Direct mp3 download or play:  A Goofy Dumb Halloween ’09

This is something I made for an “Over The Edge” show sometime in the 1980s or 90s. I can’t recall how I made this, but I think I had records playing on two turntables.

****HAVE A GOOFY DUMB HALLOWEEN****

CAREFUL, ADULT LANGUAGE!

Direct mp3 download or play:  Ham Jammers Early 1980s # 1

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I became interested in receiving and recording different types of radio communications. One of the first radios I used was the Realistic Patrolman 4. I thought it was pretty good, because it even had a squelch control. I remember listening to the Contra Costa County Sheriff, Martinez Police, (155.880 MHz before they went to UHF) BART trains, and early mobile phones, (when they were analog and on VHF) and several paging companies. Unfortunately the reception was not good, because the selectivity on the VHF low and high bands is so wide that many signals overlap and become unlistenable.
The one exception was a very strong signal at 146.820 MHz. In addition there were no other strong signals near this frequency. The reception on 146.820 MHz was as good as listening to an FM broadcast channel like KPFA at 94.1 MHz. By the way, at my house in Martinez, California, there were only three VHF signals on my Patrolman 4 radio that were consistently good. Those would have KDFM in Walnut Creek at 92.1 MHz, KPFA in Berkeley, and an amateur radio repeater at 146.820 MHz. I later found out that the amateur station was located in the Berkeley Hills like KPFA, which is probably why the reception was so strong.
I listened to the amateur station regularly, and at first it seemed quite normal. The more I listened, the stranger it became. There was lots of joking, cursing, and playing recordings of other radio operators. They kept referring to “jamming.” This, of course, is the act of an operator deliberately transmitting or keying up their radio while someone else is talking. This would cause the conversation to become garbled, distorted, or completely blocked, depending on how strong the jamming signal was being received by the booster station or repeater. A repeater is actually a receiver and a transmitter working as one. In the case of this one, the amateur operators would transmit on 146.22 MHz, and the repeater would receive these signals and broadcast out at higher power on 146.82 MHz.
As you may have noticed, there is a difference of 600 KHz between what is known as the input and the output of a repeater. 600 KHz is a standard amount of separation for amateur repeaters, and is widely used throughout the United States. I decided to start recording this amateur station on a regular basis. I took the signal from the headphone jack on the Patrolman 4, (a10 ohm resistor across the output to simulate a load instead of headphones) and fed that into the line input on a Shure M67 mixer and then connected the output to the line in on my Superscope C-104 cassette recorder. This setup allowed a VU meter to monitor the recording.
Once I started recording these ham radio operators, known as “jammers,” I knew I was hooked. I regularly listened and recorded for years, and much of the stuff I got was absolutely outrageous. Negativland ultimately incorporated some of this material into their releases. “Jamcon84” and “A Big 10-8 Place” are notable examples of the use of ham radio jammers. There is a website here that appears to be where ham radio operators can talk about the times they had in the early 1980s, talking on the 146.82 repeater and more. There is also a ham radio club in the Los Angeles area, with a similar spirit to the group in the Bay Area. They have streaming audio of their repeater, and you can go here and here for more info. Go here to hear 147.435 live. Just one last thing, “amateur” and “ham” operators (as far as I know) are one in the same, with emphasis on the “ham” in the case of these guys.

Radio Shack Realistic Patrolman 4 multi-band receiver

Shure M67 Mixer

Superscope C-104 cassette recorder

Direct mp3 download or play:  BRM August 10, 2006

Several years ago, I made this recording of a baby room monitor. I can’t remember which radio and antenna I used, but the signal was somewhat weak and noisy.  I added reverberation, initially to mask the background noise, but it actually turned out somewhat terrifying instead.

Direct mp3 download or play:  Distorted Accordion

I’m embarrassed, but here I go again trying to make music. This was recorded around the same time as “Distorted Guitar and Voice,” using the same technique. Some of you have requested more stuff like this and I hope you enjoy!

Direct mp4 download or play:  Law Day USA

I reprocessed the video in Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 just today and I think the picture quality may be a little better if not brighter.

Here is a little 16 MM film I found. You had better stay on the straight and narrow! Actually it is from a real film purchased on eBay.  I ran the film on my Singer Graflex 16 MM projector designed for video capture. It is known as a telecine projector and it has a five blade shutter which prevents flicker when used with a video camera. The image was projected onto plain white printer paper attached to a piece of wood. I set up my Sony three chip CCD camcorder and focused it to the small image (less than 12 inches) on the printer paper. Naturally the image is offset slightly because the camera body would block the light from the projector if the camera was perfectly centered on the image. I think I got the alignment almost perfect even with camcorder being slightly below the projected image.
For the audio I accessed the optical pick up audio signal from inside the projector and mounted a jack on the projector that would interrupt the audio signal going to the internal preamplifier when a cable is plugged into it and feed the signal exclusively to the jack. From this jack the audio signal runs on a shielded unbalanced cable to a small metal box with a 1000 ohm audio taper potentiometer, two 10 microfarad capacitors (negative ends tied together and attached to the potentiometer). The two positive capacitor leads are attached to two other shielded audio cables, keeping in mind that the outer conductor of all the cables inside the box are common and are connected together. These two cables are actually molded together as a single wire with two separate audio signals. This cable runs about four feet and there is a 1/8 inch tip and ring (stereo) plug on the other end. This cable is then plugged into the external microphone jack on the camcorder. This jack provides plug-in phantom (1.5 to 5volts) power for electret condenser microphones and there is power on both tip and ring for left and right microphone capsules. This power must be blocked without short circuiting it and the 10 microfarad capacitors in the box do this very effectively. When the projector is sending audio from the optical pickup, the level and the equalization seem to be very similar to simply having a stereo electret condenser microphone operating normally and connected to the camcorder. The 1000 ohm potentiometer is usually almost all the way up and there is an onscreen level meter in the camcorder.
The camcorder was then connected to a computer with a “firewire” IEEE 1394 cable and I captured the video with Ulead VideoStudio 8.The image was actually recorded on a mini DV tape. Later recordings with this camcorder were often done with no tape and captured only into a computer. While the file was in the computer as type 2 dv .avi, I made the audio louder and clearer with Adobe Audition. Then I converted the video to a flash file using freeware called Avidemux.

Direct mp3 download or play:  Whatever Whatever

Here is an odd little bit I made with the voice of a strange woman I found on the internet. I know it has been awhile, and as usual I’m lazy, but I can assure you there is more stuff to come.