and so added some manipulated 'The Galaxy' samples from Giskard's final speech, beat mapped my previous audio that was LFO clocked, added the booming bass drum from my ER 1, and a crappy hissy noisy, thus muddying the mix into sludgy mess which you can listen to here...

Things to do:

1.Sort out the mix!

2. Add Star Trek Theremin type Choral Sci-Fi noises.

3. Keep the track emptying into silence, I kind of like that.

4. Possibly add some LSDJ type computer jibber jabber, in sync.

5. Try and focus a feeling of robot thought processes and conversations in sci-fi-deep-space.

6. Finish the damn thing...

Samlper 2013 - Music in Progress

A new type of blogpost for a new year - I've got so many unfinished pieces of music I decided it was about time I started finished some of them, hence this 'music in progress' post, which I hope to be the first of many helping me manage the creative process.

I recorded Samlper 2013 early this morning before the family woke. It's starting point was to make an spatial-sci-fi-soundscape with a limited palette of two 8 bit samples and feedback loops, which then I modulated in three sweeps of stereo-space-time.

Version 2 coming soon...

(and yes I did mean to misspell samlper!)