A great way to spend a Sat arvo with Paul (aka Cobramatic) ,
Messing around with some euro mainly today. ....and a video synth and a the Makenoise 0-coast.
Paul showed me some great new modules .. two by Intellijel... the Rain maker & Plonk.
These are both digital.
The Rainmaker.... it a deep complex digital sound processor that can create resonant sounds that go into the "pseudo physical modelling territory". loads of precets. Its much more than just a delay.
It has 16 taps, each with has its own resonant filter (LP/BP/HP) and granular pitch shifter.
In addition to being able to save the type of filter at each step, you can set resonance & cutoff frequency.
They can even self oscillate . The pitch shifter has a range of +15 semitones to -16 semitones.
Plonk.
You can probably view this as a drum module that specialises in making percussive sounds... natural and unnatural. I've never really been into digital, but i was impressed with this one. i´m absolutely in no doubt that the Plonk will pair VERY well with a Rings. The Plonk definitely emits very realistic sounds of the mediums it tries to emulate but it's capable of some very alien sounds too!
It's not a samplier, it uses physical modelling. A
microprocessor calculates the type of sound that is
produced ...depending on the characteristics of the membrane (called the resonator) and the percussion device (the exciter).
So its uses mathematical modelling.
Plonk offers several types of resonators: beam; marimba; drumhead; membrane; plate; and string.
There are 2 types of percussion devices: a mallet and a noise source.
There are 128 user preset slots with import/export via USB. These come filled with factory presets designed by Richard Devine and AAS.
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The video synth I tested yesterday ia the new Vidiot by LZX.
It arrived only Friday so I did the big unboxing yesterday.
Here are some quick videos to show you what we came up with in just one arvo.
Lots of variation. I think its a great synth and a good way to begin your journey if you are new to video synths.
Even if you have a big LZX system, I think this is still useful as its size makes it perfect for live gigs.
These are my build notes for the ARSEq. It's a Nonlinearcircuits module in Eurorack format.
ARSEq ( =Attack Release SEquencer). Its a hybrid sequencer and AR envelope generator.
The thing that makes this special and unique is that the envelope needs 2 clock signals to work.. one to start the attack and the next to start the release.
There are 4 clocked envelopes.
NLC words of wisdom.
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When installing the pots, you will need to decide how snappy you want the envelopes to be,
Andrew suggests the best setup is
100k pots for Attack and 1MA pots for Release.
The 100K pots are type B, linear taper.
The first thing that will strike you when you visit Bolivia are these
bowler hats. They are everywhere, and most of the women wear them.
It seems that this fashion started in the 19th century. The story is that the Manchester manufacturers first tried to export the hats to British railway workers in Bolivia but when this failed they turned their attention to the local women, saying that all the fashionable women in Europe were going around wearing these bowler hats.
“Legend” has it that those who were wearing the hats did not have problems
with infertility. So it became vastly popular among the women from the
Aymara indigenous group.
La Paz also named Chuqi Yapu (Chuquiago) in Aymara, is the seat of government and the de facto national capital of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. With an estimated 789,541 residents as of 2015, La Paz is the third-most populous city in Bolivia
These are my build notes for the Nonlinearcircuits eurorack Divide & conquer module.
Obviously this is a clock divider.
4 different dividers:
1. /2, /4, /8, /16, /32, /64, /128, /256
2. /1.5, /3
3. /2.5, /5
4. /3.5, /7
Its super flexible as you can patch outputs into inputs to get crazy divisions.
Some NLC words of wisdom
Broke Down Engine and Other Troubles with Machines. This is a book by Ron Goulart.
"Thirteen wry and terrifying tales of homo mechanicus (what we are becoming) versus the machines we have created." 1971.
I haven't read this, but it sounds a bit like The Terminator.
La Grande Bouffe is a 1973 French–Italian film directed by Marco Ferreri. "The film centers on a group of friends who plan to eat
themselves to death. It satirizes consumerism and the decadence of the
bourgeoisie." Wikipedia.
====================== Back to the build.
The CMOS chips you will need are: 4013, 4024, 4070.
They are all SOIC format.