bleepology

OK, it’s not very synthy, but all electronic musicians owe this guy a lot, so I’ll make an exception.

If you’ve ever recorded one track down, located back to the beginning, armed another one, and pressed record, you’ve followed in the footsteps he pioneered.

Not to mention if you’ve ever played one of his namesake electric guitars!

He was the original musician-engineer. Pay your respects.

OK, this is just too cool. This guy took the mainboard of his little eeepc and fitted it into the Korg Legacy Collection MS-20 USB controller, creating a standalone device. If he took it just a little further and routed audio I/O, USB (host), and VGA out to the side panel, it would be even better!

The SN76477N was a TI tone generator chip intended for video games, but, of course, found new life in modules like Blacet’s Dark Star Chaos.

Recently, it’s been used in a couple of Thomas Henry designs like the SN-Voice and the Super Controller.

BGMicro put up some stock of the chip for sale, and it’s relatively inexpensive, so I grabbed a couple. I already had one for my (as of yet unbuilt) SN-Voice, but needed another for a Super Controller board to go with it. They arrived quite fast, actually…

Note that these are the “thin body” versions of the chip, some older designs may require an adaptor if they were intended for use with the wide-body version. The Thomas Henry boards have footprints for both sizes.