The 555 Noisemusick Kit is a musical instrument that generates chaotic square wave noise from two 555 oscillators. The instrument consists of two 555-based circuits: the first uses your skin’s natural resistance to control the carrier frequency; the second modulates the carrier based on the input from two infrared detectors. The result is a surprisingly chaotic sound generator. It’s also fun to play!
The Noisemusick Kit is a lot like the Atari Punk Console, but less predictable with a wider range of sounds. There’s also a very similar schematic in Forrest Mims’ excellent 555 Timer Mini-notebook. The touchpads are inspired by the touch sensitive version of Jessica Rylan’s BPNG kit.
See the assembly instructions here.
How to Play
Touch the two left-hand touch points to make sounds. The pads on the left complete the first circuit to establish a carrier frequency; the pads on the right add your skin’s capacitance to the affect the timing of the IR detector modulation circuit. Here’s the Noisemusick kit in action:
Design Files
Here are the EAGLE files:
And here’s the schematic:
