Frederic Schmidt

Tired Machines Orchestra

For the Tired Machines Orchestra course, I was building two instruments out of old electronics, that someone else considered to be trash.

I found them at the recycling facility where we picked up the tired machines that still worked fine (most of them)

The Pitchman

The Pitchman was built out of an old Panasonic Walkman that still worked fine, when it fell into my hands and it still does, but now it has some extra features.

According to the speed, of the spinning motor inside cassette player, you are able to change the Pitch of whatever sound is recorded on the cassette.

I did some research on this and found out, that there is a small potentiometer where they set the speed at the factory to make the player spin at the right speed.

I opened the player and found the potentiometer and soldered it out. Next step was, to put a different one with a bigger range to the outside of the player to make it accessible while playing.

The slightly thicker cables in black, blue and green were soldered to the electrical contacts where the old factory potentiometer was sitting.

open cassette player with longer wires for the potentiometer

external potentiometer and wires routing

Now I was able to play back the cassette at different speeds (pitch it up and down) and also change the pitch while playing.

with the potentiometer, you can change the resistance and so the speed (Pitch)

Version 2.0

So I came up with the idea to have several potentiometers and some trigger buttons so set particular resistances (Speeds->Pitches) and trigger them with a button.

I found a circuit to accomplish this.

circuit schematic

I used only four buttons and potentiometers and did the wiring the same way as shown in the picture to the left, if you click on the picture, you'll see a bigger version and also the tiny descriptions become more visible.

For my version, I made some kind of handheld thing with all the buttons and potentiometers inside a transparent cassette case.

handheld pitch trigger with pitch set

use of spacers

The buttons were sourced from an old children's toy that I also found at the recycling facility, the potentiometers were ordered in a set online with different values.

At the end, i was able to set different speeds with the potentiometers and trigger them with the four buttons.

TAPES:

I used a tape with recordings of bird voices that sounded very weird but still like birds but different species

if you pitch them up and down and i also used a tape loop with only one Synth sine wave on it that I was able to pitch up and down to a specific tone with the help of a guitar tuner.

If you use two buttons, the values are added to each other and you can play some kind of portamento.

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Video Pitchman