Richard Brewster's Synthesizer » Music MP3s

Tetrazzi Dark Drone

Richard — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:18:57 +0000

I’ve had the Tetrazzi Organ for about a week. I have a pretty good understanding how it works now, and I’ve been practicing to come up with playing techniques. It’s oddly named as an organ, since it has no sustain (the salient characteristic of an organ). To get sustain I used the Cocoquantus as a sampler. This recording uses the dolby features of the Cocoquantus, set up to duck the loop mix whenever I play the Tetrazzi. The loops are a sample of the Tetrazzi, pitch-shifted to a very deep bass region, and these provide the slow drone cadence. Over the top of that I improvised on the Tetrazzi. The CGS dual tube VCA adds overtones and sub-octaves, and a pair of Blacet Time Machines follow those.

This is kind of scary sounding. Don’t listen if you’re easily frightened by scary sounds.

Party Horns

Richard — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:38:32 +0000

It was a small party. Cocoquantus + Morphing Terrarium, some envelopes and VCAs, S&H with glide for pitch. The coco quantussy petal controls the … —Read more

Sensitive Dependence

Richard — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 23:19:17 +0000

This is the cocoquantus patched back to itself and left to run. I used the configuration in which four of the five oscillators are patched in a circle. The name refers to the concept of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. The cocoquantus is a chaotic pattern generator. Set the initial conditions and it generates patterns. A tiny move of the chaos pot changes those conditions. I didn’t touch it during this recording. There is a lot of bass in this one. Use of tiny earphones may lose some of it.

Late Nite TV

Richard — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 23:23:18 +0000

I’m trying out different combinations of equipment with the cocoquantus. In this patch the quantussy oscillator cluster is patched into the MOTM 510 Wavewarper, back through the COCO delays, and then through the Lexicon MPX-1 to add echos (way overdone, of course).

Petal On Its Own

Richard — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:46:09 +0000

This week’s cocoquantus patch again utilizes the CGS Tube VCA as a timbre enhancer. This time not only do the coco outputs each pass through one of these, in addition I’ve taken quantussy triangle outputs over to the CGS VCA CV inputs. This makes for interesting timbres. I finally understood the workings of the cocoquantus’s chaos circuit. For a decade I’ve been trying out different aleatoric techniques. The cocoquantus exceeds my expectations for an aleatoric controller. To duplicate the quantussy section would require five VCOs and ten sample and holds. For this recording I used a chain of four out of the five oscillators and let it run on its own for the entire recording without intervention.

Could It Get Some?

Richard — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 22:53:40 +0000

The cocoquantus with two of its oscillators patched back into the coco inputs, patched through the Uhbik phaser VST plugin in Audio Mulch. I … —Read more

Aleatoric Croaks

Richard — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:08:46 +0000

The Cocoquantus integrates well with the main synthesizer. All I need is cables with a phone plug on one end and an alligator clip on the other. In the patch for this recording the audio and CV all originate in the Quantussy, the cluster of five oscillators. Two of them provide the audio, which is patched first into a CGS Tube VCA to generate more harmonics, and then through a MOTM-480 VCF, then through an Oakley Cycling ADSR/VCA and back into one of the COCO delays. There are two of these routes, making for a stereo patch. Two more of the cocoquantus ‘oscirators’ are patched over to the frequency CV inputs of the MOTM-480. For this recording I didn’t use the feedback on the COCO delays, so that the result would be simple and clean. In essence, I used the cocoquantus as a cluster of oscillators. The aleatoric (random) quality comes by means of the chaotic interaction within the cocoquantus among the oscillators.

Cocopuffs for Dinner

Richard — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 23:42:46 +0000

The mail lady just delivered my Cocoquantus! I’ve only just started playing with it. Here’s my first recording. I created a simple drone patch using one Buchla 258J VCO, modulated by the dual XR-2206 VCOS with the sine and waveform outputs patched through a pair of Haible Trapezoid VCAs in self-cycling mode. These are patched into the Cocoquantus, which is recorded. I manually operated the COCO delays and did not use the Quantussy Oscillators. The recording starts out dry, you just hear the patch. Then I bring up the delay feedback and shortly afterwards start messing with the delay frequencies. Wild.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Richard — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:08:17 +0000

Yesterday I happened to listen to some of Ancient Eyeball Recipe (Nelson Baboon) on Soundcloud. It inspired me to get back to my roots, whatever they may be. So today I made this patch. It is recorded straight out of the modular with no digital post processing. I needn’t describe the patch too much, except to say that it includes two MOTM-300 VCOs, a MOTM-440 VCF, and two Blacet Time Machines.

Four Low Pass Filters

Richard — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:54:54 +0000

There are lots of excellent sounding filters available in modular land. I have a pretty good collection, myself. Well, today I tried doing a comparison of four different 4-pole (24 db/octave) low pass filters. It’s not easy to keep all things equal, but I tried, as follows.

The audio input to all four filters is a sawtooth wave from a MOTM-300 VCO. It’s being stepped in a repeating pattern.
The inputs are all somewhat attenuated to avoid over-driving effects.
The 1V/octave CV input of all four filters is a single MOTM-800 envelope generator.
The initial cutoff frequencies of the filters are as close as I could get them by making them resonate and matching their pitches.
The resonance (Q) is set all the way down, since I don’t have a good way to set them all to an equivalent resonance.
I made an attempt to keep the signal levels even.
The recording is mono.

And the four filters are:

Synthesis Technology MOTM-490 VCF
Oakley Filter Core Super Ladder VCF (Transistor version)
Mattson Mini Modular VCF
Mankato VCF

I’m not saying in what order these filters appear in this recording. It is not the above. You’ll have to guess. I’m making a post on Muff’s where anyone interested can comment. (You can comment here, too, but I’d rather have the discussion on Muff’s.)

What strikes me is that all four sound remarkably alike! You can hear subtle differences. This is NOT meant to be a shoot out of which is “best”. Truth is that these filters are quite different in overall features, one from the other. They are not mutual replacements. But they all have a 24 db/octave low pass output. Here it is: