More PLL

 Last week the Doepfer A196 was integral to synthesizing a flute. Since that worked out well I wanted to dive deeper into the functions of this module. While recreating the Buchla 259 Complex Waveform Generator still eludes me, another cool voice came out of the A196 today. Behold a screeching cello!

Phantasie for Cello Patch by jeremiahfisher

This voice was pretty easy to create. Here is the barebones idea:

Osc 1 square wave into A196 input 2. A196 square wave out into filter. Filter output into VCA. VCA output into wavefolder. Wavefolder out to mixer/soundcard/etc.

The modules I used with the A196 were an Analogue Systems RS95e, Tiptop Audio Z2040, and a Toppobrillo Triple Wavefolder. The z2040 has a built in VCA. I used a Malekko Envelator to open the VCA. The Doepfer A149 Source of Uncertainty controls rise/fall time of the envelope and pitch of the RS95e.

Mess with knobs and switches until satisfied with the result. You could also add portamento with a slew limiter and vibrato with another vca.

The accompaniment in Phantasie for Cello Patch is two drones: one from my e350 and another from a bunch of oscillators through a matrix mixer.

Installation of the Vizier

I am currently infatuated with the Doepfer A196 Phase Locked Loop module. The A196 is a fairly esoteric module, even by modular synth standards. So forgive me if I cannot provide an accurate description of it's functions! There are three parts; a square wave oscillator, a phase comparator, and a low pass filter. The three elements create a feedback loop that can be tapped at different places for different purposes. My PLL arrived in the mail months ago and I've been trying to figure it out ever since... Most recently it's been used in a flute patch influenced by the youtube clip here:

PLL Arabesque

It's a tricky patch to get right, even the basics to get it running require a fair amount of careful fiddling. I should probably write the settings down! Here is my work with the "PLL Arabesque":

Installation of the Vizier by jeremiahfisher

After exploring the flute a bit more, I am going to see if I can emulate the Buchla 259 complex waveform generator. The PLL is an important part of the Buchla oscillator, although I don't know how it's implemented. Final exams are just around the corner and I love a good reason to procrastinate.

In the Humid Delta

My plan to record a bunch of material over the Thanksgiving break didn't make it very far past the planning phase, but I was able to finish one piece.

In The Humid Delta by jeremiahfisher

You can download it if you like.

Alex Barnett / Fielded split LP

After finishing last month's post about Stacian's awesome Pul EP, I realized another great record was being neglected. The Alex Barnett/ Fielded split LP came out earlier this year, courtesy of Nihilist records. I had the honor of premastering the record before they were cut to vinyl and was pretty juiced to do it. More rad synth music! Alex's instrumental tracks seek to influence the listener to experience life as series of uncertain intrigues. I think its a bit more involved than the John Carpenter references prescribed by some critics, but I do understand what they're getting at. Here, Alex's expositions depict a cold world that could be a reference to the The Thing (a Carpenter film), or a nod to the album Iceland by Richard Pinhaus. Tracks such as Antarctica are come across as more human than either because Barnet uses minimal sequencing. Most the synth lines are played by hand, ensuring sterility does not plague the recording process.

Similar to Barnett's fascination with the unnatural Lindsay Powell (Fielded), pursues a romance with the  supernatural in her side of the record. Simultaneously listless and yearning, the characters in Fielded's music toil under the spell of their own dark fantasies. Still there is a quiet strength throughout and it is reflected in the vocals. Fielded is no slouch with harmonies. Her multi tracked vocals sound like a cell of spirits fettered to a corporeal body. She also has un uncanny knack for chord progressions, her accompaniments suit the vocals perfectly. "The Mark, My Good Master" is a standout example of what I am trying to communicate. Take a listen!
Hopefully I did the music justice, both sides of the record are excellent.

DIY Power Supply 2

More power! It's sort of a mantra when constructing a modular synthesizer. The type of power supply being used is arguably more important than any other part of the synth and it's wise to get the largest supply you can. This is especially true if you might ever want to expand your system. A high output power supply will last you a while. I'm currently on my fourth power supply.

My first DIY supply - the third overall

When choosing this newest power supply, I had a few considerations. For example, there are the common linear power supplies which are bulky and can weigh a few pounds, and then there are the far lighter switching power supplies. Currently, only Tiptop Audio offers a switching supply and it is integrated into their Zeus bus boards. Each board can pull up to 1.2A from a laptop style power brick and can be daisy chained together to power a large system if your power brick has the amperage to spare. Additionally the Tiptop boards give you a lot of configuration options and headers for both the common Doepfer style connectors and less common Analogue Systems connector.

Price was my second consideration. Tiptop's linear powered Zeus boards are 160 USD each. To safely power a 9U eurorack system would require an investment of over 300 dollars. Coincidentally, this is about the price of most higher end synth modules. For myself, the glamour of a three hundred dollar oscillator outshines the practicality of a working power supply. Thus I feel these bus boards are pretty expensive for the relative benefits offered. And I already own a set of bus boards. But if you are just starting a system they might not be a bad choice at all!

Tiptop Audio also makes a power module called the uZeus which offers an all-in-one solution with limitations. Each comes with a bus board made from ribbon cable and can power up to 1000 ma worth of modules. One should be enough to power 6U of eurorack. On the downside, these cannot be daisy chained to pull more power so you will need a wall wart for each uZeus. uZeus must also be mounted in the front of the system so it competes for space with your other modules.

I have a uZeus and it's pretty nice. However I blew out a resister and led on it when trying to integrate a dual power supply for my ever expanding and power hungry system. Something was hooked up backwards or grounded incorrectly and it starting smoking when powered on. Oops! It still works without the visual indicator but I doubt it has much resale value. This also convinced me to not try and integrate different power systems in my synth. With my most recent upgrade I decided to just get one power supply large enough to power everything.

Newer, beefier supply and it's oversized case

Instead of repurchasing bus boards and a power brick I went with a linear power supply. I bought a PowerOne HCC1.5-3-A from feeBay. It puts out 3.4 amps worth of power which is enough for a fairly substantial amount of modules. And it was only 12 dollars! On hand was a cheap toolbox from Harbor Freight that I picked up for a mini system. It's large enough to house the PSU and one additional row of eurorack.

At this point, let me state that this is not a tutorial on building power supplies. I have no knowledge of electrical engineering other than my own DIY experiences. In addition to the uZeus frying LEDs, I've also blown another linear PSU and pretty sure I caused a brown out on my block last summer for not grounding something else correctly. If you have some experience with electricity and want to roll your own, consult this excellent post on the Muff Wiggler synth forum.

First I had to clean the foam out of the bottom because I'm pretty sure the heat from the transformer would have melted it. It was glued in pretty well and was took far longer than I expected. Once that was done I drilled a few holes in the case and mounted the PSU with aluminum standoffs. Afterwards I recycled the power switch, fuse holder, and CB connector (to deliver power to the main case) from my first DIY supply and soldered the necessary connections.

Foam removed and connections made

Pay attention to the fuse recommendation on the PSU!

On first power up it blew a fuse. After replacing the fuse it worked two more times before blowing the fuse again. This cycle of blowing fuses continued until I spent over 20 dollars on replacements and decided enough was enough. The solution came in two fixes. The first was simple enough - I had been using 0.6A and 1A fuses instead of the recommended 2A. Second, I had not connected the common ground of the PSU to it's chasis. Since these two fixes were made everything has been great. Hopefully my synth doesn't surpass this supply for quite a while.

Rhythm Sketch 1

Just a quick jam with a rhythmic sequence created by a clock divider and mixer set up. This isn't a full fledged demo by any means as I didn't elaborate much on the idea. I will post more "sketches" in the future until some of these ideas coalesce into something larger. The clock divider and mixer combination is one that I usually hear used to control oscillator pitch, but here the sequencer is triggering envelopes and low pass gates.

Rhythm Sketch 1 by jeremiahfisher

Stacian "Pul" EP

Awesome! Over the summer I had the good fortune to mix a few tracks for Dania Luck's project Stacian. Most of those tracks have manifested on the Pul 7 inch released by Moniker Records. My copy arrived in the mail very recently and today I listened to the finished product. Pul is three great jams, and filled with some of the best synth riffs I've heard in recent years. Stacian is a little bit high space fantasy, it's a little bit of DIY urgency, and a lot of good songwriting. With just a few pieces of gear (one Jupiter 6 and a TR606) Stacian pilots the listener through intense but brief trips through action filled spacescapes. I wonder if she watched any Silverhawks growing up. I'm glad to see Micro Trauma made it on the record, it's one of my favorites.

Stacian is going on tour with Gel-Set in November. Look to http://www.staciansound.com/ for more info.

Ga'an review in Wire

Nick Richardson reviewed the self titled LP by Ga'an in September's issue of Wire. I feel that he successfully pinpointed the aesthetic values the band embraced when this record was recorded, although I wonder what led to his reading of the band to have 'a complete lack of selfconsiousness' while simultaneously having 'affected' grooves. In building his discourse on the 'outer limits of taste' he manages to peg my keyboard patches as 'shamelessly tacky.' Shameless is an adjective I can certainly jam on when it describes the sound coming from a busted Roland digital keyboard found in a basement! Robert Beatty's wonderful artwork gets a nod as well. Mr. Richardson's review was largely favorable so I will scratch Wire review off of my personal bucket list. Not sure what the current line-up is up to these days, but hopefully their next record review is even nicer.

DIY Eurorack

For people with more time than money, developing some DIY skills is a must when putting together a modular synthesizer. Most of my summer then was spent burning solder on different PCBs found on the wiggler forum and elsewhere.

The first module I built was a MOTM e350 Morphing Terrarium. For those that don't know, its a dual wavetable (digital samples of waveforms) oscillator. MOTM ships these kits with the PCBs populated with all the smt components, leaving the builder to solder on the jacks and knobs, mount it to a faceplate, and calibrate the oscillator. These factors make the e350 on of the most expensive DIY kits around, and also one of the quickest to build.

Here is a pic I uploaded to facebook earlier this year:

Most of the work went into the faceplate. There are files circulating the web with the standard MOTM faceplate which you can then have created at places like front panel express, or you can make your own. I created this one out of acrylic. I used the faceplate pdf to determine knob and jack placement, then drilled away with a 7mm drill bit. The graphic is a color photocopy from the book Ultraviolet which was pasted onto the back of the acrylic panel. Quick and dirty results, but without any of the module's functions labeled! This oscillator is so awesome I have them memorized anyway. Later on attenuators and switches for additional functions were added in the extra space on the right.

The next module completed was the Ian Fritz Dual Trigger Gate Threshold Sample & Hold (TGTSH!)

This panel is also acrylic, this time the image is the cover illustration for the novel The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem. Wiggler forum member falafelbiels provided me with a photoshop file containing the text and jack/knob placement. Printed with a crap HP Photosmart printer. Might reprint a higher quality graphic later and paste it over top.

This week I am trying to finish a Thomas Henry Dual X-4046 VCO. The PCBs and panel layout were provided by Fonik from the Wiggler forum. Fonik's documentation for building this circuit is fantastic, and the detail in his PCBs is even better. For a relatively complicated circuit, this was a pleasure to build.

For the Dual X-4046 I pasted the graphic to the front of the acrylic plate and coated it with shellac. This image also came from Ultraviolet, I realize it's not really visible in the photo below. The colors really pop in the book, but my efforts to relate that were again stymied by the HP Photosmart printer. The built in scanner does not cut the mustard and the colors are very dull. On the positive side, this oscillator sounds really nice! I hope to have a demo recording of it soon.

One thing I learned from this circuit: when building a module with a lot of knobs or jacks to connect, order some j connectors if the PCB allows for them. Otherwise you will find yourself navigating a jungle of wires to make the necessary connections from the board to the panel mounted components.

Still there are more circuits on the bench! I am still working on a Toppobrillo Triple Wavefolder, Music From Outer Space Dual VCA, and a CGS chime simulator. Can't wait to start recording once this are all built.

SoundCloud Tracks and New Release

The Clay People cassette came out earlier this year on Catholic Tapes, it contains four tracks of synthesized flute jams, Buchla bongos, and Afro-influenced synth. It's dirt cheap! Brett puts a lot of thought into each release in order to represent a wide range of synthesized music. Equally as intentional is a unifying visual aesthetic tailored to cassette fetishists. "Gateway Through the Mountains" appears on Clay People, but you can jam it right here:

Gateway Through the Mountains by jeremiahfisher

Since I just started a SoundCloud account today, I thought I would share two other recordings as well. This first track has been in the can for a while now, previously unreleased. It might get re-worked, but I currently like the minimal atmosphere.

Sister to Sister by jeremiahfisher

The second track is a live recording from the 2011 synth chili cook-off, courtesy of Elon Katz.

Aztec Secret by jeremiahfisher

Up next: Some DIY synth pics and perhaps a sound demo of a new oscillator I've been building.