Over the holiday my dad and I made a DIY rat distortion pedal from a kit I got for Christmas. I am yet to house it in a box but it was good practice for my aims to build some sort of instrument for my portfolio. Working on skills such as organising parts, following circuit diagrams, soldering… After it is finished I hope to include it into my no-input mixer setup.
I have also made a contact mic in the past which was again good soldering practice as well as wire stripping. However it is in a previous workshop with milo where we built small piezo oscillators from breadboards that will form the basis of my second project to build a light sensitive instrument.
One is battery powered and has two pitches adjustable by two knobs and a light dependant resistor and the other has no pitch changing resistors but is solar powered which gives the sound some variation with the amount of light. The dual piezo one also has an led visually representing the oscillations for one further bringing my theme of light forward. Though both very simple, making these two allowed me to start to understand basic circuit diagrams and knowledge of components that I could use in my own project.
I hope to eventually build something I can perform with perhaps even doing an intervention within my other installation project linking the two pieces about noise and light together.