I taught my classes how to make custom pcb in KiCAD this fall. One of my students, Dom Frugoli, ended the semester with PCB holiday cards (complete with silkscreen family portrait and Krampus).
Happy Holidays!
I taught my classes how to make custom pcb in KiCAD this fall. One of my students, Dom Frugoli, ended the semester with PCB holiday cards (complete with silkscreen family portrait and Krampus).
Happy Holidays!
Photo: auto-wah circuit by Izaak Thompson
When I first started assigning circuit board projects, I couldn't find much material online about how to grade a circuit board, so I devised my own rubric.
I found the quality of student work improved significantly once they had the Build Checklist and could see how it was weighted in the grade.
Waubonsee Community College recently invited me to install my work in a lovely art project space located in the Dickson Center.
Red Rubber Bands was on display from September 8 - October 20.
Foundations in Sound Design for Embedded Media, edited by Michael Filimowicz.
I contributed Chapter 2: The Electronics of Microphones and Loudspeakers. This allowed me to revisit in-depth the technical material I was exploring when I did my textile loudspeakers. The book features the work of 25 authors, with far more impressive biographies than my own. I'm enjoying reading their contributions on the subject.
Fabric and Fiber Inventions by STEAM educator Kathy Ceceri. I'm thrilled to be featured as a "Fabric Inventor" on pg 116-117.
This year I've been busy managing the explosive growth of Columbia's Electronics-For-Audio curriculum. What started as a single elective course is now a 3-course sequence!
The Audio Department's little electronics workshop previously served about two dozen students a semester. This spring, we had almost a hundred! We hired several new adjunct faculty, and an incredible team of teaching assistants who helped me keep 8 sections running smoothly. It's clear that we're outgrowing our current digs, so I'm also working out plans for some serious upgrades for the coming year. Change is afoot!
Here's the new lineup:
AUDI 104: Audio Electronics (pictured) The first, intro-level course, Audio Electronics, is now a part of the required "core" course sequence for majors. Students build stuff from scratch, like this loudspeaker from a plastic cup. They also build circuits using Snap Circuit kits, which are great for small group activities. (This is what's happening in the photographs.)
AUDI 313: Building Circuits for Modular Synthesis with Logic Gates After completing Audio Electronics, students can follow up with this elective on building circuits for analog synthesis. We build a number of projects from Nic Collins' book, Handmade Electronic Music. (I'm still kinda working on the course name for this one. I think I overdid it when the college said "More descriptive course names, please". )
AUDI 413: Building Circuits with Pick-Ups and Pedals This advanced class focuses on op-amps and pickups. It also fulfills a senior course requirement. Since students take the introductory class as a pre-requisite, they'll be able to get a lot further, a lot faster, in these two follow-up classes.
The videos feature my Spring 2018 advanced students, in an improvised performance at Columbia's Manifest Urban Arts Festival this past May. I'm so proud! They built most of the hardware themselves: springboard instruments (inspired by Eric Leonardson), contact mics, spring reverb units, fuzz pedals and pitch trackers. Plus, checkout Rachael's "squarinet"-- that's a square clarinet-- that she built for her Physics of Musical Instruments course with Professor Dave Dolak.
Student Performers: Rachael Cowell, Vito Di Beasi, Hunter Funk, Aaron Gelblat-Bronson, Mac Kelley, Derek Muhl, Nick Novak, Isaiah Quino, Sky Roessler, Daniel Vega
Hands-on workshops require a lot of planning. People progress at
different rates and can get impatient waiting for each other or for
assistance. Too much waiting and the workshop loses momentum.
So
I like to work with small groups. I move around to offer assistance,
and encourage people to help themselves to materials and progress at
their own rate.
This wasn't going to work at SIGGRAPH-- the
classroom was spread out with no middle aisle. And I'd be wearing a body
mic. If I walked in front of the speakers, I'd set off ear-piercing
feedback (which I did, twice, oops...). Plus... I wanted to give people
sleeves that fit their hands but there was no way to measure hand sizes
of participants ahead of time.
So we had to get creative with solutions.
There wasn't room for participants to get their own materials, and asking for help would slow the presentation down. So I gave everyone bright yellow post-it notes. If they needed something, they wrote it on the post-it, attached it to top of their computer monitor, and one of our volunteers would sprint over to read the note and help or retrieve materials. Worked great!
Adding a fixed resistor ½ the value of a variable resistance sensor improves Arduino performance.
My advanced class made spring reverb units this semester. Steve and Connor stacked theirs together with a homemade tone control and a hefty dose of feedback.
Trevor, Andy, and Brian, plus some really sweet synth.
Daniel, Rachel, Robert, and the joy of three sequencers on one clock.