Engineering a Sonic Toolbox

Computer engineering student and street musical artist Thomas Choboter builds his own audio equipment to enhance his performances

With 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 in a live setting, such as its programmable drum machine, or the ability to change the tempo of the loop. That’s where the caramel box comes in.”

Choboter said the six pedals on his MIDI controller multiplies the options in the loop station and easily doubles his enjoyment of performing.

“Without the box, my performance would be limited to relatively simple loops,” he said. “Thanks to the use of Arduinos and MIDI-compatible devices, I’m able to have a much more versatile sonic toolbox that I can specifically tailor to create my own sound.”

Choboter’s sound, a fusion of folk, rock, pop and other genres, developed growing up in San Luis Obispo and Templeton, California, and as the son of Cal Poly mathematics Professor Paul Choboter, he said he’s always had an analytical approach to education and music

“I enjoy learning about science and engineering because it gives me more control of my surroundings,” he said. “If I can understand why a certain process takes place, then I can generalize that knowledge and apply it to other aspects of life. One of the reasons I love music so much is that there is always more to learn and new ways to generalize or understand musical structures.”

Choboter clearly remembers the day his caramel box amplified his music to a new level.

“It’s difficult for me to express the satisfaction that I get starting from a tiny idea to producing a physical object that works exactly how I want it to work,” he said. “It’s a deep sense of fulfillment that few things can give me. The fact that I know exactly how my device works, down to the wiring, means I have complete control over it and can use it to its full potential.”

While the potential of a musical career is alluring, Choboter remains balanced with respect to the relationship between art and science, and realistic when it comes to his future.

“There is no path toward a career playing music like there is a path toward a career in technology, and I have found that my skills in engineering and science give me a more guaranteed way to make a decent living,” he said. “All I know is that I have no plans to stop performing music, and all I focus on day to day is the next step I can take to make my performances better.” ■