October 2015 marks the release of the first EP in a series of three printed circuit boards on the Metronomicon Audio label. This EP “Dead Cats” Is unique in that each physical copy of the printed circuitboard is a different version of the EP. The last track on the ep “main.h” is generated by the microcontroller on the circuitboard using a bunch of complex 8bit maths equations and your download code. Simply plug in your headphones and accept the harsh reality that is the robot takeover of the cultural market. The release includes 5 other tracks that are downloaded via the download-code. 8bit synthesis and hectic rythms in an epic battle with deep basses and angry vocals.

Or as the captain puts it:

“filthy drunk beats bathing in a lake of melting synthesizers and old Nintendo cartridges”.

Dead Cats i snot so much an EP as it is a mental projection of the large hadron collider, inhabited by miniature farm animals soaked in meth.

Open Source Generative EP

So yeah, basically this is the first of three EPs where the final track was uniquely different for each copy, and also infinitely* long. To do this he had to forego the traditional medium of compact discs or vinyls, and instead create his own medium on wich to release the music. So he put together this circuitboard and wrote some code for it like the idiot he is.

The circuit board is pretty simple. it consists of an ATtiny85 microcontroller, a CR2032 button cell battery, 3 resistors, an LED and a stereo minijack socket with an embedded switch. The embedded switch means that the circuit will only be on if there is a minijack connected, handy.

I can has gerbers?

sure, why not:

The Code

The Code fills an array with a melody, and a few others with drum patterns. Using a randomly selected key, time signature, subdivisions for individual notes and tempo. It then proceeds to play the melody and drum sequences while occasionally switching out notes, subdivisions and percussion sounds and sequences. It also inserts "drum breaks" and occasionally goes into "free jazz mode" where it comes up with random "oneliner sound generating algorithms" kinda like these.

The Percussive sounds are also generated using "oneliners". This allows them to be modified throughout the "song"

The notes are generated using the tone() function of the arduino core library, but i was previously using this handy solution http://www.technoblogy.com/show?KVO.

The code uses a core library called arduino-tiny that adds support for the standard Arduino tone() function to ATtiny.

You can download, inspect and criticize the code here.

The code is a mess, variables have stupid names, some are superfluous others are bigger than they need to be. I was in a hurry to meet a deadline, and i still am. Maybe later one day i will clean it up a little.

A short example of the musical genious it can come up with

The Prototyping board

After the third EP is released (did i mention there will be three) the prototyping board will be made available for sale.

Alternatively you can just make your own with the provided gerber files here.

(yes the pictured PCB on the left is a slightly outdated design)

You can order the first EP and PCB here:

https://meau.bandcamp.com/album/dead-cats

Press release / bio / photos download link

*not really infinite but probably longer than the span of human life in the universe