Tag: Lo Fi

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I made an analog saturation box for $2, and here’s how it sounds (diode clipping)

Can you build a stereo analog distortion box for just $2? Yes, you can! What does it sound like? Well, you’ll need to watch the video for that.


In this video, I put together a simple passive DIY distortion circuit using just 4 diodes, 4 wires, and 4 audio jacks—all dirt cheap but surprisingly effective. This little box works by clipping taking advantage of the diodes’ forward voltage to clip the signal, a classic analog distortion method found in everything from guitar pedals to vintage studio gear. It’s cheap, it’s basic, but listen and see if this might add that grit and warmth that you’re looking for (and, if not, you’d only be out $2).

🎛️ Tools & Materials Used:
* 4x Diodes (1N4148)
* 4x 3.5mm Audio Jacks
* 4x Wires
* Small Enclosure
* Soldering Iron & Solder
* Drill

More creative electronics videos here:

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Voltage Starving in Eurorack

Voltage starving op-amps with Blood Cells Audio‘s “Mangle” module.

Following up on my voltage starving conversation with Spectral Evolver a few weeks back, today I’m exploring Blood Cells Audio’s “Mangle“, a Eurorack module that’s basically a voltage-starving VCA, where you can send CV to the op-amps (or insufficient CV to the op-amps to voltage starve them). Here, I try a few different program materials, and show some interesting results of modulating voltage starving over time.

You can check out Spectral Evolver’s voltage-starving Moog gear here:

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Low-Battery as Aesthetic Practice: Voltage Starving Audio Gear

Talking about voltage starving your audio equipment with Will Klingenmeier.


I sat down for a virtual chat with Will, who has been doing some interesting experiments voltage starving his Moog DFAM and Subharmonicon. Voltage starving is when you intentionally deprive a circuit or device of the full voltage it needs to function, simulating a “dying battery”. The sounds you get are probably not what the manufacturer intended, but definitely an aesthetic worth exploring as you look for new sounds.

In this wide-ranging discussion, we talk about circuit-bending, starving stompboxes, and whether or not this is a good idea with your expensive equipment.

0:00 Introduction
0:30 What is “voltage starving”?
1:08 Voltage starving & circuit-bending
1:54 Voltage starving Moog synths
3:46 How to do it
4:33 Is this dangerous to your equipment?
6:07 Thinking about guitar pedals
8:15 Closing thoughts

Check out more videos on Will’s Channel here.

More creative electronics videos here:

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Circuit Bending Super Edit (Tinkerbell Wand to Expressive Instrument)

I’ve just posted a re-edit of my series introducing circuit-bending old toys (cutting the three-video series down into a more reasonably paced single video). Circuit-bending is the creative customization of consumer electronics with the goal of inventing new unique devices for sound-making, visuals, or other expressive goals.

In this series, now edited into a single video, I take you through my process with some toys from the start, including explorations, experiments, and, importantly, failures. I continue work through transforming this Tinkerbell wand, testing out different resistors and switches to see what I might add to increase its glitchy expressive range.

I’m a composer and sound-designer, not an electrical engineer, so my goal is to find fun sounds that I can use in creative ways (rather than any kind of serious circuit design).

0:00 Intro
0:22 Selecting toys to bend
0:52 Testing with new batteries
1:52 Opening up the Tinkerbell wand
4:42 Opening up the whack-a-mole
7:20 Poking around with test leads
10:40 Recap, equipment
11:11 Examining the components
12:20 Speeding up the clock
14:17 Slowing down the clock
15:19 Varying the clock
18:58 Switches
22:17 The “glitch switch”
24:40 Considering packaging (instrument morphology)
25:19 Tools & equipment
26:15 Updates/Plan
28:32 Installing the “Glitch Switch”
30:48 Installing the Toggle
31:47 Changing the LED
32:47 Installing the Potentiometer
34:17 Adding RCA audio out
35:18 Putting it back together
36:08 Esoteric Etude
38:31 Closing


More circuit-bending and handmade electronic music here:

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Elektrosluch and Stereo Microphones

Listening to electromagnetic radiation around the house using a homemade elektrosluch.

I was cleaning up, and found an “elektrosluch” that I made a few years back, and figured I’d dust it off and make sure that it still works. This is a device designed by LOM-Instruments that converts the vibration electromagnetic fields into sound (specifically vibrations of voltage that we can listen to through headphones, more info here ).

Make your own with this DIY article.

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Commodore 64 French House

Making some chiptune French house using the Commodore 64 and Alesis 3630.

C64 French House

Here, I’m using Paul Slocum’s CynthCart to turn my old C64 into a SID synthesizer. We run those licks into an Alesis 3630 compressor, side-chained to a kick drum (from an Alesis D-4), and then we have some pumping French house. Finally, we add some finishing touches with delay, reverb, and EQ in Logic Pro, as well as a cameo by an Electrix Warp Factory hardware vocoder.

Download the track here for free:


More Commodore 64 sounds:

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Adding “Analog Warmth” to Your Digital Synth (Reaktor 6 Primary)

Some ideas on how to add some beautiful (analog?) imperfections to your Reaktor synths in Reaktor Primary.

The definition of “analog warmth” is pretty nebulous, but it brings to mind things like tube distortion and tape saturation–imperfections to the “fidelity” of the sound. Digital sound has imperfections too, of course, but these are aesthetically different (though perhaps no less interesting). In this video, though, I talk about some ideas in how to imitate the imperfections of analog in our digital Reaktor 6 synths.

Reaktor 6 Beginner Tutorials here
More Intermediate Reaktor Tutorials here.

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Making a Bad Sine Wave in Pure Data Vanilla

Building a “wab-sabi” oscillator in Pd to celebrate the beauty of imperfection and impermanence.

Sine waves are great! The perfection of a pure, single frequency can be both expressively and technically very useful in pursuing our musical goals. There are, however, lots of musical reasons that we might want to intentionally make our oscillators a little more rough around the edges.

Performance on traditional, acoustic instruments, of course, produces a huge amount of micro-variation across each note, and so it can be expressively engaging for us to be able to introduce that same imperfection (analog warmth?) in our digital instruments as well.

In this video, I build a bad sine wave by frequency-modulating my oscillator with noise, and then feeding back the output back into the modulation. While I build this out in Pure Data, the same can be done in Reaktor, Kyma, Max/MSP or any other synthesis environment.

More Pd Tutorials here.
No-talking Pure Data jams and patch-from-scratch.

0:00 Introduction, The Beauty of Imperfection
1:26 Slider-Controlled Sine Wave
3:28 Adding Noise
4:35 Frequency Modulating with Noise
7:24 Filtering the Noise
8:20 Feeding Back into FM
9:55 I’ve gone too far
13:26 Reaktor Examples
14:18 Closing Thoughts, Next Steps