I’ll be at Maker Faire Detroit on July 30-Aug 1, at a table along with circuit benders Creme Dementia and the band CMKT4. If you’re in the area, please stop by to demo all the Unatronics standards and a few new, experimental pieces.

The Beat-Bike bicycle-controlled drum machine will be set up as well.

I will also be playing a concert or two in the Detroit area, more details to follow.

I’m thinking about making my next synth/drum machine using a microcontroller like the Arduino rather than all analog chips, which is what I’ve been doing.

The thinking is that I can implement read MIDI instead of the CV pulses I’ve been using to sync things, which is more accessible to the general public.

Also, It would enable me to do some more complex behaviors with a minimum of development time.  My goal is to create a control backbone that I can then use to control a few different types of soundmaking schemes, including analog synth chips like the SN76477 and software-based stuff like the SID Emulator.

So today I was looking at how to read data from a rotary encoder and it turns out (no surprise) that it’s really easy.  The encoder has two output square wave forms which differ in phase by 90 degrees.  By keeping track of the on/off state of both outputs, it’s possible to determine which direction the encoder is being rotated and adjust a software value accordingly:

So simple, but totally effective.  And you can specify how many increments per revolution you want, which is awesome.

(images via Wikipedia)

Getlofi has just posted the details for this year’s Experimental Garage Sale. I won’t be there in person but Chicago Buck will be my agent, and I’m going to make sure he’s loaded up with goodies:

Experimental Garage Sale 2010, June 5th.

Circuit Bent Instruments, Un-Bent Gear, Parts, Vintage Components, + Other. Custom lamps. GetLoFi Kits. Art. Raffle.

Noon-5PM in the Heart of Chicago @ ESS.

10 Sellers!

1. Tommy S. http://www.rothmobot.com
2. Patrick M. http://www.rothmobot.com
3. Mike http://www.aa9il.com
4. Steve http://site.properboy.com
5. thejunkyard catalist http://myspace.com/ThriftsoreBoratorium
6. Creme Dementia http://www.myspace.com/CremeDeMentia
7. GetLoFi.com http://www.getlofi.com
8. Low-Gain http://www.lowgain-audio.com
9. Tim Kaiser http://www.timkaiser.org
10. Buck http://www.stevenbuck.us/

Websites:

http://www.gelofi.com

http://www.rothmobot.com

http://www.experimentalsoundstudio.org/

With much thanks to Grant Bussinger, I proudly present my new website: Unatronics.com

I will maintain this blog to discuss art and technology things, but also Unatronics has it’s own tumblr and twitter. Friend and RSS those mofos for maximum info on new product development and experimentation.

There’s also a shiny new store set up to showcase my four (4!) current products, with more on the way.

Stop by and say hi, won’t you?

Greetings, earth friends. I’ve been a busy bee building synths in my studio these past few weeks, but I’ve also lined up a few events that should be a lot of fun.

Event the first: I will be performing live at Grinnell College in Grinnell, IA along with Austin Cliffe (Creme Dementia) and Alex Deeba (Talking Computron, Getlofi). That will be taking place on Thursday, April 29 at 7pm at the Faulconer Gallery. I’m told that you can’t miss it. The Facebook event page is here.

Event the second: I will be a visiting artist at Mount Mercy College for High School Art day on Friday, April 30. So if you know of any teenagers living in/around Cedar Rapids, tell them to come on by and check out a performance and workshop. After I rock the auditorium, we’ll all assemble some LED throwies.

Event the third: Alex and I will be conducting a workshop in Minneapolis on Saturday, May 1 for Handmade Music Night. HMM is graciously hosted by The Hack Factory, the Twin Cities’ community-run hackerspace and techshop. Alex and I will be assisting people to build 555-based oscillators, controlled by calculator keypads. It’s gonna get really bleepy. The event page is here.

w3rd.

Hi all. This Friday I’ll be playing a new set at Notox, a recently opened designer toy store/art gallery in Chicago’s Pilsen arts district.

I’ll be employing some new handmade instruments, including the first finished Seeq-it synthesizer which should be up for sale in the next few weeks. Accompanying me will be excelent video artist Galina Shevchenko and others.

Type: Music/Arts – Exhibit
Date: Friday, April 9, 2010
Time: 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: 726 W. 18TH ST.

More info here.

Hannes Pasqualini is an illustrator, comic artist, and musician/noisemaker in Italy. He bought one my my Beep-its a few months back and wrote me today to describe the modifications he’s made to it. Inspired by Gijs Gieskes’ Fan Synth, Hannes added a speed-controlled fan in front of the light sensor to modulate the pitch.

I love that he made this new thing and just bolted it onto the front of his Beep-it- it’s very functional and clever. He had to move the Beep-it button to the front of his new case, and it looks seamless:

Here’s a video of the new device in action:

the beep-it-fan synth from Hanzo on Vimeo.

This is pretty awesome. Has anyone else modified theirs? Drop me a line if you have- I’m very interested to see what you’ve done.

I’ve finished a new run of Beep-it Deluxe and have some available for purchase through my Etsy site. Thanks to everyone for the interest and support.

Big news in the past two weeks- after some fierce competition and harrowing interviews, I have been named as Scale Well’s first grant recipient.

Scale Well is a Chicago-based consortium of entreprenuers who’ve all pitched in to start a fund for helping small businesses level-up. The organization was just founded a few months ago, but they plan to award these grants on a quarterly basis. In addition to the $1000 grant, Scale Well provides office space in downtown Chicago and mentoring from successful businesspeople specific to the needs of the recipient.

I’m really frickin’ excited about this and am very honored to have been chosen. To me, the grant is a serious vote of confidence that I’ve got some good ideas and solid plans for bringing those ideas to market.

I’ve got very detailed plans that I’m keeping confidential for now, but suffice to say that the grant is going towards funding a production run of the sequencer synthesizer I’ve been designing. The design is about 98% finished and you can expect to see a big announcement in about three months.

If you’ve been following my work at all you’ll have seen videos of a few different prototypes over the past year. As a teaser for what’s to come, here’s a little jam with the latest prototype- the finished product will be different in form but similar in sound and control to this:

Bleep-it prototype version 4 from Michael Una on Vimeo.

This is a sketch built in Processing that takes an audio input and uses the amplitude as a variable to define the position, size, and color of generative squares is realtime. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Recipe for Squares from Michael Una on Vimeo.