Patching percussion: Marimbas, gongs, and wood blocks
This is a great patch for creating resonant percussive sounds. You need a trigger or gate source. A clock module such as the
Quad Clock Distributor (QCD) or RCD or SCM from 4ms works well. In a live setting, you could use manual trigger/gate
sources such as the FSR-4 from Synthwerks, or the Pressure Points from Makenoise. Another option is a trigger recorder
such as the Tri-ger from Qu-Bit Electronix.
Patch the black “evens” OUT jack into your mixer (un-patch all other jacks).
For stereo output, also patch the white
“odds” OUT jack into your mixer and pan it to the left. Pan the black “evens” signal to the right.
Patch your trigger sources into the IN jacks. Two sources with different rhythmic content is ideal, however if you only
have one trigger source, just patch into the “odds” jack. To start, have the triggers firing about once or twice per second.
The odds IN jack goes to channels 1, 3, and 5. The evens IN jack goes to channels 2, 4, and 6. So each trigger source can
strike a chord of three notes.
Listen to how the channels resonate when struck with a trigger or gate, they should sound like a gong or marimba. Adjust
the Q (Res) knob to change how “ringy” the sound is: low Q is like a wood block, high Q is like a large bell.
The amplitude of the triggers also effects the sound, try attenuating or boosting the triggers before they reach the SMR.
Notice that the SMR will be struck on both the rising and falling edge of a gate, so two sounds will be heard for every gate.
Triggers will cause only one sound since the rising and falling edges are very close together.
Adjust ROTATE and Spread to change the pitches of the notes, and play with the sliders to adjust the level of each note.
Input another trigger source into Rotate Trig → or Rotate Trig ←. If you don't have another trigger source, you could input
an LFO or envelope (0 to +5V) into Rotate CV In and the rotation will track the waveshape of the incoming CV.
Play with slowing down the rotation from the external triggers by turning up Morph. Try setting the rotation trigger source
super fast and then turning Morph up and down to adjust the speed of the motion. Morph is a powerful way to limit musical
movement (and it can be CV controlled).
The ROTATE knob is also a button: push and release it, and you will enter SCALE mode.
Notice how the LEDs change: the bottom six LEDs are one color and there should be one LED that's slowly blinking colors in
the top half of the ring. This is SCALE mode. Turn the ROTATE knob and the blinking LED will move: each position in the top
half of the ring represents a different scale (there are eleven). Listen to how each scale is different. You may want to click the
ROTATE knob again to go back to Rotate mode so you can rotate the channels around to hear how the scale sounds. If you
like, patch CV into the Scale CV jack to control the scale selection with another module.
Run CV into the Level CV jacks. Gates from a QCD work great, and you can flip the CV Slew switch to the left to smooth
out the click that happens when a gate snaps up or down. Setting Morph higher when you flip the Slew switch will cause more
slewing to happen, which means very fast CV in the Level CV jacks will be rolled off.
Try running a fast decaying envelope into one or both Freq jacks. Time it to the trigger sources to get membrane drum
sounds. Or try a 1V/oct melody line from a sequencer to track the pitches. Flip the 135|1 and 246|6 switches to select which
channels are modulated/tracked, and which stay steady.
5
Trigger
source #1
Trigger
source #2
TO MIXER
