Disquiet Junto Project 0555: A Simple Timer
The Assignment: Simplify by a factor of 5.

This week’s assignment goes to the inner workings of electronics. It was developed by longtime Junto participant Anatol Locker. Before getting to the instructions, here’s some background information: In 1971, engineer Hans Camenzind designed a simple timer IC, the Signetics LM555. It packs 25 transistors, two diodes, and 15 resistors on a small, eight-legged silicon chip.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Camenzind

Due to its sheer simplicity, it populates most PCBs that need a clock. The 555 is used for a multitude of tasks: as a pulse generator, timer, delay, or waveform generator. When it comes to DIY music projects, you can find 555’s in the Atari Punk Console and other DIY synths.

https://www.instructables.com/Atari-Punk-Console-Synthesizer/

You can get an impression of what the chip is capable on Wikipedia and Electronics Tutorials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC
https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/waveforms/555_timer.html

So far, it has sold a billion times, making it the most popular chip design on the planet. Which is to say: It’s iconic, it’s simple, it’s omnipresent, and it “makes things tick.” By comparison, an SID chip, engineered a decade later in 1981, would be the equivalent of a symphony orchestra.

There are two steps to this project.

Step 1: Think about what simplicity means to you.

Step 2: Produce a track taken to the extreme minimum. Use only pure waveforms (sine, sawtooth, triangle, pulse wave) and no effects. Restrict yourself to 5 voices.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0555” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0555” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0555-a-simple-timer/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

. . .

More on this 555th weekly Disquiet Junto project — A Simple Timer (The Assignment: Simplify by a factor of 5) — at: https://disquiet.com/0555/

Thanks to Anatol Locker for having proposed this project.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0555-a-simple-timer/

Image by Stefan506, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Signetics_NE555N.JPG
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Disquiet Junto Project 0555: A Simple Timer

Halloween-2021

Now and Then (Instrumental version)

Con Amore

Con Amore (extended) [feat. Silmarien]

https://soundcloud.com/slimecop

https://soundcloud.com/slimecopjr based on the film Time after Time 1979

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080025/



    LYRICS:TIMECOP!

A new toy for Juliette wants to play a game
The hidden knife is in his hand, carving out her shame
They took him for a victim, but they didn't know his name
Now, reflected in the mirror glass, multitudes are maimed

Uprooted from his era by some technologic means
Transplanted to a place that's unlike anything he's seen
Soon these stainless city streets won't be so crystal-clean
And he'll lay his bloody hands on the controls of the machine

He's traded in the Liston knife for a living blade
The incisions so much neater than what any surgeon made
And he's going on a lil' trans-chronologic escapade
History re-wrote with what the open throat has sprayed

The sacred whores he'd slaughter at the Anu Ziggurat
Butchered suffragettes and starlets, their assailants never caught
The future Oval Office rug a crimson Rorschach blot
He brings Whitechapel with him, any time and any spot

Past, present, future, all beneath the veiny rod
The Mothers murdered in their caves, before the glaciers thawed
This world becomes a charnel pit where women's bones are gnawed
If you want to know his name, we simply call him God

Jack is Back(SLIME COP OOTO)

I recently started with Bitwig, which allows you to build your own synths. I took some time to build what I think resembles the horrible audio capabilities of a 555 chip: a monophonic pulse oscillator, an AD amp envelope, plenty of quantizing, and a very limited frequency band. 

Of course, I wanted to challenge my new creation. So why not throw the most difficult piano piece at it? I downloaded a MIDI-File of Rimsky-Korsakow’s Flight of the Bumblebee from Bitmidi (https://bitmidi.com/rimsky-korsakov-flight-of-the-bumblebee-mid). 

While the ensemble is monophonic, the MIDI file clearly isn’t. I had to laugh hard how it struggles to play chords and produces audible hiccups. But hey: 720 notes in 55 seconds. Not bad for a "chip"!

_______________________________________________________________

Disquiet Junto Project 0555: A Simple Timer
The Assignment: Simplify by a factor of 5.

This week’s assignment goes to the inner workings of electronics. It was developed by longtime Junto participant Anatol Locker (@Anatol). Before getting to the instructions, here’s some background information: In 1971, engineer Hans Camenzind designed a simple timer IC, the Signetics LM555. It packs 25 transistors, two diodes, and 15 resistors on a small, eight-legged silicon chip.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Camenzind

Due to its sheer simplicity, it populates most PCBs that need a clock. The 555 is used for a multitude of tasks: as a pulse generator, timer, delay, or waveform generator. When it comes to DIY music projects, you can find 555’s in the Atari Punk Console and other DIY synths.

https://www.instructables.com/Atari-Punk-Console-Synthesizer/

You can get an impression of what the chip is capable on Wikipedia and Electronics Tutorials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC

https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/waveforms/555_timer.html

So far, it has sold a billion times, making it the most popular chip design on the planet. Which is to say: It’s iconic, it’s simple, it’s omnipresent, and it “makes things tick.” By comparison, an SID chip, engineered a decade later in 1981, would be the equivalent of a symphony orchestra.

There are two steps to this project.

Step 1: Think about what simplicity means to you.

Step 2: Produce a track taken to the extreme minimum. Use only pure waveforms (sine, sawtooth, triangle, pulse wave) and no effects. Restrict yourself to 5 voices.

(...)

Thanks to Anatol Locker for having proposed this project.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0555-a-simple-timer/

Flight 555 [disquiet0555]

More on this 555th weekly Disquiet Junto project — A Simple Timer (The Assignment: Simplify by a factor of 5) — at: https://disquiet.com/0555/

Thanks to Anatol Locker for having proposed this project.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0555-a-simple-timer/

Simple Waves (disquiet0555)

Disquiet Junto Project 0555: A Simple Timer
The Assignment: Simplify by a factor of 5.

I tried different DAWs and Synths to get a nice sound and ended with Live, Stepic and Aalto (Beat Edition). The track consists of 5 tracks, all tracks are automated with 5/10/15 step sequences. Aalto does not offer triangle, but I used sine, square and saw. Some tracks change their wave form by modulation and/or automation. I allowed all 5 sequencers only to select from 5 notes (plus octaves), from which one note had to be random. The drums are very deep squarewaves with very short decays, which made noise (looking at the exported waveform this may have been a betrayal to the assignment). No effects or filters have been used but some EQ on the drums, modulated and automated panning in general and some mastering at the end. The lenght is 555 seconds (5m55s felt wrong). I think I failed on 'minimalism', on the other hand it's 9+ minutes with only five sequences which do not bore me, so I think it passes as minimal ambient. As always, it was a fun challenge!

--

Track cover based on SVG pinout of 555 timer chip by Inductiveload, Public Domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:555_Pinout.svg

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More on this 555th weekly Disquiet Junto project — A Simple Timer (The Assignment: Simplify by a factor of 5) — at: https://disquiet.com/0555/

Thanks to Anatol Locker for having proposed this project.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0555-a-simple-timer/

album.link

555TRIG2TH8 [disquiet0555]

for the disquiet junto //

simple waves, composed simply

555 Angel (Uncomplicated)

[disquiet0555] 555 Angel (Uncomplicated)

An evolving sine wave sequence.

More on this 555th weekly Disquiet Junto project – A Simple Timer (The Assignment: Simplify by a factor of 5) – at: https://disquiet.com/0555/

Thanks to Anatol Locker for having proposed this project.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0555-a-simple-timer/

Image by Stefan506, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Signetics_NE555N.JPG
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

State Express (disquiet0555)

French Waltz

Now and Then

WORLD In FIRE (Instrumental). 
The composer Sergey Goryunovich.
2019

WORLD In FIRE - Instrumental

Sentito

Abstract Sound Structures, Musique Concrète & Live Electronics.
Experimental abstract animation videos.
It is my aim to create and/or edit my tracks & videos using free or open-source software only.
Influences include: J.S. Bach, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Giacinto Scelsi, Mauricio Kagel, Conlon Nancarrow, Christian Wolff, Harry Partch, Luc Ferrari, Morton Feldman, Cornelius Cardew, Bernard Parmegiani, Ana-Maria Avram, David Tudor, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Renaissance Polyphony.
All my work is published under a Creative Commons licence & can be freely downloaded (as wav) or remixed.

State Express (disquiet0555)

ray_cobley