EDITORIAL: MASK Ah, the sweet smell of fresh solder. The frustrating hunt for that one exotic capacitor. Trying to remember how many pica's go into a nano. The never-relenting anxiety over who will have to cook dinner this time. And as a bonus perhaps, later, some exploding capacitors and fried circuit-protectors. At the MASK we've seen it all, it's a veritable emotional roller-coaster zipping from personal technical triumph to the harrowing existential defeat of humanity as a whole. Every monday evening, in a somewhat tilted house located on one of Rotterdam's finest inner-city streets, a seemingly random collection of -mostly- men gather with the sole intent of putting together bits and pieces of modular synths. Okay, yes, you could say they are geeks, nerds even. But overall, they've been infected by the DIY bug. They found out that, yes, modular synths as a hobby can be quite an ex-
pensive one, if you are just a consumer, say. But if you pool your resources, make up some stuff by yourselves, and help each other brainstorm, troubleshoot and build, you can go a long way. Since I joined, about 2 years ago, I have built about 100 modules, gave away dozens of pcb's and panels, and designed and built a few of my own. The feeling of thinking something up, designing it, ordering the parts and then putting it together to find out that it works is absolutely unique. As is the crushing defeat of frustration to find out it doesn't. But why doesn't it work? See, that's when you start to learn stuff. Part DIY-club, part social club, part therapy and part gossip mill, MASK has turned out to be a more than worthwhile addition to my synthesizer-obsessed activities, and an invaluable resource for learning and producing.
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Falafular; the Man, the Myth, the Modules. MASK headquarters has a mouse problem. Late at night, when all has gone quiet, the vermin scribble around, like the restless incarnations of ideas about what could be built from all those electronic components and parts lying around in boxes all over. Your interviewer gets on very well with Mr. Falafular, also known as Falafel Biels, audio-technician by trade. The origin of that name is still a mystery, though it appears to have something to do with his mother. We can get pretty grumpy together, and have to take care not to descend into an altogether nihilistic worldview in which conjo's, the seemingly unavoidable descent of society into neoliberal greed, cynicism, a total lack of historical awareness, hyper-individualism and a grating lack of solidarity lead to... oh well, that aside. I am here to conduct an interview about modular synths and DIY. How did it come to this? 'Well, I used to make music, with synths, well, and then I thought at some point, I was just busy buying synths all the time, and then I'd made a tune, and then I'd sort of had it with that machine, you know, and then I'd try some other cool sounds you could make with it, and then the novelty soon wore off. And then it had to go, because after two months I'd have 100 bucks or 200 bucks extra and then I could sell it for purchasing price and get a more expensive one. Yeah, that's how it is with everyone, I guess.' 'And so at one point I thought, 'jeez, what a hassle, man, I could also just put 50 bucks towards buying a filter every month, or some other doodad or thingie, you know, or save up for two months and buy an oscillator or an envelope. So yeah, that might be a good idea... Let's put together a little Euro-rack. Cool. Then I'd bought some of those modules, a lot faster than anticipated of course. And it didn't do much against wasting money, right?
Doepfer and MFB, some of those Harvestman things, and eh, a Plague Bearer I had as well, but that went out pretty fast, well, and then at some point I'd bought a sequencer, and I plugged the thing in... and seeing as how you can look at these things from the back, when you get them you can look 'em over, whereas normally you'd have to open up a machine, which you are weary to do, and then you can see how they're put together. And then I thought, well, this sequencer is pretty big, but really there isn't that much inside of it, you know, so I thought, well, I could build that myself, a sequencer like that. At least, I had been looking on the Internet at these parts, what they do and all, and then I thought, well, that's interesting, and then I went CMOS-crazy for a while, I wasted all my time looking at datasheets to see if there were any cool things to fool around with. You insert a trigger somewhere and then something happens, well, that was certainly interesting, I thought I was getting it a little. So then I put together a few little sequencers, the Baby-10 yeah, or a Baby-8, was my first sequencer. After that I made a sort of triplet Baby-8, adding some alternative fun features, and then I had a very cool Baby-3, like, a Baby-24, and yeah, that was cool. But yeah, then I saw that there were PCB's offered by various people and then I built a whole bunch of them, and eh... yeah that was fun.'
Birth of the Patternizer: the first Falafular PCB? 'The first PCB I had made was a patternizer, and a patternizer, dear people, is a clock-divider, it's even four clock-dividers in one module, and these different clock-divides you can turn on and off, and when they're all on, it gives these different divisions, and it doesn't issue these at the same moment, but they fall consecutively, so that you have a sort of 16-step sequencer, of which in fact you can turn steps off. That's the idea. You input a clock and then it makes loops of 16 steps where you can turn steps off, and it puts out triggers, or rather, interrupted clock signals, and these divisions you can also have turned on or off by external gates or triggers, and that makes it a sort of frequency-divider you can modulate, but not one that just produces simple divisions, but patterns consisting of different divisions, and it can even modulate itself, wow. But don't expect some incredible feedback-noise, or some such madness. Though it is also a neat sub-oscillator.' 'How did I get that idea? Dennis (Mono-Poly) at one point had found a schematic from... I think it was that guy who builds Wiards, I don't know his name, but he had something with neurons, and eh, a little like those circuits that Andrew F. (NonLinear Circuits) is working with (no, not really chaos circuits) I don't remember this guy's name, man. They are interesting things, right? Things that make decisions for you, without you being in control 100%. But this guy had some sort of clock-generator in this circuit, and that was also based on this 4089 chip, and Dennis said, hey, look at this, that's some funny stuff coming out of this, so I thought, okay, you could automate that as well, cool! And that is how the thing was born actually. So it's not a 100 percent my idea, half of it
was there already, and Dennis found it, so I actually didn't do very much (...) Yeah, I spent like two years on that. It was a bit of a bad obsession... There have been different versions, and now it's fine. I am not going to work on it any more. I've had it with that thing... on to new projects! I built around 20 or so, I guess, and now I have like 2 of them myself, and some single-channel ones.' And then there had to be something that could be triggered; the 808 clones....? 'After that I made the 808 clones, yes, I needed something to trigger after all, also because, that LDB (Little Drummer Boy) drum computer I'd built, it had this dopey snare, and that needed to be replace by a cool snare, and I'd already put in an 808 kick, by this american guy with the poststamp-size pcb's, those tiny pcb's, I'd put that in, before I had that 808 kick, and I thought, well, that really needs a better snare to go along with, otherwise it's just daft, so then I built that, and yes, it got better... those snares and kicks, quite a few of those have been built, I couldn't say, I don't even know how many sets of pcb's I sold. No idea, and they went to SynthCube, they were sold there as well, but how many, I don't have a clue. Funny, to see, when you see a system coming by that has a few of those things of mine in it, then I think; that's a beautiful system! It really helps, to make your system more beautiful...' Then came the Clawbell, a combination of the CR5000/8000 cowbell and claves, the 808-hats, the Tumbadora - CR5000 conga's- and the Bunch-AKlix and -Klox. And all this messing with rhythm-boxes, drum sounds, rhythms and patterns ultimately led to the Corny Rhythm, a beautiful example of the inversion of old to new, where something very traditional, in a new context, suddenly becomes innovative!
'The Corny Rhythm? There are two angles of approach to it; well ok, three angles; one very personal, one technical, and one a little less personal. It was like this: I had made the cowbell (the Clawbell) and that was cool, but then I hung it on the Patternizer and it turned out it wasn't easy to trigger it in a cool way, because it's a non-abstract sound, in a way, so you associate it with certain things, so then you want to hear it there and there, because if you already have an 808 kick and a snare, then you want to hear that cowbell in specific places, otherwise it just doesn't make sense, that can be downright annoying. So there had to be a sequencer for it, fit for the cowbell, and that could be nice and simple... Then there was the story that we used to fool around with old drum-machines, including those in your set-up as it were, in the sense of- you have these old (Acetone) Rhythm Aces, right? People used to try and deploy them in different ways. Especially the Rhythm Aces, I believe, I've seen those used, and that was always fine, you know, those sounds were so charming, and then it didn't matter, in one way or another, it seemed like, that those patterns were pre-set patterns. Yes, they were corny rhythms (get it?) corny sounds, organdrum machines to put on top of your organ, you know, sounded rather corny, but on the other hand that fit well with the sounds you got out of one of those synthesizers. They go well together. So, in addition I had the idea that, well alright I've had a whole bunch of drum-computers, and every time I get one, or build one you know, then I play around with it for a while (like those synths from the beginning) and then at a certain point it falls from grace, but at the start it's all cool and amazing, and then you make some patterns on it, and those patterns are cool, and then you get something else to play with and
it moves to the background and then you don't really make any more patterns on the thing, and then every time you have to play somewhere, or were messing about at home, and you want to put a beat under it, you tend to go back to those patterns you made long ago, in the first months when you had the machine, and yeah, for new rhythms; a new machine right? So I thought, those pre-set rhythms were alright, and when you get a new machine you tend to go for typical patterns, for yourself anyway, and it's not like- even if you have an interface to make rhythms, you just use it for a while, and then it just becomes a playback device. And then I thought, yeah, I could do with just a sequencer like in a CR78 for instance, or a CR8000 foremost, because I could pretty well copy that (from your interviewer: a CR5000) and I'd already made the cowbell from it, so it was kind of fun to link it to that. Oh, and I saw Senne play at Noodlebar once, this was still at the West Kruiskade, and he had a KPR77 as a sidekick, I think, a Korg, and the funny thing was, all the time he was playing and dancing and then he'd hit that fill-button again and then it would go like tadadada-doodoodoodoo and then it went on, and I thought that was really cool, because, sure, I had had a lot of drum computers, but a fill-button was actually almost never on them, so I thought that was cool, and I thought, well, I'd been having this notion that there should be a sequencer, for the clawbell anyway, a pattern-sequencer, and a sort of preset pattern sequencer is alright, because it makes a lot of difference in your interface anyway, and it would be nice if you could put your own patterns in there as well, but it's mainly about playback after all. Well, I couldn't do much with that idea for now, because it seemed very complicated; and then I met Timo (Rozendal)... And that isn't that long ago, say two months. So that went very quickly. Timo came here (MASK) to learn how to do SMD soldering, and I said, sure, come by one evening, and that was okay, and he had some small things to solder, and so he sat down and I said; these are the tools, did you look on YouTube to see how it's done? So he said, sure, I looked. I said, well, go for it, let me know if it's not working. So then he put something together and it worked right away and he was grateful... haha. So then we got to talking because there was a long piece of evening left over, and so he asked, so what's up with you and these
modules, and I said, well, this and that and bla bla bla. How I got into it and all that, sort of like this interview. At a certain point he asked if I had any future plans? So I said, yeah, I have some plans, you know, but there's just a few things that I just can't do, you know, I can't program Arduino's, that's just, that's a bit too much, drives me crazy. And I'm not learning it because I don't really have an implementation that is simple enough to pick that up. Because you only learn by doing it. So he said; yeah, aha, uhm... And it turned out he was a professional coder, I got the impression. A few days later he mailed me a little clip in which he'd bread-boarded an Arduino, and that little thing did just about everything I told him would be great for a sequencer. Fantastic. Then he asked: well, what do you think, do you want this, do you want that, how about this? Etcetera. And I said well, yeah I'd love it! After a week he had this cool device with lots of features already, and he came around again, with his breadboard, and we tried it out, and I said, yeah, that is way cool, man. Then I started making the hardware to go with it, and we chatted about it a lot back and forth, while we were both working on it. I got the PCB's in, put it together and it worked right away. It was a little buggy in the beginning, but Timo solved most of the issues, and then there was a small hardware problem, that I think has been fixed, but we'll have to see about that when it's in use.' (the display chip caused some interference in the audio range) 'About the Corny Rhythm; it is based on an Arduino, which means it has preset patterns, but if you can code a little, or are reasonably smart with computers, or can actually- as I can't- read code on the internet and understand what it does, and can implement that, if you can do those things, you can put your own patterns in there. Timo made a little tool that you can use to convert midi-files to code that you can paste into the Corny Rhythm's code, and that way you can add your own patterns. So then you have a preset pattern sequencer with your own presets. And the nice thing is that you can make the module switch patterns per step, so not per pattern, every time it gets a clock-signal it looks up which pattern it's really in, and that depends on a button you use, and a cv-signal, and those are mixed, so that means you can also use an external sequencer or whatever control voltage source to change
patterns, and this is possible while it's playing the patterns. You can stick an LFO in there, and then it will step through a bank of eight patterns, it'll walk through those to read out per step which pattern it's supposed to be in. It looks up in which pattern it is, and then it will play the notes that occur on that step in that pattern. And then you get variations on presets, Just like with those old Rhythm Aces and such, where you could change patterns or combine them by pressing multiple preset buttons. But here you can do it with control voltages. And yeah, that's right, that is so cool!' 'If it appears as if I'm approaching the Corny Rhythm a little more serious and more thorough, than that is mainly due to the fact that Timo is working on it with me, since he is a lot more serious than I am (haha) But also because it has only taken two months for the thing to become what it is now, and already it's so cool. It also has to do with the factlook, if I had- that Patternizer, I could have made that easily on some micro-chip, on an Arduino or something like that, if I'd had the knowhow. But I don't understand anything about that, and so, now we have a module based on an Arduino, and then you can suddenly do all sorts of things, right? So I learn from that as well, not that I immediately grasp the code, but I can understand certain things in it, you know, and I've started coding something myself since then, for a simple idea, and that has worked so far, and that's fun too, but it's not like what Timo does. Timo is, I think, a very good coder, but you do get insight like that. ' 'And the bonus, of course, on the Corny Rhythm, is that you get conga's with it! I thought, a sequencer is nice, but since it's a preset sequencer I should include a few preset sounds, and besides that you can trigger anything you like with it, you can trigger all my drum modules with it! (haha) I am incredibly enthusiastic about this module. I can't stop talking about it. So this interview is very timely indeed. Did I make tea? I didn't, did I?' Any plans for the future? 'And the next one, with the Arduino, yes, a programmer/sequencer;
it's the same idea as - there's this CGS (Cat Girl Synth/Ken Stone) and also Serge, they have these programmers/sequencers, and the Pressure Points, by MakeNoise... So yeah, you activate a column with a number of pots that generate a control voltage ( allowing you to send a bunch of different values to different module inputs), a sort of matrix-mixer sequencer, yeah. You can select different columns to send out different values to all kinds of inputs, so if you sequence these you can affect multiple aspects of your sound in one go. It's not difficult. But the thing is, these programmers are usually quite big, with keyboard-like contacts and all. Main thing is, I want to make it smaller.'
Some Falafular modules
Confessions of a DIY addict. I started using synthesizers seriously when I was around 18, 19. I was a big fan of Kraftwerk and bands like New Order. This was around 1979. It’s a big thrill to have an interconnected system of synths, sequencers, drum-machines and effects all running in sync. I guess there’s a lot of the ‘cockpit’ syndrome, the illusion that at least you are in control of something. Of course, in time you find out that this awesome Roland SH101 you are using is actually a consumer-adaptation of the old systems as developed by, say, Robert Moog, or Serge or Buchla, a pre-patched collection of the most common basic building blocks of sound synthesis. A VCO, a VCF, an LFO, an ADSR, a VCA, a sequencer even, and before you know it you are daydreaming about taking that thing apart and wondering if you might not be able to rearrange the building blocks to do more intricate, adventurous or serendipitous stuff. That’s when the trouble begins. You look inside and wonder how these collections of resistors, capacitors, transistors and integrated circuits could produce those wonderful sounds and effects. You see some variable resistors or trimmer and think; hmmm, what if...? Well, a word of advice: don’t do it. Re-calibrating a synth to 1V/Oct is no picnic. Of course, back then, there was no internet, remember? You had to go to the library to find books on electronics and electronic music, what few there were anyway. So then you sort of find out what all those parts do when you press a key. Also there is a sense of nostalgia for the pioneers of electronic music, with their laboratories full of function generators, scientific filters, modified organ keyboards and tape machines. Punch cards fed into the RCA Mark II, using an actual computer to produce electronic music, imagine that! Skip to the 90’s. Computers are all over the place. The internet starts to arrive. Suddenly you have a ‘search engine’ from which you can type in all kinds of keywords and phrases and up pop all these links you can click on.
There are mailing lists for synth nerds, such as Analogue Heaven. Funnily enough, Lots of what you find on-line in the early days are scans from old books and magazines. The first thing I built, when I started dreaming of a modular synth, was a power supply. It was based on an article scanned from an old magazine, ‘Elektuur’. A 15 volts dual power supply. Pretty hairy, since you are messing with mains power. But it worked. Next came kits; Paia, Synthesis Technology. Ken Stone, Oakley. Not everything worked the first time, but there’s always a next project to get to. I started modifying my synths in any way I could find. Triggering keys with reed-relais, audio-inputs for filters, stuff like that. I totally Frankensteined a Drumatix, a Roland TR-606 by applying any and all modification I could find on-line. Some of these came from mailinglists, some from magazine scans, and it took me more than a year to finally put the thing back together again, but it worked. Never again, though. It was an incredible, obsessive undertaking. But hey, now I have infinite booooom! on the bassdrum, and all kinds of snappy on the snare, self-oscillation on the toms, and external audio-in on the hihats, which can be filtered. Someday, someone is going to pay a fortune for it.
But the gateway drug, for me, was the schematic of the baby-10 sequencer on-line, in the form of a magazine article scan, an article by Mark Verbos. It was so simple, so elegant almost, I could read it right away. I built it, and it worked! It is great for modulations, on filters and such, sequenced to the clock of your setup. It’s a decade counter, it clocks from one to ten stages, opens up the corresponding output and puts out
a voltage relative to the powersupply. So you sum the outputs using diodes, through pots, and hey, you have a sequence! Which is nothing more than a series of voltages after all. Okay, fine. Then you start to apply it to all sorts of real-world situations and you discover it doesn’t do so well receiving some sorts of clocks, or LFO signals, or gates, or what have you. So you start wondering why that is. From there on you stumble on to the concept of buffering, and comparators and stuff like that. It’s like the real world: to communicate with the outside, you need to be able to accept a wide range of signals and translate them into something you can use. So you study lots of other designs, see how it is done. Lots of simple schematics can be found on-line, and if you have most parts on hand, it is easy to breadboard them and tinker with them. Forums like Muffwiggler provide tons of discussions concerning most commonly encountered problems, and is a good spot for troubleshooting tips. Since then I have built a lot of modules, my favourites being Falafular’s 808 clones, Michael Barton’s stuff, NonLinear Circuits, Fonitronik, and HexInverter. Bareilles Polivoks filter clone is a favourite, as is the Synthacon filter clone by Ken Stone. My first modular cabinet was a monstrosity of modules patched together from different kinds of formats. Eurorack, 4-U and frackrack, and some homemade panels to patch up the holes. Ugly doesn’t begin to describe it. But well, it worked.
Making faceplates was always a major bottleneck. It was messy, too much work and never looked good enough. Drilling holes in aluminum panels, sticking on printable transparancies, etching with acids, none of it was really any good. Having panels made by for instance Schaeffer is very expensive. Then we discovered lasercutting in perspex, or cast acrylic. A local makerspace offered free use of their machines on certain days of the week, if you bring your own materials. We bought up leftovers from a local dealer in perspex. Cheap! And I knew my way around Illustrator, so that was sorted as well. The results looked really good. You can use markers or paint in the engraved lines and wipe off the excess with alcohol, or polish it down, which also gives it a sort of used look. Very nice. So then you start thinking; what else could I make with these machines? Well, cases, of course. So I did. Suddenly I had what looked like a collection of semi-professional modules in a beautiful case. Using Euro-rack rails and Perspex panels, you can design all kinds of beautiful enclosures for machines.
Then I learned about Fritzing and other software to design pcb’s with. Fritzing is free (though a little buggy sometimes) and really easy to use. It is developed by the Fachhochschule in Potsdam, and contains lots of parts libraries which are being added to all the time. It is sometimes a little hard to find the right footprint for certain parts, but when you’re done with your circuit and reasonably sure it might work, you can export your work to a set of Gerber files which tell a machine just what’s what. You can mail these to China, and in a few weeks you receive a batch of finished pcb’s!
I had this Doepfer sequencer, pretty nice, but big. I thought of the baby-10 and realized I could probably fit a baby-8 on one tiny panel. After all, I mainly used the Doepfer in a straightforward manner, as a step-sequencer, and I could fit about 5 baby-8’s in the space it took up! So I Fritzed it and sent it off. That was my first PCB! I built around 30 of them, and sold a few. It needs some refining, but it has served me
well. I decided to make a bunch of modules that are simple and cheap, since I’m still learning after all, and there are a lot of super-sophisticated modules out there, running on programmed chips and Arduino’s, tiny computers almost. I decided to go the opposite way, also because I can’t do code, haha. And I like the way simple things combined can produce pretty intricate results in the end. So yes, I am hooked for life.
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Ginko Synthese ‘Even as a child I had an uncontrollable desire to research things and create something out of that. That could be anything but I was mostly obsessed by things that gave off light or made sounds. I was lucky to be given lots of freedom to tinker around, and as soon as my parents thought it would be okay for me to experiment with electricity I did, even thought this was not always safe and I had 220 volts pass through me a few times. Musically I was no prodigy, I was easily distracted and everything around me seemed interesting, so the practicing I had to do for my weekly woodflute lessons were not my greatest hobby. Fortunately I had private lessons from a teacher who realized how to get me to enjoy my chores. She let me draw what I was supposed to play the following week, And so I had some more years of lessons but reproducing existing music from paper has never become my strong suit. In the early 90ies we acquired a home computer in the house and I discovered that using a little program I could chop up the sentence ‘ you’ve got mail’ into fragments and rearrange these and pitch them up or down… I could do this for days on end and I drove my parents crazy with my (a-) musical activities. They realized however how much fun it provided for me and so they asked my brother to install a program on the PC with which I could produce music in a more normal way. From then on I was shut away for years with tracker programs like Fast Track-
er 2. In these tracker programs you use short samples. These samples had names like ‘Squelchy 303 Bass’ These names I found rather odd and I was curious as to where they came from.,, Well, hardware, right? Very expensive hardware which I would be never able to afford from my pocket money! As luck would have it I was able to get an old organ with a rhythm box from somewhere. So of course, I had to take that thing apart! The oscillator part, with the knowledge I possessed back then, was doomed to a pile of useless parts, but the rhythm box I managed to keep operational and it became my first attempt at circuit-bending. After highschool I mostly wanted freedom, but Art school was not really up for discussion and my parents were afraid that freedom at that point was about the last thing I needed. A middle ground was found and I went off to study Bouwkunde, an education with a concrete goal and yet some form of creativity. During my years of studying I shared the stage often with Maarten (Klankman) and Jessie (Piouxie) as Pecnoc. In this setting I was the one who came to every gig with something new to try out in the setup, sometimes to the great annoyance of Maarten and Jessie. After my studies I went abroad for a year first. When I came back I moved in with them. This resulted in hours and even days of non-stop jam sessions in our living room. Meanwhile I was working as an independent architect un der the moniker Studio Ginko. Deep in my heart I didn’t really like the work as an architect and because of the crisis there wasn’t a lot of work. So I started to spend more time on my music and on building instruments. A chamber of commerce registration I already had and all I had to do was change the paperwork in relation to the field of activities. The first module I built for others was the TTLFO (Tap Tempo Low Frequency Oscillator) This was based on a chip by Electric Dragon and the development was actually rather simple. Initially I just wanted to make a few modules so I’d at least cover my costs. It turned out to be so interesting that I eventually sold about 300 of them. The greatest challenge with this module was actually the process of production. I’d never had to deal wit a factory that produces PCB’s in large numbers, and where do you get a couple of hundred pots in one go? You can’t get those at
Tap Tempo LFO Thank you for buying the incredible LFO based around the Electric Druid TAPLFO chip. It ’s not the LFO you already know… It is synced to your master clock, or sync it with the taps you make on the tap button and it is quite useful as a taptempo master clock generator.
•Eurorack size • Width: 10HP (50.5mm) • +/-12V and 5V • compatible with Doepfer Features • 8 waveforms • multiplier / clock divider • horizontal wave distort • external clock input • CV input for distort amount • CV input for multiplier • LFO output (selectable between 0/5V and -5V/+5V) • clock output
The module needsnext to +/-12V also +5V from the powerbus!
On the back you will find 2 headers. One for the powercable and one for selecting the voltage output. The powercable is Doepfer compatible but check my website http://www.ginkosynthese.com/ttlfo/ support to be sure you connect it right! If you connect the powercable upsidedown it will destroy the lfo chip! The red paint on the PCB is the -12V side.
1
Select your favourite waveform here
2
The multiplier divides or multilplies the tempo of the incoming clock or tapped tempo
3
The distort knob shapes the wave in a horizontal way. Play with it and see what happens!
4
Visualised output of the TTLFO
5
This is the clock output. The clock output is divided or multiplied by the multiplier from the incoming or tapped tempo
6
This led does not show the clock! It light up between two incoming pulses on the trigger input or taps on the tap button
7
Tap in sync with the beat to synchronise the TTLFO. You also can use the TTLFO as a masterclock generator for your modular system
8
CV input for modulating the multiplier. Turn the multiplier knob fully clockwise to get most effect. This input accepts only 0V-5V cv signals!
9
CV input for modulating the horizontal distortion of the waveform. Turn the distort knob fully clockwise to get most effect. This input accepts only 0V-5V cv signals!
10
Input for syncing the TTLFO to an external clock signal
11
The cv output of the TTLFO. On the back you can select if it puts out -5V/5V or 0V/5V
The 3-pins header has a jumper on it. This jumper sets the output voltage between 0V/5V and -5V/5V.
www.ginkosynthese.com
your local electronics store around the corner anymore. The TTLFO was a nice start to develop modules in a more business-like manner. I had a lot of wild ideas when it came to new modules, but one idea had to be done: the SampleSlicer. Maybe this notion for a module is still lingering from my ‘ you’ve got mail’ period in 1992. I wanted a module that could sample in real-time and chop up the audio. The idea was simple and I wanted to keep things that way. I experimented a little with ISD chips which are used for voice-recording but I soon realized that if I wanted to do everything I imagined it to, I would need a programmable chip. I had programmed things before but this opened up a new chapter in which my knowledge was a little short. After an enquiry posted to Facebook I received a message from Mels, who indicated he might be of help in this. All the work I had done before on prototypes could be discarded to the rubbish bin straight away, it seemed, because everything could be done better suddenly. The concept had been crystallized to such an extent already that I could explain to Mels what the module had to be able to do at every step. But it also meant I was very focused on realizing this one goal. And maybe there I should have let go a little, to speed up the process. In the end it took 1,5 years to get from an idea to a working module. Great to have a result at last, but the costs for the module were rising daily and taking this module into production would be unfeasible without proper financing beforehand. That is why I set up a Kickstarter project for it. A Kickstarter project allows people to sign up for a future product and pay for it before it has even been taken into production. The goal was reached pretty quickly and so we could move into production. But by that time there were like a hundred people waiting for a module. The pressure was terrible and every little setback made it seem like the whole project was failing. Production costs turned out to be twice as high as originally thought, and in the first batch delivered the noise-floor was unacceptably high. After a modification the noise problem was solved but in the mean time the technology used in the sample slicer was outdated due to the swift developments with the ARM chips which could easily handle twice the load of what we pushed into our CPU with so much effort. But of course it was quite a kick to be able to
produce a cool module with only 12 bits and limited processing abilities which sounds musically good. But although developing a module like the sample slicer is a very nice challenge, I have chosen to focus on more simple modules for now. I can not afford to take the risks I took developing the sample slicer in the coming time. And the development of more simple modules gives a lot more peace of mind. The first module released after the sample slicer was the ‘Grains’, I developed this module more or less on the advice of others. I had already developed this module as a prototype at the time I started with the TTLFO and I regularly brought it to gigs. So technically I only had to refine it and design a panel for it. Because the module is so easy to put together I decided to design it completely for DIY and workshops. The design is stripped as much as possible and the PCB is kept as simple as possible. This inspired me to design a new line; a series of cheap modules for DIY lovers. The ‘Mix’ is the first result of this, In this series we will have, amongst others, the ‘Tool’, a stripped-down version of the TTLFO, programmable through USB so that it can also be used as an ADSR or a sequencer, actually a cv-version of the ‘Grains’. Alongside the ‘Grains’, the ‘Mix’, and the ‘Tool’, there will be a low-pass filter and a VCA, so in effect a very easy to build and very cheap but complete modular. A modular with 2 LFO’s, 3 oscillators, a mixer, an LFO and a VCA you can build in one day for about 250,- euros. Apart from the DIY series there are a few more complex modules in planning, but I’m not going to get as worked up about them as I did before! A module that is ready to go is the TTLFOv2. I completely revised the module around some new firmware. The new module will be more slim, has been expanded with an additional cv-input and the -5/+5 header has been brought to the front as a switch. In addition I have plans to design a module around some PT2399 delay chips, but it will not be a delay module! The modular synth is going through a big hype these days. For me the modular market has always been a place for afficionados who share a passion. I’m afraid that at this time lots of people are getting into
modular who now produce music from behind a laptop. These people probably have completely different expectations from modules and the modular in general than the people who fell in love with the additional value of the ‘inconveniences’ of the modular synthesizer before. I want to produce modules above all for the lovers of crazy stuff, so besides the more accessible modules I want to experiment with unusual audioprocessing, different forms of media and for example video-processing in the modular system. We don’t really need more oscillators and filters after all, do we? I’m not a modular purist, I just want to do stuff and make things that I find interesting at that moment and it doesn’t really matter what form it takes.
The SampleSlicer
Paul Tas
and ErrorInstruments;
Travelling
Noise-Drone-Salesman
If you go to visit Paul Tas in his home near Amsterdam, you end up in an avarage rowhouse that exhibits definite signs of wanting to bust out of that line of same-same rowhouses. A banner on the front proclaims it to be the headquarters for ErrorInstrument. What in the other houses is a garage, I think, is in his place a studio, with a large porch attached. The entrance is at the back, or is that the front? Passing wooden robot statues and evidence of out-door woodwork and paint jobs you enter a pretty packed working space, where noisemachines, euro-rack modules, bent Speak & Spell machines and keyboards, all in various states of disrepair, lie everywhere. So this is where it all happens; and as it would appear, all at the same time. You’re an artist originally, right? ‘I have a creative background. I had trouble when I was younger with reading and writing, I have a severe form of dyslexia and am almost analphabetic. I’ve been making art since I was 16, did various small art-schools and eventually ended up studying metalwork out of necessity.
The link between technology and art has always been my passion. I did a lot of work for the fashion industry (Chanel) and also did a lot of industrial designs for Damien Hirst’s Bitmove. I created various art-concepts like the ‘Beeb’ (wooden robots) and other sculptures, I did art-fairs world-wide. Nowadays I’m more inspired by technology in combination with sounds, sonic arts, sound art and kinetic art. I then started a store in musical instruments with the money I’d made in the art world, called ‘ErrorInstruments.’ This web-shop has become very established, also abroad, which accounts for 80% of the sales. It’s all about crazy noise-boxes, lo- and hi-fi. The only constant in the line of products is that they have to be creative. So from Bastl to Buchla. I also provide small local artists and instrument-designers a chance to sell their creations. With a lot of passion and success. There’s a big development world-wide in Euro-rack modules being produced that a lot of creatives want to take advantage of, also in the DIY subculture, because, often, it’s a very expensive hobby. Through the process of DIY a lot of people are confronted with themselves, and they get ideas to make different modules. This is a growing market, also for the business. But business is not the main reason I started ‘Error Instruments.’ There’s no point in competing with stores like Bax or Thomann. Just let ErrorInstruments be exactly as it is, not perfect but certainly unique! A typical day at ErrorInstruments? There is no 9-to-5 or Monday-to-Friday routine at ErrorInstruments. Because of my health I just work when I can and when I feel like it
(which is a lot luckily) We sell mostly on-line but also show ourselves at festivals and events. These events are mostly focused on art and music, very cultural! We give workshops in circuit-bending and sell unique products at festivals. These are in the Netherlands as well as abroad, like STRP, Gogbot, Incubate, Tecart, Sonic Arts, etcetera. We are there as part of the entertainment and work with the crew. I do this together with Underbelly, which focuses on Sound & Media Art in the form of vinyl, CD’s and tapes, but also very interesting books. Bestseller up to now? ‘FERTAS’ has sold quite well, a synth we make ourselves. It has this retro sci-fi movie sound, it’s a combination of and-gates and a delay (PT2399) But these and-gates are no longer being manufactured, so we can only make about 5 more, and the alternative sounds different so now we’re moving on after the Fertas with the Kabinet Bizar. It also has this desired analog psychedelic delay sound. Also the MicroGranny by Bastl is a best-seller. Tell us more about you involvement with Bastl Bastl used to be Standuino and they did workshops at STEIM (Foundation for Electro-Instrumental Music in Amsterdam), this was about two years ago. I thought they had a good product, and they were enthusiastic young guys with a lot of knowledge and creativity from Brno (Czech republic) I made them an offer to sell retail. So I bought 3 for the price of 2 and that was a success, I sold them the same week. I called Ondrje Merta in the Czech Republic and asked him to send me some more.
They were already working on the Pi model, a very creative sounddevice in a limited edition of 50. Interesting for lots of collectors and sellers. Now Standuino has turned into Bastl and they also focus on Euro-rack. But the creativity and the technology have remained and we get along excellently. Drinking, partying, holidays, developments in hacker-spaces in old castles and more crazy stuff. We’re also a part of SGMK (Swiss Mecatronic Art Society.) We had a lot of developments in weird locations all over Europe.
The Bastl Modular Range
Who do you make instruments for mostly? For the creative artist. I’ve made instruments for Thom Yorke, Mark Lyken, Colin Raff, Herman Kolgen, and more sound-artists. People involved in game-design and in movies also use my instruments. My favorite chip is the PT2399, an echo-chip with a very dirty delay. I look forward to the workshops at Incubate and am proud we have so many foreign guests coming over!
Horoscope By resident MASK stargazer Tamara the Mystic ARIES: March 21 to April 20 Your PCB is doing an excellent job today, which means your circuits can think extra fast. Emotions can run high, but you succeed in soldering enough resistors. There might be a chance you are running out of resin, however. Be sure you order in time to make sure you have everything in stock before starting your next project. Taurus: April 21 to May 21 This day is all about the studio. You are efficient and ambitious and you want nothing more than to elevate your music to a higher plane. If gigs are what you’re after, it might be good to put more demos on Soundcloud. Media attention can get you gigs. Make sure you are doing the music you want to make. Do not give in to monetary temptation. Otherwise before you know it you’ll be doing Eurohouse on your Eurorack. Gemini: May 22 to June 21 You’re feeling a little emotional today. Lock yourself away in your studio. If you manage to finally finish something today, it might relieve stress. Make sure you have a good balance in mastering. You will prevent DJ’s from tweaking the controls too much. You have more control over this than you might think and the DJ won’t fuck up your track. Cancer: June 22 to July 23 Not completely happy with the modules you have? Then this is the time to look for something better suited to you. Don’t wait for people to give you recommendations. Modules are a very personal choice and it will be different for everyone. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Then get to work and start Fritzing, so that you can develop your own modules. Leo: July 24 to August 23 After a frightening accident, you will be out of phase with reality for a few days. Unable to communicate with the living and unable to touch physical objects, you will begin to see life and humanity in an entirely new light. The reason for this could be a transporter malfunction or the unconscious consumption of caffeine-free beverages. Virgo: August 24 to September 23 You don’t feel like being among other people so much today. You just want to be left alone and do your own thing, and be spared the opinions and input of others. Don’t feel guilty about it. Seclusion is sometimes a prerequisite for creativity.
Libra: September 24 to October 23 You have a ton of ambition and an inexhaustible desire to reach your goals. You are very loyal, and will go to the limit to help someone. You are a very social being and will conquer many hearts through your personality and patches. Scorpio: October 24 to November 22 If you are not sure of your work, then go through the procedure point by point. There is a very good chance you didn’t solder an SMD chip just right. You have let yourself go lately, but now it is time once again to focus. Finish all those unfinished modules you have lying around in a corner of your room. You will be very satisfied. Sagittarius: November 23 to December 22 You are assimilated by the BORG. Your identity as an individual will cease to exist, and you will be no more than a mouthpiece for the hive mind, some brainless drone, working endlessly till the day you die. You are unaware you are just a small cog in a machine of systematic evil. You have been plugged in. Capricorn: December 23 to January 20 A date tonight with a good friend will bring you closer together. They might tell you a secret in confidence. If something needs to be organized, be sure to pitch in. Today at work you do your utmost, but are once again undervalued. A seductive glance can momentarily unbalance you, so be sure to keep both feet firmly on the ground plane. Aquarius: January 21 to February 18 You are plagued by musical doubts today, and will nearly lose faith. Unconsciously, because maybe you are secretly jealous of all those artists who just press ‘play’ and get all the attention from women. Pisces: February 19 to March 20 You will be bothered today by- Hungry, annoying cats. You will be unable to finish a single- You will not get- Forget it... Unplug and go to sleep. Watch TV.
My First Synthesizer:
Mono-Poly: noodlebar chef I think in another life, Mono-Poly would have been a great chef. He’s the only person on facebook who I don’t mind posting pictures of food. He loves a good meal almost as much as he loves modular synthesizers. And he can cook a mean one, as well as patch up a good bunch of noodledrones and beats on one of his cases. They are full of Serge and Buchla modules, alongside Falafulars and Wiards and what have you. I met him through the Dutch synthforum site, mainly from the Marktplaats section, since he was forever buying and selling stuff. At one point we decided to host a synthforum meeting at my work, after-hours. It was very nice so we did it once more. I think there were about 50 forum members then hanging around, talking about synths and admiring the gear brought along.
He came up with the idea of starting a monthly night for modular synth performers in Rotterdam, which came to be Noodlebar, of which we’ve now had more than 20 editions. It is a great concept; to get those nerds and geeks out of their holes, shake off the smell of solder, and actually perform live, where they can meet other nerds, talk about their cases, but also mingle with ‘normal people’, and music-lovers, or even - god forbid - meet actual girls. ‘I started buying and exploring synthesizers around 1994. The first one was a Crumar Bit One synthesizer, a sort of FM digital/analog hybrid, and later on I acquired a Korg Mono/Poly and Roland JX3P. After that things came and went, and the setup changed over and over. At some point I realized I loved moving knobs and programming more than playing with those white and black things on my synthesizers. Soon I bought my first modular synthesizer, an ARP 2600 and that started a never ending story. At some point in 2007 I went to an Electro-Music.com event in Belgium called “Chateau Sonore” and I met a guy who programmed self playing patch noodles on the Clavia G2 modular. It fascinated me and I became really passionate about self-generating patches, those interconnections between modules that play stuff without any human or computer manipulation at all. Nowadays I’m running a modular event in the Netherlands called “Noodlebar” This is the spot to play modular synthesizers and we have artists from all over the world coming over. I’ve done a lecture at the Dutch Film Festival about modular synthesis and collecting stuff. Played at festivals like Freerotation and did stuff for Intergalactic fm. I have releases on Doppelganger records, Strange Life Records and more... I’ve gigged in various places like Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Oxford, Manchester, Copenhagen, Estonia, Myanmar, and Chengdu.’
A Recipe By Mono-Poly: Jollof Rice Jollof rice, also called Benachin (Wolof: “one pot”), is a popular dish
in many West African countries. Its name is derived from the name of the Wolof people. The origin of Jollof rice is a subject of great debate in West Africa, as many countries have their own version, and abhor “inauthentic variations.”However, it’s origin is traced to the Wolof people of the modern day Senegal and The Gambia.The most common basic ingredients include rice, tomatoes and tomato paste, onions, salt, and hot red pepper. Beyond that, nearly any kind of meat, vegetable, or spice can be added. But here is Mono-Poly’s:
First we need to go shop for some ingredients: - package dry salted fish (bakkeljauw) - peanut oil - small can of tomato paste - vegetable stock - some Shallot onions - one big sweet Patato - one Casave root - 6 pieces of Antroewa (african aubergine) - a big hand of Okro. - butternut squash - small cabbage - spicey pepper (madam jeanet) - pack of rice
Now we need a BIG pot to make everything. First wash the fish to remove the salt. Bring the fish to a boil in some water to remove the last bit. Once it boils seperate the fish from the water and cut the fish into smaller pieces. Cut the shallot and put some peanut oil in the pan to fry the fish and onion. Once the fish and onion are fried remove them from the oil and add 1.5 l or 2 l of water. Add the vegetable stock cubes and the tomato paste and the whole peppers. Cut the potato and the cassave root and add it to the water.
Add the pumpkin pieces too and let them boil for 10 minutes. Now add the Antroewa (cut in quarters,) the Okro and Cabage. Add the fried fish and onions too and let it all boil for another 10 minutes. Now take everything out and put it somewhere so it won’t cool down quickly. With the rest of the water/oil/tomato residue you can boil the rice. You have to figure out a good balance or maybe use a rice cooker. Once the rice is done, mix everything together and make sure you have enough friends to feed!
NOODLEBAR.ORG