Basic Electricity Concert Tonight - Rastko, Plastiq Phantom

If you’re in Berlin tonight, come along to Basic Electricity, a concert with the Serge Animal tamer, Rastko and Patch Point proprietor, Plastiq Phantom, aka Dr. Wiener.

Doors open at 19:30 for music at 20:30 at the König Otto in Neukölln. As you can see, it’s an amazing venue housed in the old Kindl brewery.

There’s more info here and a Facebook event here.

See you later!

BE#23, Thursday, 19.10.17 @ König Otto
Tickets 10€. Doors at 19:30, music at 20:30
Am Sudhaus 3, 12053 Berlin Neukölln
U7 Rathaus Neukölln or U8 Boddinstr.

Basic Electricity on Friday - Joker Nies, Gino Robair, Richard Scott

Join us on Friday, April 21st for an evening of hands-on live electronics with Joker Nies, Gino Robair and Richard Scott. It’s the second Basic Electricity concert in our new, super venue, the König Otto in Berlin, Neukölln.

There’s more info, pics + video here and the Facebook event is here.

Here is a video of the re-opening concert with Wolfgang Seidel, Hilary Jeffery and me:



direct link

We're looking forward to seeing you on Friday!

BE#20, Friday, 21.04.17 @ König Otto
Am Sudhaus 3, 12053 Berlin Neukölln
U7 Rathaus Neukölln or U8 Boddinstr.
 
Tickets 8€. Doors open 20:00, music starts at 21:00.
Seating is limited to 50, so please come on time.
The bar will be open for drinks and sandwiches.

Nord Coast - Micro Modular Patches

Performance patches created on the diminutive yet powerful Clavia Nord Micro Modular.



I'd seen these odd shaped and coloured boxes lying round in studios gathering dust before. But it wasn't until I saw Rastko Lazic's inspiring video that I took the Micro Modular seriously. Here is a collection of patches, driven solely by the Micro Modular's three knobs:



Yes, it sounds digital and you need to jump through hoops to get the editor to work on a modern Mac operating system, but it's worth it. I've used the G2 demo for years to try out ideas, so I was used to the workflow. The NM engine doesn't have some of the conveniences or modules of the G2. But, as ever, there are workarounds. If you get stuck, consult the Nord Modular Book, edited by James Clark or Rob Hordijk's workshops.

In his video, Rastko uses a new Faderfox controller to play his patches. The two make a perfect pair, but I didn't want to be tied to a USB host i.e. computer. The older FF controllers are less flexible when it comes to custom assignments, so I built my own. I used a Doepfer Pocket Electronics kit and a perspex sandwich. The joystick is a small, game controller type.



With that built (and an old Faderfox controller now bought ...), I've realized that the beauty of the Micro Modular is its simplicity. With some canny patching you can get a lot of mileage out of three knobs! Download the album to access the patches and try them yourself.

Here is a link to Clavia's sound-bank. If you're using a Mac, the V3 Editor will run with varying degrees of stability and frustration under emulation. I have both Win XP and 10.6 versions running under VMWare Fusion on a 10.8 system.

Rob Hordijk Benjolin

Over a year after my first encounter with Rob Hordijk's wonderful instruments, I've finally built my own Benjolin.



It's a joy to play and sounds great:






This was my most involved DIY project. Sourcing the parts took time and there is a fair bit of soldering. I got the Cool Audio SSM2164 clone from Magic Smoke Electronics. I'm indebted to Chrisi from Koma Elektronik for etching and drilling the PCB. Inspired by Leaf Audio's practical solution, the enclosure is a €2 snack box - a perfect fit.



I kept my Benjolin simple: there's just an on-off switch and one, filtered, output. With Tom Whitwell's Turing Machine and my own Bitsy, I have enough shift-register-based sequencers. The Benjolin is unique as it chases its own tail and falls into patterns which can be manually nudged. It's a patch in itself; a fun, hands-on instrument.

Benjolin documents and info can be found here and here. Casper Electronics suggests some mods and will offer a kit.

Thank you Rob for giving us the best little noise box around!

Turing with Bitsy

A quick jam featuring two DIY shift-register-based random sequencers, Tom Whitwell's Turing Machine and my own Bitsy.



Playing with sequencers that you can't program, only influence, is great fun. As you can hear, the two make a great team!



Just add a quantizer, and you're away. (Turing left, Bitsy right).



Tom managed to pack a lot into his sandwich design. It's tight in places, but it does all fit. My own DIY projects have been primitive by comparison, using perf-board and flying connections for the pots and jacks. The one benefit of this method is that it's more forgiving of part placement when it's time to screw the module together. I might have to revisit some of the jacks to help them sit better. I made two minor changes to Tom's design, one out of necessity, the other for aesthetic reasons: I ordered the wrong size polyboxes, so substituted ceramic caps for C10 & C11, and I went for a green LED, rather than red. I still need to paint the legends, but don't mind the look of the sticker residue for the moment.

You can find extensive information on the Music Thing Random Sequencer project here, here and here.

Thanks for a great instrument, Tom!

Bugbrand WOM Pro

Some sounds from Tom Bugs' DIY Workshop Osc Machine Pro.



I've just built my WOM Pro, which I got from Tom at his recent gig in Berlin. Despite its simple looks, the WOM is capable of a wealth of complex, ear-shredding noises:

Bugbrand WOM Pro by navs

The kit comes with all necessary parts, excellent instructions and was a joy to build. The schematic reminded me of some of the circuits in Nicolas Collins' Handmade Electronic Music, some of which I used in my Trobetronic40. What makes the WOM special is its power starve, touch plate control and, I suspect, its CMOS-based mixer. The latter seems responsible not just for volume control, but also the way the oscillators interact. Click here for more info on the build.

The WOM Pro puts out enough juice to be plugged directly into the modular and, used with an envelope follower, random generator and the Borg filter, is capable of Benjolin-esque sounds. Try setting the VCO range switches to a midway position. The resulting uncertainty opens up another can of bug-sounds.

Thanks to Tom for an excellent kit. I was going to give the WOM away as a present, but it's too much fun - highly recommended!

Bitsy - Stepped CV Generator/ Recorder

A DIY Ring Counter based on Ken Stone's Gated Comparator circuit.



My inspiration for this module was Grant Richter's Wiard Noise Ring - a random CV generator with a form of memory. While I liked its ability to capture an eight note sequence, I found it hard to control and wanted some method to reliably input my own data.

I first thought an analogue shift register - a chain of sample + holds - might provide the solution. Thanks to a prod in the right direction from Matthias of Fonitronik, I discovered Scott Stites' Klee sequencer and later Rob Hordijk's Rungler and Ken Stone's digital shift register circuits.



Using a CMOS chip like the 4015 or 4021 won't allow you to sample your own CV stream, but the end result is the same. A series of zeros and ones is converted into a stepped CV via a DAC, in this case an R/2R network. Feeding the last stage of the shift register back to the input allows you to hold a sequence. Here's how it sounds:



I built Bitsy as a companion to the Wogglebug, which provides the clock and data, via its burst output. Like the Klee, it can also be programmed via a sequencer or manual gates. To simplify the design, I left out the input comparators of Ken Stone's circuit. A switch is used to manually hold a sequence. The last stage is also available, allowing VC over new/ old data selection via a sequential switch like the Doepfer A-151. An LED reflects the voltage level.



I used the DIY Layout Creator to plan my perfboard and a 6HP Makenoise blank as faceplate. This was the first time I'd made a parallel board, which meant using wire connections for the jacks etc. However, the benefit of this was I didn't have to be totally accurate when drilling holes.

Thanks to Matthias for the hint and to the designers of the original circuits which inspired this project!

From Bananas to Blippoos

Some pictures from a day in Richard Scott's studio.









Richard's studio is an Aladdin's Cave of Banana-jack synths. The Buchla VCO was on its way to its new owner, so I was lucky to get a chance to hear it. While it looks fantastic, I wasn't taken by its sound. Financially speaking, this is probably a good thing. The Serge & CGS system was much more to my taste. I was surprised at how familiar I was with its patching vocabulary, due in part to certain Serge-inspired Euro modules, and was able to dive straight in. The Bugbrand is a cracking, compact system with a gutsy sound. But of all the synths in the studio, I lost my heart to the two Hordijk boxes, the wonderful Blippoo and Benjolin.

Thanks to Richard for a wonderful afternoon and the pukka pakoras!

Patch Tips #15 - Non-Linear Distortion

I recently stumbled across the Nord Modular's exponential shaper module while looking for something to bend a signal. The ShpExp works with transfer functions to generate non-linear distortion. This can give a sound edge, without totally shredding it. Of course, my next thought was whether it would be possible to patch something similar with my system. As usual, Rob Hordijk had the answer.



The trick involves generating a signal at twice the frequency of the source, which will then be used to modulate the amplifier. The easiest way to do this is to patch multiples of the source to both inputs of a ring modulator, effectively multiplying the signal by itself. This performs full wave rectification and, in the case of sine waves, frequency doubling. Patched to a linear VCA, a sine wave is bent like this:



Here's how it sounds:


Mono- then Duo-phonic signal. Clean Cwejman signal path (MMF-1 sine, VCO-2RM RM, VCA-2P)


Mono- then Duo-phonic signal. Dirty Doepfer signal path for added crunch (MMF-1 sine, A-133 as RM, A132-1 VCA)

Feeding the rectified, frequency-doubled signal back to the source, rather than the VCA, will bend the sine into a triangle, albeit with a different pitch. Try varying the FM-CV amount, other VCO waveforms or even polyphonic signals for seriously warped shapes.

I used the VCO-2RM and A-133 which, being dual, allows one to cascade and further multiply the modulator. Frequency doubling or rectification can also be achieved by feeding +ve & -ve signals to a min/max analogue logic module like the A-172 & Maths' OR processor or Doepfer's A-119 ext. input module, as per this Patch Tip. Like the A-133, Fonitronik's forthcoming mh31 and Makenoise's modDemix provide one-stop solutions.

I'm not sure if this process is in fact single-sideband modulation as the modDemix description suggests, but it's certainly closely related to Amplitude Modulation which will be the subject of the next Patch Tip.

Patch Tip #7 - Synced Transposition

Today's tip is adapted from Rob Hordijk's excellent Nord Modular tutorials.

Here's the situation: you have a clocked sequence that you want to manually transpose with Pressure Points. Try as you might, your timing isn't precise enough to avoid pitch glitches:



In the above, PP's row 1 CV was patched directly to the transpose input of an A-156 QNT. Taking the CV and first patching it to a sample & hold, which is triggered by a clock division, synchronizes the manual changes:



Hordijk's patch is a little more involved, but in the second example I simply used an inverted output of the A-160 to trigger the S&H. Another option would be to use the 'step1' output of an Analogue Solutions SQ8.