[sdiy] Chaotic/lo-fi patching techniques

[Tom Bugs]

Licked fingers (or maybe just sweaty) or other body parts (ooo-er) will 
provide much higher resistances! --- earthworms are exactly the same 
idea, but isn't it a bit cruel?
-- you can make a patchbay kind of like a cracklebox touchplate -- this 
can be great fun to play.

Needless to say - be careful and aware of what you're doing both for 
your own health and that of your synth. I've not had any problems 
myself, but I've certainly felt some electrical flow when I've held 
patch cables in my mouth!



Sean Ellis wrote:
> Once I got a very small bowl of water and experimented with dipping 
> patch cables into it to see the resistance. The goal was to make some 
> sort of illuminated rotating lfo with water splashing around :) It 
> worked OK but needed a tiny amount of water or the resistance was too 
> great.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Keller" <psilord at cs.wisc.edu>
> To: "|||||||||| ||||||||||" <beschaving at gmail.com>
> Cc: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
> Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 9:23 PM
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] Chaotic/lo-fi patching techniques
>
>
>> On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 08:24:59PM +0200, |||||||||| |||||||||| wrote:
>>> I'd love to hear about other ways that people are "mechanically"
>>> interfacing with their synths. I vaguely remember seeing some design
>>> that just had a number of metal nails sticking up, for example, that
>>> one would either touch or clamp crocodile cables to.
>>> I also seem to remember something with a metal ball rolling around
>>> another bed of nails?
>>
>> Having just made up this method and never tried it, how about this:
>>
>> Make a 2D nail board with the tips precisely vertically aligned and
>> suspend it over salt water where the tips are *almost* touching the 
>> water.
>> The nail tip have to be high enough though that surface tension doesn't
>> leave a connection from the nails to the water.
>>
>> It would look like this (~ is water):
>>
>> | _____________________________________________ |
>> | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |
>> |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|
>> -------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Then, produce waves in the water box. The crests of the waves and of the
>> constructive interference will produce interesting patterns of 
>> electrical
>> connection.
>>
>> You could drive longer non electrically connected nails through the 
>> nail board
>> and into the water that when you hit with a mallet, produce the waves at
>> different 2D points in the water box. That would look like this:
>>
>> |                                               |
>> | |___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|___| |
>> | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |
>> |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|
>> -------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Then, hitting the nails could produce more interesting repeatable wave
>> interference patters much better than hitting the box would.
>>
>> The above is a linear version of the system, a full system would be
>> fully 2D.
>>
>> Later,
>> -pete
>>
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>
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