The Prepared Radio is a hacked Sony ICF2001 portable communications receiver that is now controllable by a computer application via serial/USB link. This in itself is nothing new (winradio, GNU radio). However, the aim is to enable the radio to be used as an instrument in electronic music and generative sound compositions.

I am currently using the prepared radio in the aleatory compositional system, an patch written in Max/MSP. The patch consists of four modules. The first is a dynamically allocated buffer array, currently supporting eight buffers, each with a maximun length of ten seconds. The second module tunes the radio by sending a three to five digit number to the radio that represents the frequency in kilohertz. This module can also fine tune the frequency in the range of +/- 5kHz. The third module records samples of the audio output to randomly chosen buffers. The forth module randomly reads and plays back these samples, applying envelopes and panning the playback between two or four channels. There are as many playback modules as there are buffers. All of the modules are autonomous and send messages to each other to initiate action. However, if any of the modules is busy performing a task, it ignores the message until the task is complete.

Randomly chosen parameters and the indeterminacy involved in the messaging scheme result in an aleatory composition. As for the presentation of this composition, it is possible to stream the output live over the internet, or rebroadcast it via a low power transmitter, having the potential to reach a geographically distributed audience, not just those who are present in a performance space.

Sound samples available soon...

Resources:

Sony ICF-2001 Users Manual (PDF, 5.3MB)

Sony ICF-2001 Service Manual (PDF, 7MB)