500th Post!

By Kevin on June 29, 2024

It turns out that whilst I wasn't really paying attention I'd crept up to 499 posts so this is my 500 post to this blog.

At 400 posts, I rebuilt my Lo-Fi Orchestra and released The New Lo-Fi Orchestra and The 1812 Overture.
At 300 posts, I wasn't really counting, but I think it was fairly close to my 2022 Year in Review.
For my 200th Post I did a round-up of my first 199 blog posts.
To celebrate reaching 100 posts, I released my Lo-Fi Orchestra – 1812 Overture Finale.

Well, I've not done anything special for 500!

But rather than let the occasion vanish completely, I thought I'd pull out some of the posts I quite liked doing myself. One of the weird things about publishing on the Internet is that things you think are really neat can go completely unnoticed, yet things you think were pretty basic or straightforward or even hardly worth mentioning, for some odd reason can end up quite popular.

So here are some of the posts I quite liked over the past four years and a few of which I'd liked to have had a bit more notice at the time.

The Lo-Fi Orchestra

My top favourite personal posts are still my large-scale Lo-Fi Orchestra works. These were a lot of work to get arranged note-wise but it was quite a lot of fun and I was really pleased with the results.

Naturally at the top is my Lo-Fi Planets (of course). Here is Mars, but the whole thing can be found here: The Complete Lo-Fi Planets.

The planets got a fair bit of coverage when it was complete, ranging from my still favourite "what a complete nonsense" comment to mentions on Classic FM's blog and Hackaday and elsewhere.

But a lot less recognised it my Lo-Fi Ravel's Bolero. I do so like the use of that relay.

Other mentions that still appeal to me include:

And of course, I'm still rather proud of my two John Cage interpretations.

I keep telling myself it is time for a new work, and whilst I have a few ideas I've not felt strongly about any of them to actually embark on a new arrangement.

PCB Making

I've really taken to making circuit boards. I'm still learning and am very much an amateur but it has opened the door to a wide range of projects that wouldn't have been possible before.

The full list of my PCBs (there are almost 50 in total now - all published on GitHub) can be found here: PCBs. But the following projects have stood out for me.

My MiniDexed pseudo TX816 is probably still my favourite. Largely pointless in what I was aiming to do - reproduce an old, not particularly useful aesthetic, but there is something about those red LEDs and black panels that appealed.

It is also one of the few projects that I've regarded as largely being finished.

Whilst on the topic of MiniDexed, I've now done around 6 different PCBs for MiniDexed and different versions of the Raspberry Pi.

The full list is on my PCBs page, but I was quite pleased with some of the more esoteric ones, specifically the dual MiniDexed and quad DAC MiniDexed.

Sticking with Raspberry Pi for a moment, I have quite a few boards for the Pico too. These were particularly key for my The New Lo-Fi Orchestra rebuild, but I was also pleased to finally do the MIDI interface I'd planned pretty much when I first obtained a Pico.

Finally, I have to mention my most recent build - my Educational DIY Synth Thing based on an ESP32. Again this is particularly interesting to me as it feels largely "finished". In addition to the PCB design is a panel and this time even a 3D-printable case!

Musical Projects

Of course the main topic of the blog is electronic music projects. They started out as a simple DIY electronic music projects, but the number of what I've classed as intermediate or advanced projects has increased over the last few years.

Some of the ones I've particularly liked have probably been some of the wackier ones:

Series

Finally I'm just going to call out a few series of blog posts where I took a gadget or a thing and just focused on that for a few posts.

Arduino "Make Your Uno" Synth.
XIAO SAMD21, Arduino and MIDI.
ESP32 and PWM and ESP32 DAC Envelope Generator.
And of course there are so many posts relating to Mozzi and Arduino Tones too.

Closing Thoughts

I guess I never anticipated getting to this point when I started writing up some "wheel reinventing" I'd been meaning to do for a while some four years ago. I just get an idea, get going on it until I've lost interest, and then spend a bit of time writing it down so that I don't forget it. It is not uncommon now for me to be searching for something and finding one of my own posts in the results. I guess that means it was worth doing.

I'm slowly moving everything over to the Fediverse now, so if you've been following along using Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, please be aware that most things are now centred around my blog, Mastodon and MakerTube accounts.

But this is a sincere thank you to everyone who has followed along for the ride so far and I hope some of you will be able to follow me in those new places too.

Kevin