Bass / String / Tuba. hmm.
as far as i understand it, we have: 1 main squarewave oscillator.
its pitch (labelled 4') gets divided down to 2 lower octaves (labelled 8' and 16'). two submixes of these octaves are made, both of which are sent to their own crude single trannie VCA's.
the Main Mix VCA features: a decay control and a bypass switch for continuous sound. the result of which gets sent to 2 selectable bandpass filters. et voila: Tuba and String presets.
the second mix (no 16' in that one) has a fixed -short!- decay time on its VCA, and is only used to mimic the plucking attack of an electric bass in the 'bass' preset. which is basically the String sound, with this second voice added. seems a bit of a waste.
So.
the divider chip yielded some more suboctaves, only one of which was musically relevant. anything below this 32' ended up spewing clicks. interesting, but not for my purposes - not this time. added it to the mix.
next, brought out the fixed mixes to be fully variable for both voices. lots of new textures. and pots, for that matter.
VCA decay time for voice 2 is now controllable as well.
since detuning one voice against the other is not an option - they're both based on the same oscillator - and since the waveshapers i tried didn't seem too happy with the square waves, i decided to have an arpeggiator thingamawhatsit jumping between the four available octaves of the second voice. figured i could build one with a 4051 analog multiplexer i pulled from an old wacom tablet. ignoring future real estate problems, i thought i'd go Cook Your Own Pattern sequencer style on the arpeggiator: 8 steps, slider selectable between the four octaves.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth, just unscrew the lid and see what you can use.
as far as i understand it, we have: 1 main squarewave oscillator.
its pitch (labelled 4') gets divided down to 2 lower octaves (labelled 8' and 16'). two submixes of these octaves are made, both of which are sent to their own crude single trannie VCA's.
the Main Mix VCA features: a decay control and a bypass switch for continuous sound. the result of which gets sent to 2 selectable bandpass filters. et voila: Tuba and String presets.
the second mix (no 16' in that one) has a fixed -short!- decay time on its VCA, and is only used to mimic the plucking attack of an electric bass in the 'bass' preset. which is basically the String sound, with this second voice added. seems a bit of a waste.
So.
the divider chip yielded some more suboctaves, only one of which was musically relevant. anything below this 32' ended up spewing clicks. interesting, but not for my purposes - not this time. added it to the mix.
next, brought out the fixed mixes to be fully variable for both voices. lots of new textures. and pots, for that matter.
VCA decay time for voice 2 is now controllable as well.
since detuning one voice against the other is not an option - they're both based on the same oscillator - and since the waveshapers i tried didn't seem too happy with the square waves, i decided to have an arpeggiator thingamawhatsit jumping between the four available octaves of the second voice. figured i could build one with a 4051 analog multiplexer i pulled from an old wacom tablet. ignoring future real estate problems, i thought i'd go Cook Your Own Pattern sequencer style on the arpeggiator: 8 steps, slider selectable between the four octaves.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth, just unscrew the lid and see what you can use.
