We started the week off with a guest tutor explaining a few components in electrical circuits and the theory of circuit-bending. It's basically pulling old electronics to bits and attempting to short circuit it in either an experimental or possibly (but not so likely) planned way to achieve interesting sounds. It's also the practise of building simple circuits.

We were given a diagram of a mic construction (from an Electret mic) and another diagram of a small amplifier. I personally might have liked a diagram of an amp that didn't use an integrated circuit, favouring transistors, although it became apparent that we weren't really meant to learn electronics in depth, just some basics to tinker. We were given a shopping list, which included a small breadboard and a prototype board. The breadboard is for building circuits without soldering. I bypassed that stage with the amp and built directly on to the prototype board. A classmate suggested jokingly that I draw a diagram of how the components are mounted physically on the prototype board and so I went ahead with that idea and posted it up on facebook. Possibly not the smartest idea as that earned me a rep as someone who actually understands this electronics thing. We were to make another circuit from a pile of schematics, a "computer voice" (Vocoder possibly though I'm not sure if it was) was picked out but we were free to try other circuits including square wave generators, wah effect and equalisers. Nothing was really grabbing me but I settled on the the possibility of making a couple of wave generators feeding into the vocoder. I never really got a chance to tally up a parts list though, and I offered to help one of my friends with their kit as they weren't enjoying the idea of electronics and looked rather despondent. This was in part to a number of people's first introduction to soldering being with the keyboard hack - a notoriously difficult part to solder wires to. But soldering isn't normally that difficult. Not even close.

I was quite happy to help my mate out and figured I could use her vocoder at the end of the week too. Oh, this circuit-bending was to culminate in a performance in front of the class.

But while trying to build the circuit I also had various classmates also want my attention as they struggled with the circuit construction.

I like my class. I'd happily go and party with any of them really,- a great bunch. But being called all over the place and also trying to build a circuit already, it started to get a bit painful.

I'm not entirely sure why, but the vocoder never did work. Less interruption might have helped to a degree but maybe it wouldn't have worked regardless.

Our class was divided up into groups of 3, the dividing was done by our tutor for the purpose of making us work with people we wouldn't normally work with which I thought was a great idea. Even I'm becoming a bit set in my ways, I have a mental list of people I like working with most even though there are people I still have yet to work with. Our class is pretty friendly over all but everyone does have their own groups of friends.

I had a working amplifier but that was about it. I also built a siren but that had stopped working. I'm not sure why, it was a very simple circuit, transistor-based. The only thing I can think of is I fried the transistors with heat while re-soldering a wire. Except that doesn't really make sense, the transistors are far enough away from the wire for heat to not effectively transfer.

Friday was performance day, a few people didn't turn up which is disappointing really. I find resistance to doing things out of the comfort-zone - especially when they aren't that much of a big deal - a tad silly. Learning how to deal with performance (and presentations) are brilliant skills to have. Maybe some class mates don't realise just how advantageous they are. I'm pretty sure some (based on a conversation I had today) don't get that they are learning stuff even when not sitting in a class being talked to. We've all got better at presentations. We've all got better at self-directed research. We've all got better at time management. These things don't get taught in a class (effectively). You learn by doing.

Anyway I bought a small pile of electronics with me, but only the amp had been built this week. All the best electronics though is in boxes at my mother's house some 50km away. I only had a pile of largely solid state devices. Our group were the last to perform and equipment didn't quite work the way planned but we got through it. I have no idea what we sounded like in comparison, I spend the first half of the performance trying to get equipment to make some sort of sound and finally unplugged it all and used my cheap amp and produced feedback. Even that didn't work too well, the feedback was a bit difficult to get.

I did like the idea of performing though, it was fun. I'd just like to have had a bit more control over the sounds so I could respond to my "band members" more. Also not be struggling with equipment so I could have engaged with the audience more. Oh well.