Stompbox 2016
Digital Stompbox Design Workshop
CCRMA Summer Workshop 2016
July 25-29
Instructors: Romain Michon and Esteban Maestre
Course History and Description
Come design your own flavor of audio effect at Stanford Universityʼs Digital Stompbox Design workshop. We will teach you a new platform for implementing audio effects in hardware that not only allows you to recreate classic types of sound effects but also enables the creation of new sound effects. Our resources for new media design are also at your fingertips if you would like to re-design the concept of a guitar stompbox of effects unit: for example, design the layout and control interface of your effects unit, add accelerometers on your guitar or your hand and use it to control the parameters of an effect, or use some LEDs to simulate the glow of vacuum tubes or fire!
This workshop is intended for musicians interested in exploring new possibilities in digital audio effects in a hands-on and technical way; makers, engineers, computer scientists, or product designers interested in exploring artistic outlets for their talents and collaborating with musicians; and/or anyone looking to gain valuable skills in basic audio signal processing and human-computer interfaces, with a focus on invention.
Participants are required to buy a $170 lab kit included in the registration price. The kit contains Satellite CCRMA platform featuring Arduino and the Raspberry Pi 2 as well as a miniature audio I/O digital interface, knobs, buttons, footswitches, a number of other sensors, and a customizable acrylic enclosure. All this leading to a custom programmable effects unit to bring home after the workshop! Participants are encouraged (but by no means required) to bring their own laptop computers (with Ethernet support) and/or musical instruments, so that they bring home a working platform and the associated toolchain configured in their laptop, ready for deploying new effects and control paradigms.
This workshop was created by Edgar Berdahl and Esteban Maestre in 2011. This workshop uses very similar hardware to the New Music Controllers workshop, but the focus is more on applications to stompbox design and audio signal processing.
How to sign up for the workshop.
Course Schedule
We will meet from 9am-5:00pm daily, with mini-breaks at around 10:30am and 3:00pm, and a lunch break approximately between 12:00pm and 1:00pm.
| Date | Morning (9am-12noon) | Afternoon (1:00pm-5:00pm) |
| Monday |
Introduction and Overview | |
| Tuesday | Review Lab 1, FX Lecture 3, Introduction to Electronics--Sensors1 | Lab 2: Controlling an Effect with Real Sensors |
| Wednesday | Lab 2 Review, Interfacing With The Rest Of The World (i.e. making cables, etc.) | FX Lecture 4, Optional guided laboratory time or start on project |
| Thursday | FX Lecture 5, Refine project ideas, Work on project, Enclosure How-To | Work on project |
| Friday | Work on project | Project presentations (3:00pm - 4:30pm) |
