Cocoquantus

The Cocoquantus from Ciat-Lonbarde is a most unusual instrument for electronic music.  Not many electronic instrument can claim, “materials include: Walnut, Sassafras, Juniper, Cherry, circuit board, transistors, capacitors, and resistors… ”   Its inventor, Peter Blasser, describes it.

The CocoQuantus is a device by Ciat-Lonbarde composed of two Coco modules (8 bit digital delays) and a central “Quantussy” analog brain (nabra).

The Quantussy is a five (5) petaled flower, each petal with oscirator, that creates a rhythm, that triggers quantizations of the movements of the other four oscirators.  The Quantussy is thus both based on five (5), but four(4)… and its name also refers to Quantum Physics through its unique “double quantizing” of angular momentum.

Running at low frequencies, the Quantussy is intended to provide ample modulations for the various functions of the COCOs, through inputs “FLIP”, “SKIP”, and “SP.AF”, or “Speed Affect”.  The Quantussy petals can also run at audio frequencies, as well as “Balcium” frequencies, depending on a toggle switch.

The center of the Quantussy merits some attention.  There is a central indicator-lozenge of 15 Light Emitting Diodes, showing the “Spesal State” of the device.  The Spesal State is controlled by touching the “Cercel Nodes”, thus preserving Ciat-Lonbarde’s motto of “touch-sensitive is best!”.

To preserve this precious jewel of silicon encased in finest woods, use patch cords to wire it up in its own self-reconfiguring spasms.

These vibrations, spasms, activities, all manifest in unique transpositions and flip-skips in your material, which is input via Mike, Synthin, or special High Impedance Piezoin.  The COCO modules here have a generalized version of the DOLBY cargo-cult preamp, which includes a self-expander, and an other-puncher for maximum POP SENSATION MUSIC>

You see, on each COCO, there is a knob for INPUT as well as FEEDBA…  These are the primary functions of the COCO, to take in sound and recirculate it through *8BIT* digital memory.  These two functions INPUT and FEEDBA, depending on a toggle switch, can punch the others out to create monophonic articulations of time-layers in your material.

The instrument is ‘cottage-made’, according to the website. It is indeed a handsome artifact, each one custom manufactured for the customer. What can it do? The circuitry is arranged as a pair of 8-bit digital sampling devices, packaged with an ingeniously clever quintet of oscillators. It is a stereo device, capable of processing inputs of three types: mic, line, and high-impedance piezo electric device. The digital samplers are independent of each other. They feature various control inputs that are meant to be patched from the oscillator outputs (using jumpers with alligator clips, attaching to the head of screws in the wood panel, which act as input and output terminals).   Yet this is but one typical configuration. The oscillators can be patched into the line inputs, so that the cocoquantus will function as a stand-alone synthesizer.  The sample/delays are conventional enough that I could get the gist of them fairly quickly.  However the oscillators are more challenging to wrap your head around.

The ‘quantussy’ oscillator cluster is designed for complex cross-modulation. It’s going to take me a while to understand it. The design encourages jumping in and messing around, without having to understand it at first. It may turn out that trying to ‘control’ it will be a useless exercise. Briefly: Each oscillator has a three position range switch, high audio, low audio, and LFO. The five oscillators share two knobs, one which sets the initial frequency, and the other that adjusts ‘chaos’. Additionally, there is a control input for each oscillator that reconfigures its relationship with the other four. Each time the control input receives a voltage change, the configuration is randomly altered to one of eight possibilities, which are visually indicated by a combination of red, green, and blue LEDs in the central ‘petal’. Thus there are 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8, or 32768 different configurations. A hand-drawn schematic is available, and I’ll be studying it in an attempt to find out just what these configurations represent. Now, each oscillator has two outputs. The ‘castle’ output is a result of sample and holding another oscillator at the speed of this oscillator. The triangle output is a smooth ramp up and down, which is modulated by the result of other castles, “re-castled”, when you turn chaos “up”. I looked at these outputs on a ‘scope. Once the chaos comes into play, they are quite unpredictable, but are following an internal logic. I was surprised at the variation in frequency resulting from the chaos. A given oscillator can go from high audio to LFO speed and everywhere in between, regardless of the position of its range switch.

Here’s a pic of the underside, showing the incredible printed circuit board that incorporates surface-mounted components.  (Note the nine-volt battery connector, nice for portable use.  It can also run off a 12V wall wart, not supplied.)

Cocoquantus underside

And here’s another photo of the top of the instrument.

Top side view