Submergent by Jason Sidney Sanford
Submergent
Electronic music pioneer, Laurie Speigel, refers to fading technologies as “little doorways to paths not taken.”1 One can hardly argue that Hans Camenzind’s famous 555 Timer IC is a path not taken; for decades, as the dominant timing integrated circuit in production, it was so popular that engineers would make a game of finding new uses for it.2 Nevertheless, today, some fifty years after it was introduced, it is, by most measures, fading in popularity. The ascendancy of microcontrollers as well as computer programs that allow for the virtual construction of intangible oscillators have placed the 555 on a downward trajectory.
So why use such an old technology?
While digital technologies offer us unprecedented precision, and relatively clean and simple means to achieve certain ends, they are fundamentally different in kind from analog electronics. Many have struggled to explain the mystique of the analog. Bob Moog described the experience of placing his hands over a circuit board and “feeling” what the circuit is doing.3 While somewhat shamanistic or new-agey, his claim points towards an important concept, that of the kinesthetic.
Even though analog electronic circuits operate invisibly and on a tiny scale, we still can understand them in a physical way. Consider how the ‘water metaphor’4 is frequently invoked to explain the flow of electrons through circuits in introductory electronics classes; with some work, students can begin to visualize, and even to feel the way electricity works. With a lifetime of circuit design to his credit, it is unsurprising that Bob Moog can ‘feel’ a circuit.
Digital technologies, by contrast, operate not on a substrate of physics, but of language. Computers work because of code. A code is linguistic and symbolic in nature, and is inherently not kinesthetic. Learning to code, or learning to use any computer application for that matter, is unlike learning something about the physical reality of the universe. It is more like learning a language. Languages may evolve organically, or they may be planned (such as L.L. Zamenhof’s famous Esperanto), but they are always to some degree arbitrary and incorporeal.
Languages and codes name or describe things, but they themselves are distinctly not physical things. The designers of digital technologies can work around this somatic gap by developing ‘intuitive’ and ‘user-friendly’ interfaces; but in so doing, such layers only obscure further the actual machinations of the code substrate.
The recordings ‘Submergent 01’ and ‘Submergent 02’ utilize new circuits and custom instruments that I built based on the 555 IC. While I didn’t invent or construct these instruments until 2022 and 2023, they are not emergent technologies; I call them “submergent.” These are circuits that could have been built in the 1970’s. Paths overlooked, perhaps, in the past, but taken now.
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1 “Little Doorways To Paths Not Taken” is a 7 1/2 minute mini-documentary about the electronic music pioneer, Laurie Spiegel. The film was made by Aura Satz, and was accessed on YouTube as of 19 February 2024 at the following URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vjFF9393iU
2 “The Art Of Electronics” by Horowitz and Hill, ©1980, page 288
3 Fjellestad, Hans, dir. Moog says, Robert Moog says “When I think of this circuit…I have a feeling for what’s happening with the electricity as it goes through these parts…” as shown in the film Moog (dir. Hans Fjellstad, 2004, see timestamp: 13:46).
4 See, for example, Paul Sherz’s excellent textbook Practical Electronics For Inventors. Sherz gives many physical analogies that help to make the invisible world of electrons concrete in the mind of the reader; he discusses water analogies in Section 2.3.5 of the 2nd Edition. (Paul Sherz, Practical Electronics For Inventors 2nd Edition [McGraw Hill, 2007].)
Tracklist
| 1. | Submergent 01 | 20:37 |
| 2. | Submergent 02 | 21:58 |
Credits
About the recording and equipment:
The main instrument in use is what I call a “556 Dual Oscillator.” The 556 is a ‘chip’ or integrated circuit, which combines two 555s. The Dual Oscillator uses two 556 ICs, so there are four oscillators in all. Two of these are wired as audio-frequency pitches (the pitch sweeps across several octaves by turning a dial,) and the other two of these oscillators are set up as LFOs (Low Frequency Oscillators,) which control the pulse or tremolo. Picture a small electronic keyboard with only two keys, and several dials to control the pitch frequencies and pulse speeds.
In Submergent 01, three of these 556 Dual Oscillators are used, so up to six different frequencies can be heard.
In Submergent 02, four of the 556 Dual Oscillators are used. Additionally, there is a twelve-note bass keyboard. The keyboard, also a custom instrument, is a somewhat different circuit, but again based on the 555 IC.
For both recordings, all the instruments were patched through a mixer and recorded live and direct to computer in a single take without any overdubs.
Submergent 01 was recorded 23 November 2023.
Submergent 02 was recorded 25 January 2024.
J.S.Sanford
License
All rights reserved.
Jason Sidney Sanford is an artist working with sound. He makes sculptural musical instruments, compositions and scenarios, and performs using his body and his voice. He is a founding member of both the bands Neptune and E.