Just did my first lecture at The British Academy of New Music, it was packed, and probably my highest attendance for one of my lectures so far. I often find it strange when I do these lectures when few or no people have heard of either chip tune music or circuit bending music, mainly because I am so immersed in it, which makes it all the more fun when I bring both types of music to new people.

I did an outline of explaining what circuit bending is, and then in front of them hacked up a brand new kids keyboard out of a box, I wanted to show them how much fun it is and how simple some of the hacks can be. I think they were also quite shocked by what you could achieve with so few extra components and very little money.

I then moved on to chip tune music, and improvised with the Music Tech Pro Performer, again it was something new to a lot of them, and several hands and questions were raised.

Overall it was great, and it was a very varied group in terms of their individual musical interests and yet at the same time being very open minded about sourcing different sounds. I got to talk to some of the students after the lecture, in which they told me about what they are all studying and how it’s been a real positive thing to be involved in. It’s a fantastic music facility and it was a very fun lecture.

(Written September 28th, 2008 Declassified January 23, 2009)

It was my second visit to do some recording and again it was fantastic, recorded loads of sounds and loads of video footage. I also got to access to “The Archive” which is amazing a huge room of software, magazines and books from manuals for the Elliot 803 to Z80 assembly language and more, I imagine I will spend quite alot of time there.

A new machine arrived the Elliot 905, which looks amazing, the control console looks like something out of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, and immediately I notice it too like the Elliot 803, is capable of producing sounds, so I can’t wait to see that up and running.

Had a go on a few punch card machines which make a strange collection of clicks and whizzing sounds which was good fun, and had a look at DECtalk, which is a speech synthesis computer module which sounds remarkably like the voice of Professor Stephen Hawkins, so thats gonna be fun to manipulate.

The picture to the right is of the BOMBE.

I am also going have access to a few electro calculators, which depending on what and what type of calculation can produce different types of clunky sounds and rhythms, which is gonna be good fun to play with.

So lots of stuff done and a lot lot more to research.

(Written September 25, 2008 Declassified January 23, 2009)

I had my first visit to The National Museum Of Computing TNMOC with the intention of creating a piece of music out of the sounds there, it was fantastic. I am very honoured to have met Tony Sale, not just once but several times now and today I got to talk to him about the  workings of Colossus.

I was there to make several recordings of Colossus and a few other machines for quick project to show what it is I do. Colossus was the first machine to record and it was the hardest, it’s not the most musical and when it’s running perfectly there is very little musicality to it apart from the tape reader loop and the relays.

However When Colossus is made to make a mistake it can make some amazing sounds, such as the uniselector being turned and then reset, and the typewriter and thanks to Tony Sale I was able to find out how to do that.

I also recorded the Elliot 803 which is one of my favorites, The Tunny, An Amstrad CPC464, A Sirius booting up, an IBM card puncher, the machine hum of a 380Z Research Machine and and RM Nimbus.

I also filmed some of the machines I recorded, as I hope to edit a short video together of the project I am doing. Overall it was very good, even though it was a long day I had to leave at 8.30am and I didn’t get back til about 9pm at night, but checking the sounds as I walked round the museum on my headphones, I am certain I got some good recordings.

I had a fantastic evening with a few friends of mine, we were invited to engineer and cartoonist Tim Hunkin’s workshop, just out near Southwold. He is a very inspiring man, full of fantastic ideas, his workshops are surrounded by carcasses of old video game machines, statues brought to life with LED lights and giant calculator which made me laugh.

We all agreed that the workshop was surprisingly tidy, and I think we were all expecting a chaotic mess. It was great, full of tiny little drawers with really specific labels and several pieces of projects in progress. It wasn’t just the things that were in the workshops but the crazy stories attached to things like the polygraph machine from an American police station and the dentist chair. Overall it was very much how I would imagine or hope my workshop to eventually evolve into.

Moving on from the workshop, we decided to head to the pub, I believe it was The White Hart Inn, in which we spent a few hours talking about our various endeavours. Tim Hunkin told of his meeting with Tony Sale if I remember correctly at the Science Museum in London during the rebuilding of the Pegasus and expressed an interest in visiting Bletchley Park. It was a good evening, and I will definitely head back out to Southwold to visit The Under The Pier Show.

I first met Tim Hunkin at Dorkbot in London in October 2007, when we both did talks on hacked computer / video games machines and hope to bump into him again on my various travels.

My second visit to The National Museum Of Computing was a lot more formal, press conference, lunch and a tour, again it was fantastic. Although my journey had to start at 5.30am it was well worth it. This time around I also got to meet several of the other enthusiasts involved in the museum in some way. Both PGP and IBM were there and gave a considerable donation to the museum which is excellent. The tour was great this time by Tony Sale who gave us a breakdown of the workings of the Bombe and Colossus, and explained the Tiltman break.

It was good to see not only so much enthusiasm from the people involved, but also from the press who showed up in great numbers to cover the event. Again I got to see more of the Elliot 803 and got to hear about the what I believe is called the “Sirius” which makes different sounds depending on what area of the hard drive is being accessed, which definitely sounds like something to research.

I was quite nervous in that only twenty minutes before the press conference, I was tipped off that they would be mentioning my involvement with TNMOC, which was also very exciting. Overall it was a very good, and hopefully many many more to come thanks to PGP and IBM.

To see the full gallery of my photos visit my flickr page.