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23 Feb 2022 Gus
Uncategorized

How to add a Battery to Electronic Instruments

Electronic instruments like the Akai MPC One, Maschine+, or Modular synthesizers are great tools for making music. For me, they serve as a way to escape being at the computer where I’m working primarily with the keyboard and mouse. Exploring other creative modalities like twisting knobs or bouncing pads is great, especially if you use a computer all day for work. In addition to being powerful tools for composition and performance, electronic instruments can also be compact and easy to bring with you away from home or out for live performance. As you can imagine, there are many situations where you would want to use your electronic instruments but don’t have convenient access to power.

To address this issue, many hardware manufacturers have started including batteries in their instruments so that you can use your instruments without needing to plug them in to power. For example, the Akai MPC Live and Live II include internal batteries and market the device as gear that you can bring along on a hike should the creative spark strike you.

The clever OP-1 from Teenage Engineering can run off its internal batteries long enough (18 hours!) to last through many sessions and is sophisticated enough to compose complete works on.

Teenage Engineering OP-1
The OP-1 is like a miniature studio in a box

Being able to just pick up and play with instruments like this gives them a charm that differs from powering on a computer and running a windowed application with VSTs.

So what do when you have an instrument that you wish were battery powered but that isn’t? Just add a battery! Batteries are abundant because what is essentially the same system that is used for powering a laptop, RC aircraft, or cell phone is exactly what you would be looking for to power your instrument. You can easily purchase online a ready-built power supply for your device based on the voltage, size of the connector, and required amperage. If it’s not plainly written on the device, a little dive into the user manual usually can get you all the details that you need. With the ready-built battery, you can plug in the adapter just as you would into a wall and you’re free from needing a wall outlet!

I’ll show you how I did this for a few of my instruments. First, let’s look at the Maschine+.

The Maschine+ is Native Instrument’s ecosystem in pad form

If you just flip it around and look at the plug on the back, you’ll notice some markings written on the back near the DC power jack.

Labels with 15V, 2.6A can be seen on the back.

The labels tell you everything you need to know to find a compatible power adapter except for the size of the barrel connector. The voltage (15V) is provided first, and the amperage (2.6A) is next with the lines in-between indicating that the power is DC (not a squiggly sine wave) with the polarity of the outer ring being ground (solid line) and the inner pole being the connector’s voltage. To identify the size of the barrel connector, I checked in the manual but couldn’t find it so I measured it with a micrometer to approximate and then searched for replacement parts to verify. I still came up short but many of these plugs are roughly 2.5mm which seemed close to what I measured the plug to be.

The near-final step is to try and find a battery that provides the voltage (15v) with sufficient amperage (2.6A) that includes a compatible 4mm (??? I had to guess on this one) plug. I searched on Amazon, and found this little beauty – the BatPower EX7H – which at a minimum met the voltage requirements. To do this, I asked Wolfram Alpha, how many amps is 90W at 15V and it said 6A, which should be plenty of power to meet the 2.6A the Maschine+ needs. I waved a magic bone over my keyboard and rolled the dice with BatPower.

After the charger arrived, I opened it, verified the connector worked – if it were the wrong size, I would have found a kit of barrel plug adapters – then read the manual to figure out how to set the battery to 15V. After setting it all up, it was time for the moment of truth! I powered on the battery, plugged it into the Maschine+, and the power light lit up. After that, the device worked just as well as it would have plugged into the wall.

The Maschine+ powered by battery!

I have done similar additions to my MPC One and to make it more convenient for use in my kitchen, I even added some USB speakers and 3D printed a stand. The result was this chonky boi:

All set for timer beats

So there you have it, I hope this inspires you to add power to more of your music gear so you can use it more freely! I have made portable modular setups similarly – the possibilities are endless!

Modular cases ready for external power from batteries

8 May 2021 Gus
Uncategorized ableton project, sample pack, septavox, synthesizers, synths

Septavox Synth by Critter & Guitari

I was in the local modular synthesizer store when they received delivery of the Septavox from Critter & Guitari and I immediately was taken back by the future organ sounds that came out of the cute little synth. The keys are made of wood and the case is bent metal, giving this synth a very boutique look and feel. I scooped it right away as these are pretty rare to come by.

IMG_0035

Synth Layout

This synth has an integrated speaker as well and can be powered by AA batteries making it a fun bring-along synth for taking out with you. It’s really compact for the number of octaves you get in the keyboard. On the back is midi-in and midi-out, on the side is a DC port and the 1/4″ mono output for DI recording. On the back of the synth is an open slot that takes the AA batteries and a card that is included for reference on the tone and mode options.

There are two preset selectors that indicate their current mode by changing the LED color next to the button. The left button lets you select the tone from Dirty Sine, Sine, Electric Organ, Square, Sawtooth, Dirty Square, and Computer.  The right preset selector changes the mode for the effect knobs. There’s a vibrato, slide, arp, swell, octave cascade, slicer, and pipe glide modes in there.

The two knobs control various parameters depending on the mode. For example, the vibrato mode has rate and depth settings that let you build a range of sounds from the tones from pitch-enveloped kicks to laser and wobbly risers.  The slide and swell modes also give some unique character to the various tones that the synthesizer makes.

Demos

For this demo, I created some simple chords and put them into a drum rack. The demo resembles the organ sounds from Faithless – Insomnia.
This next demo uses the same process and has a few house chords that sound like something that you would hear in a Vengaboys track.

This final demo was produced by modulating a dirty sine in the vibrato mode and sounds similar to the sounds that the talking animals in Animal Crossing make.

Download

I have put together a very simple project with the instruments used in the demos created from the samples I created using the Septavox. Feel free to use them however you want!

Download Septavox Ableton Project
14 Mar 2021 Gus
Uncategorized

Your Friend Gus’s Casiotone CT 640

Casiotone CT 640

Vintage sounds from a classic Casio keyboard.

Download YFG's Casiotone Bank 1
IMG_9586

This synthesizer was Casio’s first keyboard based on sampled sounds. When I was a young piano student, I had access to one at home and would noodle around on the keys and play my Suzuki method homework on these sweet PCM sampled instruments. I also remember being blown away by the DEMO mode of this keyboard. This is not sampled from my childhood keyboard (I found it at a vintage synth store!) but the sounds still brings back memories like how our cat peed on ours giving it a funny smell.

This bank includes Kontakt instruments as well as Soundfont 2 files (playable in Ableton Sampler, Fruity Soundfont Player, and Reason NN-XT / NN19).

The following programs have been added to the bank:

  • Accordion
  • Bells
  • E Piano
  • Funky Clav
  • Harp
  • Harpsichord
  • Jazz Guitar
  • Marimba
  • Organ
  • Piano
  • Vibraphone

Regardless of how you will be using this, you should first extract the downloaded files to a folder you can easily find. To load the Soundfont2 file in Ableton, drag the SF2 file into a sampler instrument. For Reason, load the SF2 from the NN-XT or NN19 instruments. I’m currently seeing issues loading SF2 files into Live 11; if you load the SF2 into your library in Live 10, it will then appear in your 11 library. For FL Studio, load the Soundfont Player device and load the SF2 file.

For Kontakt, just browse from the file manager to the NKI files. It’s the first time I’ve distributed Kontakt instruments, so you may need to resolve the path to the samples by providing the folder you containing the samples when you load the instrument.

You’re welcome to use the samples from my instrument however you want – I consider them to be attribution-free public domain so long as I’m not unknowingly breaking some other license. If you want to give me something back for giving these away, just follow me on Soundcloud, Instragram, or Twitter and say hello if you see me at a festival! I’ll be giving away more stuff as I make it so check back on https://yourfriendgus.com from time to time.

8 Feb 2021 Gus
Uncategorized

Mic Check

Hi!

I’m Gus, we’re friends now, I am currently working on the YOURFRIENDGUS (Your Friend Gus) project for which this web site’s been created. I have been making a lot of music over the past few years and can’t wait to show you!

I hope you’re having a fantastic day and I will be writing more about my project work on this site!

YOURFRIENDGUS