Why does it seem that 95% of my projects shine brightly for a brief moment, and then fade? This is a serious question I’ve been asking myself — it’s a personal search for answers. It has been many weeks since I last logged in, and I see a list of unfinished drafts that never seem to go anywhere.
My knowledge base keeps growing, but it’s as though I keep trying to save everything up for some grand ‘ultimate’ project, and I can’t keep doing that. That’s one thing.
Another thing is that I’m a musician. (Heh. I just had to go back and put that in bold to remind myself.) Loudspeakers and amplifiers and other strictly technical deliberations relating to electronics and software engineering can only hold my attention for so long, before I snap and revert to some primal musical state of being!
It’s also a matter of self-discipline and all that ‘stuff’. There seem to be endless hills to overcome before fully transitioning to a state where doing what I love pays the bills. Or, at least, paying the bills doesn’t get in the way of doing what I love!
But enough whining… here are some things that are really inspiring me right now.
Clavichords, Spinets and Virginals
I always loved the sound of a harpsichord as a kid, even though 99% of it was recorded material, and I can count the number of live performances on one hand. Wavetable reproductions on keyboards always sounded a bit weird, though. The plucked strings didn’t sound plucked at all. Then I learned that they’re a bit like pianos with three strings per key, which explains a lot. This would lead to a “triple pluck” sound, with phasing effects that depend on key velocity and tuning of the individual strings. And most likely some randomness that makes each key-press unique. Wavetable synths, however, tend to lazily record a few representative samples, so there’s an artificial sameness/wrongness to the sound that quickly becomes tiresome.
I went on “everyone’s favourite video streaming website, owned by Always Be Evil Inc.”, and started checking out lots of videos on these instruments, and now I want one!
Microtonal Instruments
Steel guitars — or lap steel(?). Until recently, I actually thought that this was merely a playing style and the use of steel strings, but it turns out it’s an altogether different instrument. This is something I could actually make on a nice block of hardwood and spare guitar parts!
Koto — I wouldn’t want to try imitate this, though. Those moveable bridges pieces look like an easy and convenient way to customise the tuning.
I’ve also seen various keyboard instruments, but those are mostly electronic, and frankly have way too many keys. 19-tone sound is probably the limit of what I could handle without getting hopelessly lost among all the wrong notes. Beside that, many of the experimental efforts seem to be stuck with equal temperament, or worse.
I recall someone once saying that the key of a piano piece would be an indicator of the ‘mood’ that was likely to be conveyed. Not just whether it was a major or minor key, but the keys themselves had their own moods.
In childhood, our family had an old piano, which was tuned manually by a professional piano tuner. Although the tuning was sort-of evenly spaced, there were slight differences between the keys, and if I played something in C-major, and then played the exact same thing in G-major, it would sound a bit different. Black keys like B-flat would be different again, and F-sharp major would be way off. The effect was certainly nothing like incrementally changing the playback speed in software.
Equal temperament only really works if you specifically want to treat all the keys equally. So (IMO) it clearly favours musical styles that are either very jazzy or Avant Garde in their key-hopping. But even with some ‘jazz’, I find that most of my playing tends to gravitate to a preferred key.
Electronics and Amplifiers and Speakers
Now, let’s see… If I take a step back and think about sound reproduction, do I get the same vibe? Not really; not quite. Even if I build an artistic masterpiece, it just passively sits there. But it’s a different kind of experience to be able to sit back and listen to someone else playing for a while, so it’s not a one-dimensional “more vs. less” comparison.
But it’s DIY?
The DIY experience is also a different thing. The “build once, then sit back and enjoy” experience lends itself to projects that flow in a gradual stream, over many months or even years. If you want it to be too good, too perfect, you end up paralyzed and with little or no output.
+An electronics project can provide a series of challenges and overcoming each challenge can be quite satisfying.
-It is possible to get stuck and frustrated, or lost down some rabbit-hole and/or lose sight of the bigger picture. Then again, such obstacles can also be viewed as challenges in their own right.
One such detour, which comes to mind, is a goal of minimising distortion when designing amplifiers. When there’s no clear line in the sand between audible/inaudible and no lower limit to what can be achieved (some people claim PPM or part-per-million harmonic distortion figures for their highly complex and elaborate designs), it’s easy to say “what if I add more current to the VAS, add more gain to the pre-amp stage, increase NFB, split supplies for stereo separation, use negative supplies to eliminate output capacitors, capacitor multipliers…?” ad-infinitum.
A closely related point of analysis paralysis is that, even when you say, OK, I’m going to avoid the above and just keep it simple with a class-A topology, the requirements may not actually change all that much.
<0.0…01% THD becomes “let’s say 0.1% THD is fine as long as nearly all of it is H2 and H3, while higher harmonics are progressively quieter.”
Finding/developing a topology to achieve this can be a bit hit and miss and requires a look into the inner workings of individual components as well as taking care to avoid introducing unwanted behaviours in the circuit. For instance, linearizing MOSFETs with degenerating resistors could improve THD from the perspective of a competition where lower number.
Fusion
I’ve never been one to specialise. Even the teachers at school were reluctant to brainwash us kids into pursuing a narrow specialisation. Quite the opposite! Sometimes, I find myself utterly scattered and unable to focus on one thing for more than one hour at a time, just like high-school classes.
Anyway, this thought-dump has gotten me thinking that, maybe, a bit more fusion can be had?
My mentor had previously advised me to avoid tubes in amplifiers because they were old, antique technology with high distortion and no real benefits over well-designed solid-state equivalents. But why the heck not? (I shall likely continue this thread in a later post, because I’m actually inspired to add tubes to a pre-amp stage, along with tone adjustment!)
Nonetheless, I feel as though the music in my life has been on the back-burner for so long, that I need to spend more time actively engaging in it — playing piano, guitar, and building instruments.