Engineering a
Sonic
Toolbox Computer engineering student and street musical artist Thomas Choboter builds his own audio equipment to enhance his performances Story and photos by Dennis Steers
W
ith a series of taps of his left foot on buttons affixed to the lid of an old aluminum tin made for salted caramels, Thomas Choboter strums his guitar and begins to harmonize to the beat of electronic drums and a loop of background vocals he had just recorded. The Cal Poly computer engineering student is a virtual oneman band, producing a rich, layered sound as he runs through a set list of familiar cover songs that has people at the San Luis Obispo Farmers Market singing along and tossing dollars into his open guitar case. Choboter, who turned his hobby of playing music into a potential career option five years ago as a high school student, has found a way to merge his twin passions of engineering and music. He is proud of the MIDI controller he built with that caramel box and an Arduino — an open-source electronic prototyping platform that enables users to create interactive electronic devices — that helped bring the two together. “In my acoustic guitar and live looping setup, I have two devices I use with my feet — one is the Boss RC-500 loop station and the other is my own MIDI controller that I built,” he said. “I tap a pedal on the Boss loop station once to start recording and then again to instantly play the recording back. But the loop station has several features that are not easily accessible
Revealing the secrets to his unique sound, Choboter opens up his home-built “Salted Caramel Box,” a MIDI controller, which enhances the options on his loop station.
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