491: Oscillators Oscillating Other Oscillators
Transcript from 491: Oscillators Oscillating Other Oscillators with Kirk Pearson, Christopher White, and Elecia White.
EW (00:00:06):
Hello and welcome to Embedded. I am Elecia White, alongside Christopher White. Our guest this week is Kirk Pearson. We are going to talk about music, electronics, teaching, composing, dogs, robots, and well, anything else we feel like talking about.
CW (00:00:26):
Hi, Kirk. It is good to talk to you.
KP (00:00:28):
Hi! Thank you for having me.
EW (00:00:31):
Could you tell us about yourself, as if we met at an author book signing?
KP (00:00:39):
Well, I am a composer. A lot of the work that I do under the studio Dogbotic, is I write eccentric music for eccentric people. Sometimes it is for film or TV, sometimes it is for installation, or radio, or strange little art projects.
(00:00:54):
A lot of the work I do is building my own musical instruments. That is always what has attracted me to experimental music. Since the pandemic, we have been actually teaching virtual workshops on how to build your own musical instruments. We started off with one where I shipped people a box, and I taught you how to build a synthesizer over a couple months.
(00:01:15):
It has kind of exploded into a whole bunch of offerings and oft maligned creative topics, as we put it. Things that we were not taught in art school, but we really wish we were.
(00:01:28):
Recently we wrote a book called "Electronic Music from Scratch," which is- It is really intended for beginners, but for people who have a creative urge to them, but no necessarily- They do not have any circuitry experience. This is a book that- It is a nice simple introduction to a lot of sounds that are surprisingly complicated, that you can make at home.
EW (00:01:50):
And Christopher has that book currently in his hands. We have many questions about it. Visually, he just did the Vanna White thing.
KP (00:02:00):
Oh, great!
EW (00:02:00):
But before we do that, we want to do lightning round. Are you ready?
KP (00:02:04):
Okay. I am ready.
CW (00:02:07):
What is your favorite audio sound effect in a movie, either that you did or somebody else did?
KP (00:02:12):
Oh. My favorite audio sound effect. One of my favorite sound effects is the thing that I hide in everything I do. It is me making the mouth bubble sound. <sound>
EW (00:02:24):
Wow.
KP (00:02:24):
That is one- Yeah, I know. You cannot see me, so you have no idea how I made that. No, that is just one of my personal favorites. It is the sound I could do since childhood. You can tell when I have sound designed something because you hear that somewhere in there.
(00:02:38):
I do not know. There are so many classic in-jokes in sound design, especially. One of the most famous ones, which you might have heard of, is the Wilhelm Scream-
CW (00:02:45):
Yes.
KP (00:02:46):
Which was- Yeah, it was a ridiculous sound effect made in the 1960s, that then became an in joke. It is a completely ridiculous scream. It sounds nothing- <laugh> Nothing like a real person screaming, but it is a great thing to just hide around. I have a whole bunch of screams that I have recorded for a variety of different projects, and they are always fun to sneak around in the background.
EW (00:03:09):
Making music, engineering, composing, writing or teaching?
KP (00:03:13):
Oh, all of the above. I think it is- I do not know, being a musician is an exciting thing, because you are not necessarily doing the same thing every day <laugh>. There are many different aspects to my creative practice, that all kind of feed into one another.
(00:03:26):
I love teaching, I really do. I think it brings me a lot emotionally, to get people to make things that they are themselves are surprised that they made. But also teaching is a great way to ground your understanding. The best way to learn something is to teach it, I think.
(00:03:45):
I feel very fortunate in my job, that I get so many different interesting people in our workshops, that I constantly have my own assumptions challenged. I constantly have new ideas brought up to me.
CW (00:04:00):
Favorite electronic component?
KP (00:04:03):
Favorite electronic component? I do not think any of these were on the dock. <laugh>
EW (00:04:07):
No!
KP (00:04:07):
My favorite electronic component is, I will say, "A phototransistor." That is a fun one. If you take a phototransistor and you hook it right up to an amplifier, you can take your TV remote or anything that uses infrared, and shine it at the phototransistor, and you can get it to make all sorts of goofy sounds. So I am a big fan of that.
EW (00:04:27):
Dogs or robots?
KP (00:04:28):
Dogs or robots? Porque no los dos?
EW (00:04:29):
<laugh>
KP (00:04:29):
Yeah <laugh>. I do not know. There has been a strong cultural canon of robot dogs, that I feel like I can get along with. I will go with K9 from "Doctor Who."
CW (00:04:46):
Oh yeah! <laugh> What is the favorite project that you have done sound composition for?
KP (00:04:53):
Oh, jeez. There are so many. I guess one of the ones that comes up a lot, is I did the sound design for Rihanna’s "Savage X Fenty Show" when that happened last. It was really an amazing carte blanche process, in that I had these little animated interstitial segments that they had me working with.
(00:05:14):
But I just got to build some crazy electronics for it. So most of the sounds that you hear in the fashion show are literally synthesizers, that I prototyped myself, recorded, and then edited around.
(00:05:25):
I think we have been very fortunate, probably because we have such a goofy business name, in that the projects we tend to get tend to be outside the box. So that is fun for me. I always appreciate a project when it enables me to try a different recipe, so to speak, for making sound.
EW (00:05:46):
What is your favorite ten week workshop to teach?
KP (00:05:52):
Ohh. Okay. Currently my favorite is- It is one that we call "A sound forager's guide to the virtual studio." It is really hard to pitch. It is effectively learning how to make music on your computer, but not in the way you anticipated. <laugh> You learn a whole bunch of musical processes that you would not think are musical. For instance, we build an echo effect in a spreadsheet!
EW (00:06:14):
<laugh>
KP (00:06:14):
We do a whole day where we convert sounds into images, Photoshop the images, and convert them back into sounds. You can learn how you can accomplish a lot of audio processes visually.
(00:06:25):
I really like teaching- It gets really nitty gritty, of this is actulutely what your computer is doing, when it does a digital signal processing thing. But it is done so in a way that is pretty intuitive for people to figure out, and actually gets them to wrap their head around. For instance, it is much easier to think about a denoising process visually than it is sonically. I really appreciate that.
(00:06:50):
We have our final class next week. All of the students have written their own little found sound composition. We are going to take a listen. We are going to release it on a CD. It is a ton of fun to teach. We continuously get really cool people. I do not know how we are so lucky, <laugh> but it is great for me.
CW (00:07:09):
Favorite fictional robot?
KP (00:07:11):
I have three for you.
CW (00:07:12):
<laugh>
EW (00:07:12):
<laugh>
KP (00:07:12):
I thought long and hard about this, Christopher. My three are- Because I did not want to say R2-D2. It is too obvious. So my three are- One is the techno-trousers from "Wallace and Gromit-"
CW (00:07:25):
<laugh> Oh, yeah.
EW (00:07:25):
<laugh>
KP (00:07:26):
Which certainly is a robot. It can participate in a jewel heist. It is very multipurpose.
(00:07:32):
My second is Mechagodzilla. Mechagodzilla, you see is additionally scary, because he is not just a large lizard, he is also a robot. I do not know why that was an additional thing they had to throw at you, but somehow it was.
(00:07:47):
I also really appreciate how as the Tokyo skyline gets taller, they have to size Godzilla up in every movie, just so he is tall enough that you can see over the skyline. I have been showing my lizard the "Godzilla" movies for inspo lately, so it has been on my mind.
EW (00:08:03):
<laugh>
CW (00:08:04):
Dangerous.
KP (00:08:04):
Yeah, no. And the third is the Fembots from "Austin Powers," who were responsible for great awakenings from myself as a ten-year-old.
CW (00:08:15):
<laugh>
KP (00:08:17):
But also just a good robot.
EW (00:08:20):
Do you have a tip everyone should know?
KP (00:08:23):
A tip everyone should know. This is one that I learned from the music world, but I actually think extends really well into any world you might be working in. If you are improvising and you make a mistake, make that mistake more than once.
CW (00:08:38):
<laugh> That is jazz.
KP (00:08:40):
Yeah, lean into it. If you do something by accident, just make it not an accident. It is very possible to do.
EW (00:08:52):
<music> Thank you to Memfault for sponsoring this show. We appreciate their sponsorship and the work that they do.
(00:08:58):
Memfault is a leading embedded device observability platform, that empowers teams to build better IoT products faster. What that means is that if you have just realized that you are going to build five, ten, a hundred, 50,000 units, and you need to keep track of them, they will let you create your own dashboard to observe how your system is doing in the field.
(00:09:21):
Memfault gives developers a more scalable and sustainable process. This accelerates the time to market and de-risks product launches. You can cut product costs and deliver more high quality software.
(00:09:34):
Trusted by leading brands such as Bose, Lyft, Logitech, Panasonic, and Augury, Memfault improves the reliability of devices across consumer electronics. And across mission critical systems, such as access control, point of sale, energy and healthcare.
(00:09:51):
Thanks again to Memfault for sponsoring this show. Check out memfault.com and the Interrupt blog which is filled with incredible amounts of information. <music>
(00:10:05):
Christopher, what page are you on, on the book?
CW (00:10:07):
I am on page 124.
EW (00:10:10):
Of "Make: Electronic Music from Scratch: A Beginner's Guide to Homegrown Audio Gizmos." Kirk, I believe that is your book.
KP (00:10:17):
Indeed it is.
EW (00:10:19):
Could you tell us about it?
KP (00:10:21):
Yeah! "Electronic Music from Scratch" is the result of me teaching these workshops for many years. It is a book on how to build your own electronic music instruments at home. If you have ever wanted to build your own synthesizer, drum machine, talk box or whatever, this is the book for you. Or at least that is what I am supposed to say.
(00:10:38):
Truthfully, there are a lot of great musical circuitry books out there, but I- And I really try to ground the workshops in this a lot. I am a composer. I am not an engineer <laugh>. I know my stuff from doing this, right. But the goal of mine was always to make sound, more so than to make a thing that was technically super complex.
(00:10:59):
I think that that is really the strength of this book, is politically where it is coming from is it is from the angle of someone wanting to make sound, more so than anything else. Really the goal of it, is to get you to make a working thing as quickly as humanly possible.
(00:11:13):
I just flipped forward to page 124, <laugh> because you brought it up and I was curious what was on there. But that is actually, it is a great project. It is the electro-cricket. It is a really straightforward project. But the idea is you make a little circuit that sounds shockingly like a cricket, and the way it works is really beautifully simple.
(00:11:32):
So you have a square wave oscillator that you build on a little NAND gate you have wired up to self-oscillate. So it makes a beeping sound. And it is really easy to have a second square wave modulate the first square wave, turning it on and off. So it makes something that sounds like, "Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep," like a smoke detector or whatever.
(00:11:52):
What this project is, is once you attach a third square wave to the second, you can make something go <sound>. It is just putting one oscillator on another oscillator on another. That is really all a synthesizer is. It is simple function generators turning on and off other function generators. But they are doing it so quickly <laugh>, that you perceive what they are doing as something that is incredibly complicated. But really it is not.
EW (00:12:18):
I expected when I got your book that it would be a series of projects.
KP (00:12:23):
Mm-hmm.
CW (00:12:23):
Which it is.
EW (00:12:24):
Which it is. But usually the projects are more, "Put this together with that, and we will say, 'The timer does this.'" But it would be a one line description. You ended up putting a lot of electronics in your book.
KP (00:12:40):
Yeah, I think that I probably say, to the point where it is kind of cliche in the workshops, but I really try to encourage people to think about the electronic components like paints in a paintbox. And you will start to realize that like, "Oh yeah, when you swap out a capacitor, or something like that, it really does dynamically change the sound, in a way."
(00:13:01):
I tended to not respond very well to really prescriptive art classes, where at the end of the day you will be making this project, and that is what you will walk away with. To me, it was much more fun to learn the technique, and then to see people put things together in a way that I did not anticipate they would.
(00:13:19):
So a lovely thing about the workshops is everyone's final project ends up being entirely different, because it is a whole bunch of different circuits that all talk to each other. We really tried to make the book similar, so you can take the portions of the circuits that you like the most, combine them into something that you are the only person in the world that owns. You can really make something that is very specific to your needs.
(00:13:44):
Everything in the designed world comes with some sort of pre-established technological code. Like when you buy a synthesizer from a store or something, it is effectively the Roland Corporation telling you, "These are the settings that we think you should have access to, to make a thing that we think is musical."
(00:14:01):
That is totally fine. There is nothing wrong with that. But it is important to remember that the design codes of the world, do not necessarily fit the user's needs. Especially in a world where things are harder and harder to fix, it becomes a radical act to build something yourself, that is not strictly off of a data sheet or something like that.
(00:14:25):
I think it is cool to remember that the big companies that produce electronic music products, they are not the arbiters of new sounds. You have that power too. And it is not nearly as difficult as I was led to believe it was, growing up.
CW (00:14:42):
One thing that I just realized today, looking through this, is we come from a professional background of electronics and software, and so there are mistakes that can be made.
KP (00:14:53):
Yeah. Of course.
CW (00:14:54):
Things can go wrong, and it is bad! It is bad when mistakes are made. I have always tried to learn electronics from the standpoint of-
EW (00:15:02):
The right way.
CW (00:15:03):
The academic right way. The cool thing about this stuff, and audio things, is the actual goal is to plug stuff together and see what happens.
KP (00:15:11):
Mm-hmm.
CW (00:15:11):
You have some basics-
EW (00:15:14):
Way more fun.
CW (00:15:14):
But you really encourage experimentation. You are not going to break anything, or light anything on fire, with any of these things. Or if you do break something, it is a $2 IC, or something. Right?
KP (00:15:24):
Exactly. Yeah.
CW (00:15:25):
So I think it is a really great way to approach electronics too. Because that fear of breaking something, or not learning it the right way, I think is really- It is inhibiting to me. I still do not know electronics very well. So I am looking at this book and going, "I am going to go through this book, because this is awesome."
KP (00:15:42):
You took the words out of my mouth. Honestly. It is so cool <laugh> that with musical circuitry, at the end of the day all you are doing is you are building a thing that sounds culturally interesting. Right? You are not building an electric car braking system. Right? Because if you had to do that, it better work every dang time.
(00:15:59):
Here in this case, if someone comes up with a circuit and they are not sure why it makes the sound it does, but they like the sound it makes, I say, "Good for you. You win. You did it."
EW (00:16:11):
But it also gives you a way to internalize and create intuition about what these components and processes do, beyond the mathematical, "Here is how resistors go together in parallel and serial." And, "Here is how capacitors-"
KP (00:16:29):
Right.
EW (00:16:29):
Which- I know that. I have read it a whole bunch of times.
CW (00:16:34):
But the gap between that and application is...
EW (00:16:37):
And being able to say, "Okay. What I want to have happen is this." I do not want to go back to the math, at that point. I want to just reach for the parts I want to reach for. This seems a way to build intuition, as well as creating some pretty fun stuff. Do you have a favorite project?
KP (00:16:53):
There are a lot of really cool ones in the book. There is a whole chapter that is about rhythm machines. This actually is a fun thing to talk about. When a lot of people think about drum machines, they think about a playback system that is playing MP3 files, or something like that.
(00:17:08):
But a thing that I have noticed a lot of people do not know, is that the original drum machines up through the early 1980s, they were not sample based at all. The ability to read and write digital files was so incredibly limited. So a way that all the early drum machines work, is it is an analog circuit that when you give it a thump of current, the circuit will vibrate in a way that sounds kind of like a drum.
(00:17:36):
The way that the TR-808 and the CR-78 and all of those classic drum machines that everyone knows when you hear them, the kick drum is actually just a really, really resonant filter that is almost feeding back. Almost feeding back. And when you give it a big thump, an impulse of current, it feeds back and it goes, "Boom!" And that is that.
(00:17:57):
The way that you make a symbol sound? It is an XOR gate. You send a bunch of square waves into an XOR gate <laugh> and that produces an inharmonic "Pshh!" sound.
CW (00:18:09):
I am looking at this section now. Just to give people an idea of the comprehensive nature of the book, not only do you go through making all of the parts for those sound generators, but you have got a complete guide to several important rhythms in here. Including-
KP (00:18:23):
Oh, yeah!
CW (00:18:24):
The Bo Diddley beat, and some things from Africa and the Caribbean. So you can actually, if you want to, program these beats into your thing you have made.
KP (00:18:35):
All the early drum machines come with- They did not really come with sequencers. You could not program your own beat in there. But they would come with things like "Bossa nova" and "Western," or whatever. Cobbling together a lot of those rhythmic patterns I thought was really fun.
(00:18:50):
Another thing that did not strike me how cool it was, until I actually did the research of it, is how many simple rhythmic patterns turn into completely different rhythmic patterns, if you just change where you start, or something like that.
(00:19:05):
When you read a lot of those rhythmic patterns, laid out in that simple block notation, you start to realize, "Oh. This mass of people who had this rhythmic pattern moved over here, and then the stress started being put here. And then that led to-" It opened the floodgates for a completely different kind of culture. It is a nice reminder at how plastic and malleable culture is.
EW (00:19:29):
So the workshops. Are you going to keep teaching them, now that you have written a book that has everything you wanted to say in it?
KP (00:19:36):
<laugh> That is a good question. Well, yeah, I do not know. I think the book was nice in that it is a good means for us to reach a different audience. Also I think the thrill of taking a virtual workshop has subsided a little bit since Covid. But the format I really love.
(00:19:52):
I do not think it would be possible for us to get ten people from the Bay Area to show up in person every week. But with a virtual workshop, you have people from South America, West Africa, France, just taking a workshop in real time with everybody else. That is really cool. We would not have been able to do that otherwise.
(00:20:11):
The good news is it seems like we are headed the direction of- We started out as a strictly an audio studio, and we are slowly moving into the direction of new media free for all. We have all these workshops now on like- There is one about wearable electronics, where you build a musical suit.
(00:20:27):
There is one all about- Called "Filmcraft," which is also one of my favorites. That is all about experimental film processing techniques. So we literally ship you a whole bunch of film. You soak some in bleach, you bury some in the dirt, and then you send it all back to us. We scan it, and then you edit a music video. Just stuff like that.
(00:20:44):
The kinds of stuff that I really wish I did get art school, but for one reason or another I did not, because the topic was not taken seriously.
EW (00:20:53):
The workshops. They seem to be mostly two hours a week for ten weeks, and I assume there is homework.
KP (00:21:02):
Yeaah. <laugh> I try not to rule it with an iron fist. I think with a lot of electronics, you gain intuition by building something and rebuilding it, rebuilding it. So I encourage people to do that. And I do have assignments for every week.
(00:21:15):
But I really try to change the class, based on what the interests of the people in the class are. That is also a nice thing about doing it live, and not as a fixed YouTube series.
EW (00:21:30):
You said, "Ten people." Is that the normal class size?
KP (00:21:33):
Yeah. Yeah, that, say it is about ten. I think the absolute max that we do in a class is 15, but that is rare. We really try not to do that. We really do find the value of the class is it is nice to have someone there that you can ask questions to.
(00:21:47):
Also, as I am sure everyone listening to this podcast knows, if you have ever tried to learn something technical on the web, it is not great. <laugh>
EW (00:21:59):
And yet is better than just having "The Art of Electronics."
CW (00:22:02):
<laugh>
KP (00:22:05):
Sure. No, that is fair. But I have also found "The Art of Electronics" does not shame you when you do not know something. <laugh> Like just going through even Reddit forums where-
EW (00:22:15):
<laugh>
KP (00:22:15):
Very, very understandable questions. How would you be expected to know the answer to that, if you have not been doing this for ten years? And then people respond really obnoxiously. There is just so much gatekeeping in technical fields. That stresses me out. It should not be that way.
(00:22:34):
In some way, we hope to be an antidote to that, where we really do try to foster a community that is supportive. But also one that does not tell you what kind of music to make. Really, I want you to make the music you have always wanted to make.
EW (00:22:50):
I am sorry <laugh>.
CW (00:22:51):
I am sorry. Elecia is laughing because I just discovered the flip book at the top corner.
KP (00:22:55):
Oh, I am so glad. Yeah, people do not notice that.
EW (00:22:58):
<laugh> He is so excited.
CW (00:22:59):
So I am going through that over and over and over again.
EW (00:23:02):
Sorry <laugh>, what you were saying was really interesting, but there was him discovering it. Sorry.
KP (00:23:07):
There is a flip book hidden in the textbook.
EW (00:23:09):
What other Easter eggs?
KP (00:23:12):
If that incentivizes you to buy a copy.
EW (00:23:14):
You certainly did not get that from the electronic version I had initially.
KP (00:23:18):
Oh yeah, no, that is a problem with the PDF. You have to press the down arrow really fast.
EW (00:23:25):
<laugh> I want to get back to the workshop, because I have way more questions about it. But who did the illustrations for your book?
KP (00:23:31):
Oh. Maisy Byerly, who I love dearly. Maisy and I went to school together, interestingly enough, and we lived in a co-op together. And we never really talked! <laugh> Years after school- She always did illustrations for the campus satire publication, and stuff like that. I always loved her sense of humor.
(00:23:52):
So yeah, I sent her an email a couple years into Dogbotic, when we started doing this workshop, and she was incredibly excited about it. Her art is great. I really love her art. I also really love how it is not technical. It is really genuinely very approachable.
EW (00:24:13):
Yes, that was the word. It is very approachable.
KP (00:24:18):
This is probably stuff that I have already hinted at, but I dislike that the engineering world is so gatekeepy, and stuff like that. I found the easiest way to get people over their fear of looking at a transistor, was to give it a face. <laugh> Maisy came up with all of those.
(00:24:35):
The downside is it has a lot of people think that we are a company for kids, which we are really not. But I think an adult can appreciate a good colorful illustration.
EW (00:24:46):
Well, actually, when it said, "Music from Scratch," I thought it was going to be the Scratch programming language.
KP (00:24:50):
Oh gosh, I did not even think of that.
EW (00:24:52):
That took me a second. But it is more electronics.
CW (00:24:54):
That would be, "Music with Scratch." <laugh> Yes.
KP (00:24:57):
I guess so. Yeah, yeah. I remember Scratch.
EW (00:25:01):
It is still really popular.
KP (00:25:03):
Yeah!
EW (00:25:05):
Okay. So, workshops. How do people find out about them? Other than here right now?
KP (00:25:13):
Yeah. <laugh> Right here, right now, with our expensive marketing strategy.
EW (00:25:17):
<laugh>
KP (00:25:18):
Yeah. We actually have very little in the way of marketing strategy. It has been pretty much exclusively word of mouth. The people that take the workshops, they tend to either come from a technical background, or a completely non-technical background, like a very creative background. We for some reason have a ton of puppeteers that take our workshops. I do not know why, but I am elated that that is the case.
(00:25:43):
It is exciting to me to explain technical things as a means to doing something creative. I love it that people end up coming up with projects that are things I would never think of. Because they are just approaching it from a completely different world than how I approach it. That is the dream. I do not even know if that answered your question. <laugh>
EW (00:26:07):
It was a good answer, whatever the question was, which I do not remember.
KP (00:26:10):
Oh. Okay.
(00:26:10):
So you are great.
(00:26:10):
<laugh> Thank you.
EW (00:26:12):
I like what you said. Because when I taught a class, I liked having so much freedom with the final projects, because people came up with things that I never could have imagined.
KP (00:26:20):
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
EW (00:26:20):
I gave loose rules, but then they went off and did whatever they want, which often did not even follow the rules, which was fine.
KP (00:26:30):
You were teaching embedded systems?
EW (00:26:32):
Yes.
KP (00:26:32):
Uh-huh.
EW (00:26:33):
It was intended to be paid for by the companies. It was intended to be a professional development course, and not art based course. But some people did quite a lot of art, because that is a good way to keep yourself engaged when you are learning.
CW (00:26:50):
Yep. There were a lot of music projects, I thought. I remember, right?
EW (00:26:51):
Yeah. And some tessellations and patterns, and some interesting display things.Lights.
KP (00:26:59):
Yeah. I think a part of pride for our particular workshops, <laugh> is that they all sound pretty frivolous on their surface. You really do learn creative engineering to a surprisingly extensive curriculum. But, yeah, at the end of the day, you are making a silly little thing that makes sound. I guess it weeds out a particular kind of person to take the workshop, but you have to have a sense of humor to do it. Intentionally or not, I am happy at how it shook out.
EW (00:27:35):
I saw the textiles one. It did look really interesting, because it was textiles with electronics. Although I do not think that was one you are teaching.
KP (00:27:46):
No, I do not teach it. But this wonderful artist from Michigan, Linh My Truong, teaches it. It is a cool curriculum. The first project you do is you make a glove, and when you touch each independent finger to your thumb, it turns on a different LED. That is where you start out with. Then it very quickly works its way into building some surprisingly complicated musical and visual stuff.
(00:28:09):
That is one of the few workshops we do that is actually microcontroller based. Everything I teach is completely just analog parts.
EW (00:28:18):
You ship out kits.
KP (00:28:20):
Yeah.
EW (00:28:22):
Does that not get expensive, if you have international students?
KP (00:28:25):
Yeeaah. <laugh>
EW (00:28:25):
Okay.
KP (00:28:26):
It does. Yeah. All the workshops we do, yeah, they all come with a kit that is whimsically illustrated, and comes with stuff you would not expect in it. So the synthesizers kit comes with a rubber duck for emotional support, and stuff like that. But yeah, we pack them all ourselves. We ship them all ourselves. We have done so for literally thousands and thousands of boxes. It is, yeah, part of the brand, I guess.
(00:28:55):
It is hard for a lot of people to find the parts themselves, when you are new to something. We understand that. So we just bake the parts into the price of the workshop themselves. Because it would be weird otherwise, if you sign up for a thing and then we are like, "Okay, go get these 20 chips."
CW (00:29:11):
Yeah.
EW (00:29:13):
Yeah. "Here is the DigiKey list. Sorry, if you do not have DigiKey locally."
KP (00:29:17):
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Right. Something like that. Because yeah, we have had people in Papua New Guinea take the work. I believe that was the hardest one to ship to. But yeah, it is interesting. And it is also, on the flip side, I have also found it interesting how a lot of these parts are harder to get in the United States, than they are in a lot of other places.
(00:29:36):
Like through-hole components themselves, you have to get them through a digital supplier. We have found our suppliers, but I do wonder if someday in the not too distant future, it will be workshopy educational outfits like us, that are keeping the through-hole industry around. <laugh> Because they are not really used. They are surprisingly hard to find.
CW (00:29:59):
That is kind of scary.
KP (00:30:01):
Yeah, I know. Right! Everything will be a part that a machine is meant to work with, not a human.
EW (00:30:06):
How do you set the price for your workshop?
KP (00:30:11):
Complicated spreadsheets. We try to figure out obviously how much the parts cost, and stuff like that. That changes all the time. We are currently sweating bullets about China tariffs coming up, and seeing what will happen there.
(00:30:26):
But really Dogbotic is a means for a bunch of artists to be able to be doing the work that excites them. So the people that run this company along with me, it is a whole bunch of people that we all have our own independent creative practices.
(00:30:45):
We have found a business model that lets us teach a couple of workshops a week, and be able to do all the other stuff that we love doing, that does not bring us any money. I think that is a lovely thing. It is a way to redistribute money among artists.
EW (00:31:05):
You said, "Allows you to do other things," except you also do composing for-
KP (00:31:11):
Yeah.
EW (00:31:12):
You mentioned Rihanna. I assume you did not do that for free.
KP (00:31:15):
No, no. We did not do that for free. <laugh> But yeah, the commercial projects I do love doing, for a variety of reasons. One of the questions that you sent me in the thing before is, "How would you describe your career?" I think a big motivator for me is just I love the craft of making sound.
(00:31:35):
I went through conservatory and all that, where honestly I got a lot of flack for trying to turn that into my job, and opposed to just doing it for the love of it. But I really do love the technical process of composing and sound designing. I do think of it as part of my creative practice.
(00:31:57):
But the art projects that I do for fun, that do not make any money, those are still a thing that are important to me. I try to keep those along in the background.
(00:32:07):
The whole idea of Dogbotic was really coming up with a system that would allow us to take commercial work, and then ultimately channel that into things that are, dare I say, more altruistic. Things that are art projects or workshops or stuff like that.
EW (00:32:22):
Teaching is very different than engineering.
KP (00:32:25):
True.
EW (00:32:28):
I like writing. I like engineering. Turned out I did not so much like teaching.
KP (00:32:33):
Oh. Really?
EW (00:32:34):
I like mentoring in smaller groups. But the larger group, it was just too much for my introverted self.
KP (00:32:41):
Mm-hmm.
EW (00:32:41):
But these are different skills and different interests. How do you balance them? Or do you just like doing all of them so much, whatever comes comes?
KP (00:32:55):
I think I am more of a teacher, than I am an engineer. Truthfully. The things that I get excited about are demystifying things to people. I really love getting a satisfying explanation for how something complicated works.
(00:33:08):
I find it to be like a really- What is the term? Like a- Oh shoot, I cannot think of a good term. But it is empowering, I guess, to learn that things in your house work for reasons that are ultimately quite simple and understandable. They just involve a lot of parts together.
(00:33:27):
I come from a performance background. This is a strange aside, but actually I was a very serious circus performer as a child. <laugh> I was dead set on becoming a professional juggler with my life at age 16. People told me that was crazy and I would make no money. So I went into electroacoustic art music. You know. A much better thing.
CW (00:33:54):
<laugh>
EW (00:33:54):
Now you have shown them. <laugh>
KP (00:33:56):
Yeah! Showed them. Right. Here with my swimming pool of gold coins. Yeah, I think the performance side of me really comes through. So I do feel when I am teaching, I kind of feel like I am a closeup magician, almost <laugh>. I am showing you a thing, and then I get to explain, "Penn & Teller" style, how the trick works. That is really fun for me.
(00:34:20):
I have figured out that a lot of the teachers in my life, even science teachers and stuff like that, that really stood out to me, were actually teachers that had a performance background to some extent. So I think about teaching really like I think about storytelling.
(00:34:37):
There is a way that you can set up a lesson, that provides a lot of satisfying reassurance, and also answers questions that you set up in a particular way. I script all my classes so they hit all those beats.
(00:34:52):
Because those are the things that I know I responded really well to as a kid. I always loved learning. I really do. And I always had a problem with school. <laugh> So I think that is where I approach a lot of the stuff that I do.
EW (00:35:09):
The storytelling makes so much sense. I love storytelling. That part of teaching was lots of fun. But the performance aspect...
KP (00:35:17):
It is grating. Yeah.
EW (00:35:20):
I can see how some people love it. For me, it was not a great thing. Even though my students were fantastic, and I loved what they were doing. I liked talking to them, but then afterwards, I was so exhausted I could do nothing. So it was just a difference.
KP (00:35:35):
Do you feel that way with podcasting?
EW (00:35:37):
Oh, <laugh> yes. I do.
KP (00:35:39):
<laugh> Okay. I just thought I would ask.
EW (00:35:42):
So the secret to podcasting is I end every podcast soaked in gross sweat. <laugh>
KP (00:35:49):
Oh, no! <laugh>
EW (00:35:49):
I like talking to people. I like being able to ask people questions, and getting to know people and all of that. But yeah, there is an aspect to this, even though it is not visual, that at the end I am pretty wiped.
KP (00:36:09):
Oh! That is actually a shock to me. I think you sound like a very natural podcast host, all the episodes I have heard of the show.
EW (00:36:15):
Well, I really do like talking to people. And at the show notes, putting together the outline, and doing a little bit of cyber snooping about people. Reading the books. I love all that. As soon as we are done with this, it mostly goes into Chris' ball. I interact with the listeners, but I do not necessarily interact with them about specific episodes. Because that just freaks me out.
KP (00:36:44):
Yeah. Oh, okay. No, I get that. <laugh>
EW (00:36:49):
When someone says, "Good job!" And I will be like, "Yeah, it was a great job." I do not even want to remember.
KP (00:36:55):
Truthfully, I get insane stage fright when I perform in most settings. <laugh> I think teaching is one that I have found works pretty well for me, but I do not know why.
CW (00:37:07):
I get stage fright recording videos.
EW (00:37:11):
Because you know you are going to post them for other people to see.
CW (00:37:13):
Yeah, but I have got an infinite number of tries. So I do not know why it makes me- Red light. The red light is on, it is like, "Oh, no." <laugh>
KP (00:37:19):
Well then, you know people will be making snap judgements about you, based on whatever you happen to record in that one take. And no, I get it. It is totally anxiety inducing.
EW (00:37:30):
You mentioned earlier that you make eccentric sounds for eccentric people.
KP (00:37:36):
Sure. Yes.
EW (00:37:38):
Your website. I believe it was talking about the term "dogbotic," that you combined "dog" and "robot," and that was silly. And people constantly tell you, "That is silly and dumb," and those are not the people you want to work with. You want to work with the people who laugh.
KP (00:37:53):
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. There are a lot of sound companies out there with just incredibly generic names. I am not going to list any of them. Just really incredibly generic names.
(00:38:04):
I wanted to get the jobs that you would need a sense of humor, in order to- You got to have a sense of humor to hire Dogbotic to do your campaign or whatever. I am really happy that that has resulted in some pretty eccentric stuff. Also a lot of times people approach us and just say, "Hey, do what you do," which is just right up there.
EW (00:38:30):
That is always the best. Yes.
KP (00:38:32):
They might not like what you do, but at least the first try.
CW (00:38:36):
At least it gives you some idea that they know about you. It is like, "I want whatever these people do, they are going to do."
KP (00:38:43):
Making people happy is hard, but we found a way to make it work.
EW (00:38:49):
Back to the workshops. Right now, they cost $500 to $600 US. These are mostly people paying for them. That it is not really something companies pay for, because they want those skills. Because while those skills are super useful and probably should be paid for by the companies, the way the workshop is pitched is more art-based. Not a criticism. Not a criticism at all. I think that is the best way to do it.
KP (00:39:21):
None taken.
EW (00:39:23):
But how much do people fuss about the price?
KP (00:39:27):
People fuss about the price when they do not really consider what they get out of it, I guess. But it has been fewer and fewer people.
(00:39:34):
I think when you realize that you get, it is like 20 hours of content. Plus you have unfettered access to a professional that does this work for months on end, to really fine tune what you are doing. I think it seems a lot more reasonable. But also the price of the workshop includes shipping and all of the parts.
(00:39:51):
We also have a financial aid program that is counted into all that. The model that we tried to make was basically if people cannot afford the $500 price tag, that ultimately pays for two other people to take the workshop. We feel good about that.
(00:40:09):
I would love for everyone who wants to learn how to do this stuff to be able to take it at no cost, but this is what we have to charge in order to keep the lights on, we found.
EW (00:40:20):
It totally makes sense. For us it was the same, that there were seats for very reduced prices. Free ended up being a problem sometimes, because people did not take it seriously. But very reduced prices, people did end up taking it seriously.
KP (00:40:41):
Yeah, I do not know. The psychology of marketing seems to be absolutely bizarre, and we do not understand it. That is why we are the size we are, I guess <laugh>.
(00:40:51):
But also, I think there is some legitimacy to working at the scale where we are working with ten people in a workshop and stuff. It really is quite intimate, and there is no second guessing what the intentions are. It really is to make art that you have not made before.
EW (00:41:11):
And that experience. Let us stop just making things.
KP (00:41:14):
And a community to build with, yeah.
EW (00:41:16):
Yeah. Let us find the people and have the experience and the community, and making the things is valuable. But it is the information. It is the information we learned along the way.
KP (00:41:29):
Yeah.
CW (00:41:29):
<laugh>
EW (00:41:29):
<laugh>
KP (00:41:32):
That is exactly. That being said, some people have totally gotten their big company to pay for their seat, in some workshops that are even less technical sounding than "DIY Synthesizers," like one called "Ear Re-Training."
(00:41:43):
It is a workshop I teach about media theory, where you build your way through 20th century communications. We build a phonograph. You build a radio. You build a little sampler out of a circuit bent greeting card. Then you talk about how to misuse all of those media, so they make sounds that were not intended.
(00:41:59):
Stuff like that, where it does not have an obvious usage. But they are really all the tiny little lessons that I have gleaned throughout the years of being a professional composer, and the ones that really stuck with me. I feel very fortunate that I have an outlet for that.
EW (00:42:17):
Companies, managers, people should realize that any learning you do is good practice for more learning.
KP (00:42:25):
Yeah. If only you ran the world, Elecia. <laugh>
EW (00:42:28):
It would all be different. Not better, but different.
KP (00:42:30):
It would all be better.
CW (00:42:30):
Yeah?
KP (00:42:30):
Oh, I think it would be substantially better. I would like having a technically literate person in charge of the world.
CW (00:42:39):
I wanted to ask, because we have a lot of artists and musicians on the show, who get into electronics later in life or after music education. You mentioned you went to conservatory. How did you teach yourself electronics? And can you tell me how to teach myself electronics, as somebody who should already know?
EW (00:42:59):
<laugh>
KP (00:43:02):
Trial and error, dare I say? Yeah, I went to music school. Ultimately, I realized the reason I went to music school, was to prove to myself I could go to music school. I do not know why I assumed that going-
CW (00:43:14):
That is why I went to physics grad school. Yeah.
KP (00:43:17):
It happens. I went to music school, and it took me a long time to realize that ultimately music school- I am happy. I feel very lucky I had the chance to go. Also, I think I realized that the conservatory mentality, it is not me.
(00:43:34):
I do not enjoy writing music for an exclusive audience of people that can afford to understand it, because they get the music theory in-joke you are making, and stuff like that. I do not think it was the crowd that I really wanted to reach. I guess Dogbotic was my way of running away from that really quickly, <laugh> into a more experimental world.
(00:43:55):
How to teach yourself electronics? Audio is a great place to begin. Circuit bending stuff is a great place to begin, because you are bound to get something interesting out of it. And you do not have to know how something works in order to break it.
CW (00:44:10):
<laugh>
EW (00:44:10):
<laugh>
KP (00:44:10):
But also, there are endless number of fantastic resources. Elliot Williams has a wonderful series of blog posts on Hackaday, all about making synthesizers with basic CMOS chips, which is pretty much what I do. Sebastian Tomczak, he is in Australia. He also has a whole bunch of really good forums online.
(00:44:32):
Honestly, since we have started teaching these workshops, I do not think it is because of us necessarily, but the whole DIY synthesizer world has exploded! There are so many amazing YouTube channels and stuff out there now, that will teach you how to do this stuff.
(00:44:47):
I personally, I like having someone guide me through it step by step, and that is why I love a live workshop environment. And I do not think there is really any replacement for that. But fortunately, it seems like the world has only- The resources have gotten greater, and also the community has gotten chummier and less homogenous, dare I say. So that is a lovely thing.
EW (00:45:11):
It really is. The community aspect. Do your workshops have a Discord, and do people hang out on Discord forever?
KP (00:45:21):
Shockingly, yes. I am not a Discordian. I use it when people ask a question on Discord, and I pop into it. But yeah, every workshop we do has an associated Discord channel. People are incredibly active on it, which is lovely.
(00:45:34):
But it is great to have a resource throughout the week, not only when people can post a picture of their circuit and say, "It is not working!" and then I can figure it out. But also, people just post art that they find that they love, critical takes that they think are interesting, weird accidents that happened when they were making art, and they ended up making something else. And that is all great.
(00:45:55):
I really love that people can actually see other people's process throughout the week, when we are not actually in a Zoom room together.
EW (00:46:04):
If I were to take a class, how long should I plan? How many hours should I set aside per week?
KP (00:46:10):
It really depends. In a lot of cases, I think the more you play around with the material, the better. But I have learned <laugh> from teaching a lot of these, that people tend to sign up for these classes as a fun thing to do. The last thing I want to do is completely scare them with a mountain of work, that not everyone is going to get done.
(00:46:32):
So I really try to bake the activity into the workshop itself, where I will at least build a prototype and I will say, "Hey, look at it go." Then if you have an hour over the week, you can get it together.
(00:46:43):
But I do think with a lot of this stuff, it is just gaining fluency with a new system. So the more time you can spend with it- Like, if you have two hours a week to spend playing around with circuitry, you will be so shocked at how quickly you will learn.
(00:46:57):
Again, you hinted at it. All the projects in the book are- You can exquisite corpse them. You can add together different projects, and they all kind of talk to one another.
(00:47:09):
That is really the aha moment I find for a lot of people, is when they build a kooky thing of their own, and then they go, "Wait! If I add on this chip here, suddenly all of this stuff will gain exponentially more complexity, and I will be able to get it to do this." That is really cool. That is really where unique stuff comes about.
EW (00:47:31):
It is funny how often I hear people say, "I did-" Well, they do not say it like this, but they do the prescribed actions. They do the project that is in the book, and they are like, "Okay, I followed the instructions." And somehow that is a disappointment. But it is not. That is the start. That is practice. Now create.
KP (00:47:56):
Right. You are going to have to follow a couple of build-it-yourself sheets, before you make something truly, truly inventive. But, yeah, it is not a hard thing to learn. Once you are able to identify the components, and once you can read a schematic, which are things that you can learn how to do in a day or so, electronics can really become paint-by-numbers.
(00:48:19):
You can Google "schematic for something complicated" and put together the schematic. It is not necessarily a creative way of doing electronics, but it is very doable. It is like following a recipe.
CW (00:48:34):
Back to the book for just a second.
KP (00:48:36):
Sure, sure.
CW (00:48:38):
On the subject of the comprehensive nature of it, you have two appendices in the back. One of which is a list of synthesizer based or synthesizer adjacent compositions that inspired, I think, you.
KP (00:48:52):
Mm-hmm.
CW (00:48:52):
And one is a very long list of synthesizer adjacent or based albums.
KP (00:48:57):
Yeah.
CW (00:48:57):
How much time did it take to come up with those lists, versus <laugh> write the rest of the book?
EW (00:49:04):
<laugh>
CW (00:49:04):
Because that would take me months.
KP (00:49:08):
They were not that bad. Really, I am a musician more than an engineer, so a lot of the albums were things that were not very hard for me to rattle off. The hard part was trying to ensure that there was diversity of countries in there, and there really is quite a bit.
(00:49:27):
Some of them were- They were all albums that I knew prior, but it did take maybe a couple hours of drafting to get it to 70. I do not know why I picked 70, I should have picked 75. Makes more sense.
CW (00:49:41):
I am just excited because I only know 30% of these, which-
KP (00:49:44):
Oh, good.
CW (00:49:44):
I am a musician too, so I am feeling, "Why do you not know these?"
KP (00:49:49):
Yeah, there are some esoteric ones out there. But I think that is the exciting part, is just remembering that, "Hey, there are a lot of bands out there. <laugh> Do not worry if you think no one is listening to your music. There are a lot of other bands that no one is listening to as well."
CW (00:50:05):
That is a comforting thought. <laugh>
KP (00:50:10):
It kind of is. I work as a- I am actually- This is totally unrelated. I am the head of sound at 924 Gilman, which is a punk club up here in Berkeley. It is where Green Day and Operation Ivy and all of these other bands, they all matriculated from 924 Gilman.
(00:50:27):
Despite the fact that it has such a pedigree, it really has not strayed from where it started as a community music venue. So a lot of the shows that I work there, it is high schoolers that did not really practice very much.
CW (00:50:41):
<laugh>
KP (00:50:42):
I love that. I love that there is a venue that allows for that, because you need that in a community, otherwise they are never going to get good. I do not know, it is great to know that there is just an endless font of musical artists out there that are doing this work, despite the fact that no one is really listening to it. And that is a wonderful thing.
(00:51:04):
Yeah, I do not know. I think I also try to encourage people is do not obsess over your Spotify listeners. It means nothing. Having 50 people to show up to a show, means more both monetarily and emotionally than 10,000 Spotify listeners.
EW (00:51:20):
You have a kit to go with your book. When does it ship?
KP (00:51:25):
Well. It is shipping now. We are finally sending out all the pre-orders that were made before the holidays. It is an incredibly extensive kit. It has everything that you need to build everything in the book, and then some.
(00:51:37):
For a long time, the only way that we sold kits was you had to take a workshop with us. But just over the years, we got hundreds of requests for freestanding kits. So that is a thing that we are trying to dip our toe into right now. Because we have a book, and we have a good excuse. But, oof, the margins are killing us, let me tell you.
EW (00:51:57):
For $200, for the book and all of these parts? Yes. Yes. I understand. It is what I would be happy to pay for it. Very happy, <laugh> because, my goodness, there is so much here.
KP (00:52:13):
There is a lot of stuff in there. You can absolutely source the parts on your own. We do not make the parts. We get them and we resell them. But it is reassuring for a lot of people to just have a really simple high level, "Here is everything you need." You do not have to worry about finding that weird NPN transistor <laugh> or whatever.
EW (00:52:32):
Yes, there is so much here.
KP (00:52:34):
Yeah. So that is the moral of the story, is kits are not a great business model, but they are very fun to open on Christmas.
EW (00:52:42):
So having opened your book, and knowing that Chris is a drummer, and then I am already surrounded by a large number of synths and electronic music things-
CW (00:52:57):
You can say, "Crap." There is a lot of crap in this room.
KP (00:52:59):
"There is a lot of crap."
EW (00:53:00):
No, no, it is not crap. It is-
KP (00:53:02):
Crap is not bad thing.
EW (00:53:03):
Intimidating, for those of us who are not musically-
CW (00:53:05):
It is just knobs. There are just knobs everywhere.
EW (00:53:09):
There are knobs and buttons everywhere. Like every possible surface. Where should we start with this book?
CW (00:53:19):
Oh.
KP (00:53:19):
Well.
CW (00:53:19):
Hmm.
KP (00:53:19):
Okay. Well, I have a Chris specific recommendation too. But I would recommend start at the beginning. Do the first oscillator circuit. It is not hard to get working, and pretty much everything builds off of that initial circuit.
(00:53:32):
That is also a great thing about the workshop, is it is really like once you have week two down, all you have to do is show up with a week two knowledge, and you will be able to do every project.
(00:53:42):
Chris. So. Fun story. All of those classic Motown records that you hear, do not actually have a snare drum on them.
CW (00:53:51):
Huh.
KP (00:53:51):
What do I mean by that? I mean, the way that they recorded a snare drum in every classic Motown record, is they would have a white noise generator. They would have a little noise gate on the white noise generator. And when you hit the snare drum, it would send a little impulse into that envelope generator.
CW (00:54:09):
Wait. They were triggering electronic drums in Motown?
KP (00:54:13):
Yes. Also what is even funnier, is the white noise generator, it is Johnson noise. So you take a transistor, you rip off one of the legs, and all the thermal noise from the universe, is fed into it. So that is actually how those drums are recorded. And we show you how to do that.
(00:54:31):
But there is a- I think it is in the modulation chapter, there is a piezo triggered VCA. All that is, is it is a piezo, a little tiny crystal that you could buy for 25 cents that has two little wires coming off of it. You tape that to your snare drum, gator clip the piezo to this circuit.
(00:54:48):
When you hit the drum, and you can set the threshold needed to trigger the thing, it will make a white noise generator go pfff. <laugh> It is a pretty fun thing. So you can rig up your whole drum set to trigger electronic sounds, but you are still playing it with an acoustic kit.
CW (00:55:07):
Alright, that is very cool. And now I have to go listen to a bunch of Motown records. Why did they do that? Was it just-
KP (00:55:11):
I do not know!
CW (00:55:12):
I know microphoning stuff was a real pain back then. You probably got a lot of bleed and stuff. But, huh, that is really weird. <laugh>
KP (00:55:20):
I truthfully do not know. This was an anecdote that- I have been told this anecdote many times. I do not think I have been able to find that much evidence to support it. But it is such a good anecdote, and it is a good for the class. So I keep it in <laugh> there.
CW (00:55:34):
I believe it, because back then the studio was not what it is now. <laugh> So it is like trying to make something cut through a mix might have been a real challenge for certain kinds of music.
KP (00:55:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CW (00:55:43):
We have lost Elecia.
EW (00:55:48):
I went to open the book, because I have the electronic version. You have paper copy.
KP (00:55:51):
Oh, you have got a paper copy?
CW (00:55:53):
Oh, yeah, yeah. That is what I am holding.
KP (00:55:54):
Oh, cool.
EW (00:55:55):
I had the electronic copy, and then I realized about- Well, about the time you started making fun of Theremin for being a narcissist, that this was going to be a paper copy sort of book, because it was both readable and something I wanted to open. That is how Chris got to see the flip book.
KP (00:56:18):
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Also, to the audience listening, Theremin is only a narcissist because he named his musical instrument after himself. But <laugh> otherwise, I have very positive impressions of Leon Theremin.
EW (00:56:28):
<laugh>
KP (00:56:28):
Wait, can I tell you guys a story?
CW (00:56:34):
Yes.
EW (00:56:34):
Mm-hmm.
KP (00:56:34):
Do we have time for this? This is just a good cocktail party anecdote that I really love. So Leon Theremin, after he built the Theremin and was a renowned electronics engineer in early 20th century Russia, he was actually kidnapped by the government and forced to live on the Gulag, where he made a lot of nefarious devices for the Russian government.
(00:56:56):
But one of the things that he built, which is just so fascinating, I think it is called "The Thing," and it has its own Wikipedia page. It is a listening device. So what this was, was at some point in the Cold War or something, the USSR gave the United States this big seal of peace between our nations.
(00:57:16):
The United States hung this up in their embassy or whatever in Washington DC. Then years later, they started to realize, "Huh. The Russians seem to know an awful lot about these closed door conversations happening in the US Embassy." And so they opened up seal. And this is just so freaking brilliant. It is entirely passive.
(00:57:38):
But what they found was this little tiny bladder that was hooked up to a big inductive coil of wire. The idea was, as you talked in the room, the vibrations of your sound would make the big seal diaphragm vibrate. The big seal diaphragm would change the volume of the bladder. And that bladder was hooked up to a big coil of wire.
(00:58:00):
So at the Russian Embassy, 300 meters away, all they had to do was fire a big loud radio wave at the exact resonance of that coil of wire. And they could tell by how that radio wave was attenuating in signal, they could reconstruct the audio waves that were going on inside the US Embassy.
(00:58:17):
It is a shockingly brilliant thing. It is an entirely passive listening device. And of course, as you have probably put together, this is RFID. This is like how every RFID circuit works. When you pay to go on public transit or with your credit card or something. It is basically the same idea. It is just not working with the same frequency of wave.
CW (00:58:39):
Amazing.
KP (00:58:40):
Is not that cool?
EW (00:58:41):
That is great. Leon Theremin created this amazing spy device.
KP (00:58:49):
I am sure not by choice.
CW (00:58:50):
Yeah.
KP (00:58:50):
Anyway. Fun character.
EW (00:58:56):
Oh! I have asked about the workshops. I have noted that they are not free. Now I should ask you if you have any discounts for them.
KP (00:59:08):
Oh, yes I do. Through the 31st of this year, thanks to one of my coworkers, if you use-
EW (00:59:14):
2025. No, there is 2024. December-
KP (00:59:17):
2024. Correct.
EW (00:59:19):
2024.
CW (00:59:20):
That is this year.
EW (00:59:20):
You got limited time.
(00:59:22):
Limited time.
KP (00:59:23):
Yeah. If you use DOGBOT10 at checkout, it will take 10% off. That works for any of the workshops that we do. We have 14 workshops at this point. We are launching a new one in February about building your own radios.
CW (00:59:36):
But, come on.
EW (00:59:36):
He just signed up for an intense drum workshop.
CW (00:59:39):
I cannot take them all. I want to.
KP (00:59:43):
Well, hopefully we will be around, by the time your drum workshop is done. Yeah, no, it is really great. I love the people I work with. And I love that the workshop offerings, they are just so much more broad than anything I would be able to teach on my own. Because I only know so much.
(00:59:58):
Aisha Loe, she is a great friend. She makes all these beautifully inventive homemade guitar pedals. She teaches a whole workshop.
CW (01:00:06):
Nooo! Noo!
KP (01:00:07):
Yeah. Abby Aresty, who was interestingly enough actually a professor at music school that I went to, that then reached out to me about teaching a workshop. She teaches one about musical robots. So you build a little Arduino thing that plays the drums.
EW (01:00:19):
Ohhh.
KP (01:00:19):
It is stuff that should exist. I want more drummer robots and less missiles in the world.
EW (01:00:30):
Well, I have found that when I take art workshops, usually paper based, if you can talk somebody you know into doing it with you, it is even more fun.
KP (01:00:41):
Yeah. I totally agree. Yeah, it is good to take a workshop with a buddy. But I also find that-
EW (01:00:47):
You meet more people by yourself.
KP (01:00:49):
You do meet more people, because you are not only going to talk to that other person. But also just like, I do not know how we have avoided douchebag synth bros for so many years. We really have.
CW (01:01:00):
<laugh>
KP (01:01:00):
There is a particular crowd of people that we have been able to avoid. The people that we get in the workshops are honestly just the sweetest, most interesting people.
(01:01:14):
Oftentimes, well, pretty much all the time, the coolest projects I see are because two random people in the workshop end up having some digression, that ends up inspiring both of them to do something just completely off the wall.
EW (01:01:29):
Kirk, do you have any thoughts you would like to leave us with? Otherwise, I am going to ask you 97 more questions, and we will be here for three more hours.
KP (01:01:35):
That is okay. I have one anecdote.
EW (01:01:40):
Your last one was a hit, so I am up for it.
KP (01:01:42):
Okay <laugh>. This is a weird anecdote I have been thinking about a lot recently. So I am going to complain about a movie that I have never seen.
EW (01:01:49):
<laugh>
KP (01:01:49):
Do you remember the movie "Yesterday"? The Danny Boyle movie?
CW (01:01:53):
Yeah.
KP (01:01:53):
Yeah. The guy wakes up and he is the only person-
CW (01:01:57):
The Beatles.
EW (01:01:58):
He is the only one that remembers the Beatles. And so he recreates their songs and then he feels kind of bad about it. But then there are people who remember The Beatles, but could not recreate the songs. And in the end they like him a lot. Okay, there.
KP (01:02:09):
Right. That is it. That is perfect. So I have never seen this movie.
CW (01:02:10):
<laugh>
KP (01:02:10):
But I think it reveals the deep insecurity about me, the more that I think about the premise of the movie. So I kind of think- I certainly thought growing up, the Beatles are great because they wrote great songs. And the cultural artifact of the Beatles is great. Whatever. That is a very standard thing to think. And the whole movie is based on that premise, right?
EW (01:02:31):
Wait. Have you heard the songs?
KP (01:02:32):
Stop.
EW (01:02:32):
<laugh>
KP (01:02:32):
"Revolution 9", you kidding me? Are you on the dance floor yet? No. But that is the model I was taught to think about culture. Right? This "Starry Night" is a great painting, and that is why it is famous.
(01:02:47):
Now, when you start to think about the premise of the "Yesterday" movie, you start to realize, okay, one, can you imagine "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" making a crowd of teenagers incredibly horny in 2018, or whenever that movie came out?
CW (01:03:02):
Nope.
KP (01:03:02):
No. "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah."
EW (01:03:06):
"I Want to Hold Your Hand."
KP (01:03:08):
"She loves you, yeah-" Yeah, right. It is just like, no, you obviously would not have that kind of reaction, unless The Beatles were in the context they were in, looking the way they did, presented in the medium they were presented in. That seems so obvious.
(01:03:19):
Second level, can you imagine some random, like the worst guitar player you went to college with, playing his version of "She Loves You"? No, you absolutely cannot. So it seems like when you think about the "Yesterday" movie, the more you start to arrive at the conclusion that the cultural artifact is completely unrelated to the effect it has. This guy's cover of the song, despite the fact that it is a good song or not, is not going to have the same impact.
(01:03:48):
I think that that is kind of a thing that, I do not know, I had anxiety about for a long time. That I would write a piece of music that was inherently great. But I really think what "Yesterday" proved to me, the more I thought about the movie, is that the cultural artifact is completely meaningless. It has everything to do with context, and nothing to do with content.
(01:04:09):
I think that is optimistic, actually. It is not up to you what people are interested in, and you should keep on making the cultural artifacts that you make.
CW (01:04:19):
<sigh>
KP (01:04:19):
Right?
CW (01:04:19):
Yeah.
KP (01:04:21):
Anyway, a lot of people that I went to music school with, also had that mentality that music school would teach you how to write something amazing. But really if you stop to think about it, I just do not think that is how culture works. Anyway, that was my anecdote.
CW (01:04:37):
Yeah. To reduce that even further, there is plenty of pop culture that is extremely popular, that most musicians and artists look askance at. It is like, "Whoa, come on! Why is everybody into this, when we have got this over here that nobody is listening to?" And like you say, "That is how culture works."
KP (01:04:56):
Oh, yeah. Popularity has nothing to do with quality. But I also think that means, yeah, you should be making your own culture. Who knows what is going to stick to the wall.
CW (01:05:04):
That is true.
KP (01:05:04):
The more people making culture the better.
EW (01:05:08):
The culture. Is your goal to make a lasting cultural shift? Or is your goal to make people happy right now?
KP (01:05:20):
That is a great question.
EW (01:05:21):
Goals do not have to be the same.
CW (01:05:23):
I think everyone who makes art wants to be appreciated. Unless you are completely well balanced, and you just do not care what people think, like J.D. Salinger or something.
KP (01:05:35):
I do not believe those people, though. We have all met an artist that is like, "Yeah, I just do it for my own love. I do not care if anyone listens." But no, I do care if people listen. I am attracted to music, because I love the community that it can bring. And so ultimately, yeah, I make music for other people.
EW (01:05:54):
Our guest has been Kirk Pearson, composer, musician, teacher, founder at Dogbotic. They are the author of Make's "Electronic Music From Scratch." Find it at your usual bookstore or online. There will be a link in the show notes, along with links to Dogbotic and their many workshops.
CW (01:06:14):
Thanks, Kirk.
KP (01:06:14):
Thank you so much. This was a pleasure.
EW (01:06:17):
Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to Memfault for sponsoring the show. And thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show@embedded.fm or hit the contact link on embedded.fm.
(01:06:31):
Now a quote to leave you with, from Ludwig van Beethoven. "Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down into notes."