Farewell Baby Walkman. You must leave the Noodle Zone and relocate yourself in Canada. Our time together is over because your training and modifications are complete. Rock and Roll!

Synth Going Down Under!

One of Noodle Corps newest modified products is the Circuit Bent Madnoodle Mini Piano. They feature a 555 timer circuit for creating spacey sounds. The timer blinks a LED that is effecting a light sensitive resistor. It also has an over all pitch control. One of the coolest parts about integrating a 555 timer circuit into a key board is that you can control the speed of pitch variation pulses. One finds a speed that they like and then while adjusting the pitch cool space sounds happen! :)
This particular keyboard is going to Western Australia. When I found out I got really excited and put on the Kink's song Australia. "Opportunities are available in all walks of life in Australia / So if you're young and if you're healthy / Why not get a boat and come to Australia...?"
If it were only that simple? I'd probably get bitten by something poisonous, and I'm super busy running this Noodle conglomerate from wicked and wonderful NYC.

What's a Jugger Noodler?

The Jugger Noodler, is a circuit bent Yamaha CP-11. This wasn't a very versatile electronic keyboard to begin with, but through applied variable resistance, desirable frequency modulation is attained. Some of these sonic by-products being somewhat random, others are completely controllable. I still have plans to further modify these keys. Next I plan to install an output bank that separates the arpeggio, melody, rhythm and bass line signals to 4 discreet outputs. Once I have done this I will add some effects and then re-mix the outputs through two guitar amps!?!? The other ideas are to use the rhythm parts to trigger a beefier drum machine. If I am going to summon the self transforming demon machine elf from the 7th dimension, everyone knows he only awakens to 808 drum sounds.

555 timer synths

What going on here? The 555 timer is a monolithic integrated circuit...blah blah blah. The 555 timer allows me to control the speed of a flashing LED. This LED is sandwiched...mmmm sandwich. Sandwiched with a LDR, or Light Dependent Resistor, or photo-resistor. The LDR is connected to the clock of a bent toy or a tone generator. Then one places these two components in light sterile environment like in some black heat shrink or electrical tape. I like using old magic marker pen tops and then wrapping them in E tape so that no light gets in. Some people call this a Vactrol. The 555 timer can also generate tones as well as blink LED's. I've begun making my own tone generators and they are becoming more interesting to me than toy bending. I've also been thinking of how I would mass produce something but then again I'd rather not get tied down to one formula! Working with random and different enclosures is sure to make my tone generators unique and fun for me to work on.