8/22/06
HELLO. We are here to chronicle the modification of a Wurlitzer Funmaker sprite electronic organ donated for the task by one of my favorite Seattle composers. The job has expanded because the donor said it didn't work but it DOES so I can't just wade in and do major surgery for fear of damaging the existing electronics. It's 70s vintage beatbox plays 5 rhythms: simultaneously if you press all of the buttons!
Our composer had the idea of a keyboard that plays AM radios and having long been an aficionado of AM radio noise and being handy with a soldering iron his idea is now coming to fruition although who knows how long it will take in this overheated environment. It started happening because our conversation stuck and because of the appearance of a suitable radio. In my little mind portable AM radios using tuning capacitors were plentiful but that was back in my youth (don't feed the dinosaurs!). As I looked around I found that most of the new ones, which aren't as plentiful as they used to be, use digital tuning methods and high noise floors that kill noise, crosstalk, and heterodyning (that familiar radio squeal of a weak or poorly tuned in station). Then a local drugstore chain started a sale: the bright yellow Innovage Outdoor model replete with "LED Torch" 2/$10; which must be an attempt to use up a bunch of old parts because it not only does it have a tuning capacitor said cap can actually be adjusted with a small screwdriver from the back of the unit! It's NOISY. FM and wb are good too because I'm guessing many venues will suck for AM.
Each Funmaker Sprite key will play it's own am/fm/wb radio that will be mounted somehow above the console (in back of the area where sheet music would be) so that the torch on each radio will be visible and the radio adjustable when a key is pressed. This keeps the Wurlitzer furniture concept alive too: its own 8" speakers face the player. The radios will be playable through their own speakers or via a 38 input stereo mixer (37 keys and an input for the original wurlitzer sounds). Since the cabling got too hairy (for my limited skills anyway) to allow some sort of movable panel to move the radios around current plan is to compromise with a row of stereo balance controls, 1 per radio. It will be wired so that a PLC (programmable controller) can be easily added later. I have all of the radios, and am breadboarding the mixer. Got the needed keyboard additions almost finished. I'm pretty excited about it. Will post some pictures soon. The idea of composing for an essentially uncontrollable instrument is as good as it gets for me on the 'what's the point of life' meter; and I'm looking forward to great things from at least two of my favorite Seattle composers. As a music scholar based in England puts it: "Oh my God!! That may be the best idea a human being has ever had. (Well, since combining peanut butter with chocolate anyway.)". I think he's right and at long last all of this technical education and experience of mine can be put to some good uselessness.
This blog will be a solicitation for feedback and an attempt to unbury those in my immediate vicinity from the details I am prone to lavish upon them. Works in progress in a mad world. Has it always been so messed up?
