HOW TO: JEAN STREET ART AND SCIENCE BY NATE YOUNG

For the past twenty ﬁve years I’ve made a lots electronic instrument. Sometimes the results are confusing. Many of the instruments I am showing here are not entirely useful or pleasing to the ear, but some are. With these instruments often the lines blur between success and failure. I have never been great at making anything, but I do it anyways.

To the right is a (very low res) pic of a release I did for AA Records in the 2009. It was based on a the concept of heterodyning. Which sort of means combining signals to produce a new frequency. This was achieved by playing both of the tapes that came with the release, on separate tape players, at the same time. The outputs of the tape machines both got fed into the inputs of the electronic metal box. This produced a heterodyning eﬀect which could be heard on the electronic metal box output. Inside the electronic metal box is a diode ring and two transformers, aka a passive ring mod. I don’t think it really worked, it just sounded like a broken mixer. “It needs some preamps” is what I used to say. As a sculpture I feel like it was a success but as an musical instrument pretty useless. I like to think of it as a cool little sound sculpture

This is a very simple machine that anyone could make. It’s a radio that gets turned oﬀ and on by an interval timer. The twist is, I modiﬁed the radio so it will not pick up any stations. I also added a feedback loop on the onboard ampliﬁer. This makes it screams crazy hi pitched tones. The radio dial sweeps squelching pitches that raise and lower as the timer blinks. It’s sounds like insects. The interval timer has adjustable on and oﬀ lengths that range from 1-20 seconds. At this point it’s about 20 years old and still works. It’s toured all over the world and been on countless records of mine. The high frequency sounds cut through any dense noise. It’s a simple but eﬀective rhythm Noise box

The idea of using interval timers came to me early on in my electrics toil. The simple idea of turning something on and oﬀ was very useful. At one point I had a blinking party light hooked up to a two radios, a mixer feedback circuit and a tiny reel to reel. To the right is 3 interval timers in one box. It makes no sound except the sound of the relays clicking on and oﬀ. Basically it’s three switches that turn on and oﬀ, that’s all, really simple shit. This can be used for a variety of things. One thing I do a lot with this machine is use it as a gate for feedback. Adding rhythm to feedback loops creates complex patterns with very little eﬀort. It also works as a mute and if speed up it can be a three stage tremolo. Switches are killer.

Like every electronic diy person I got into making fuzz circuits for a minute. I love how the fuzz was historically discovered by using faulty or misaligned tubes in amps. It’s literally the sound of broken equipment. To the right is a fuzz with a dual resonate ﬁlter. Basically sounds like a fuzz with two resonate ﬁlters that can be swept with an LFO. It’s works great as a preamp too. It has been wired in a modular way so you can use the ﬁlter and the fuzz independently or together. Below is a fuzz circuit that I used LEDs as clipping diodes. It’s far fuzzier that than one to the right, but has no mix control. I am still working on it. Trust me when I say it’s a nasty tone.

This is a very complex machine invented by Peter Blasser called the Rollz 5. It’s a drum synth. To get sound out of it you need to connect pulse nodes and drum triggers together. It’s interesting because programming is based on even and odd pulses. Some patterns are simple, some are so complex they take minutes to complete. Another great aspect of this machine is the strange feedback whines the nodes produce on their own. When sent through the onboard ultrasound ﬁlter it also produces radio squelching type tones. I added 4 echo circuits to the design making it even more confusing.. Huge thanks to Chip Flyn for drilling holes, mounting the boards and wiring this beast. This wasn’t something I could do alone at the time. My skills are still shit but I am much better after watching Chip and using this build as an example of the correct way to build electronics.

Dual MFOS Echo Rockit designed by Ray Wilson. This has dual delays, dual low pass ﬁlters, dual oscillators and a preamp. I have found this thing useful for processing vocals, drums, bass and pretty much anything else. The LFO can modulate the delay time and ﬁlter cutoﬀ. Anywhere from slow motion ﬁlters sweeps to subtle/extreme tape warble. When I built this I forgot to ﬂip the drilling template and had to wire it upside down and backwards. It took about 3 days of non stop work to get functioning properly. Live and learn. That said MFOS is the best place to start your electronics hobby. Every question you’re going to have is answered there already, it’s just waiting for you. Ray Wilson was a cool guy, R.I.P.

Korg Monotron and a Bug Brand weevil. Both circuits were rehoused in a old radio shack project box. I added CV inputs to the Monotron and extending the Bug Brand touch pad. This combo is great, sounds like a subspace lawnmower that is touch controllable. I toured with this in both Wolf Eyes and Regression throughout 2010-2015. It still makes appearances on all my solo recordings. I’d love build a new one with some other korg shit. I was always surprised more people didn’t rehouse the Monotron. I’ve seen some, but not too many.

The Zoom Mrt is a cheap drum machine. It has tons of sounds and you can build your own drum sets. This one is circuit bent so sounds can be scrambled into glitched oblivion. But what I love about this machine and other hacked Midi capable gear, is the random scrambled drum sounds are controllable. A portion of my solo work and Wolf Eyes discography is based on these midi controlled hacked machines. I’d even go as far to say these machines are in part responsible for the over all vibe of a lot of our bands. There is no better way to describe our music than “it sounds like tortured machines and slow distorted tapes”

Marantz PMD 222 Cassette Recorder. I added Erase head on/oﬀ and variable speed control. Done. What else do you need? These are great sounding portable machines. I use them for echo, live tape looping, and to preamp my modular synth. They are not cheap like the used to be but they are worth it. I still tour with one. On the subject of tape machines I am big fan of the Uher Report Monitor. It’s a portable reel to reel that has 3 heads. The delays that thing can get are very deep. I used to change the tape loop and clean the heads every gig. It was a worth it until I found a mint Marantz 222. Uher is heavy as fuck. In a weird way, the tape loop taught me how to play music; everything sounds better slow, warped and a bit distorted.

Casio MT-240. This machine is circuit bent exactly like the Zoom and is also midi capable. This machine was used to create many sounds on Wolf Eyes LP Dread and Slicer. It is a interesting machine, in actuality I’ve only used a couple of it’s glitched out patches. Most of the patches are sort of unusable, sometimes starting with a reversed bell tone then launching into a arpeggio of cute Casio tones. That’s great but not all the time. I feel that this circuit bent machine and most bent equipment is best used only for special occasions. But with some very careful sequences you could ﬁnd some truly unique and powerful sounds. To be fair it’s an amazing machine for bizarre tones but at any given moment it could turn into a car horn.