Euterpe Synthesizer Laboratories Vertice, User Manual

Page: 47 / 70

Playing with your fingers
With an unplugged cable inserted into the GATE port the note is always ON. This is an interesting trick to
have a DC signal flowing in direction of MCƒ or VCA , obviously via EG-LEVEL attenuator. What is this for? Well, you
can play the EG only touching the tip and the sleeve of the cable together. You don’t need a keyboard to play
staccato! :-)
This behavior is a consequence of some circuit design decisions and it is also the reason why if you put the
mentioned cable into a generic port of another device the LED blink. It is normal.
Sequencing the GATE
Obviously you can use a fake GATE signal to control the EG. Just plug a +/-5V, or less (or more, it doesn’t
really matter until 13V, after that it can become dangerous because if you push it further you can break the EG
input), square CV into the GATE port and you have a brand new one-note sequencer. Shape it with the ADSR
controls or duplicate the main rate with an EG modulation, just with the activation of the LOOP function. This
can be very enjoyable.
Do you like drops?
Of course you like them! It's started as a joke but then it comes out that this thing could be useful in
some esotheric ambient situations. The goal was to emphatize drops. What kind of drops I'm talking about?
Well, you know, surely it's happen also to you to turn OFF your sound source when the receiving module,
often a filter, still be power ON and modulating under some sort of angular LFO wave, like saw or square.
The basic noise of the circuit, shaped by the cutting and resonance settings, continue to flow and often, with
the mandatory huge-chatedral-reverb and some digital delay set to " beyond infinity", thousands of elegant,
cinematic, perfect-to-close-a-really-noisy-two-hours-live-performance drops starting to falling down from
your monitors or PA. Could we forget this fact? Could we ignore that it's 3:00 in the morning and you want to
go to sleep but our machine is still ON and, beside you don't want to play anymore, and this is why you shout
down the signal source, VERTICE is not tired enough? VERTICE want to play drops right now, and you can't do
anything about that, bitch.
Well, to giving to our beloved VERTICE users some sort of control about those drops, to avoid mass suicide after
48 hours of continuous constant drop playing, we managed the main pcb in order to obtain something that a
good engineer with a straight engineer approach would certainly avoided: two a little bit too close tracks. The
B filter preamplifier start with a 47kΩ and close to that zone we routed the EG output track to let it pass near
this resistor. Yes, dangerous. But effective. The two elements couple themselves electromagnetically, mainly
'cause of the huge EG output level, and this is it, now you have the Drops Level! Let's find another company
that can say that. ;)
Ok so: no signal, EG loop ON, now listen only the B filter. Obviously you'll hear the EG hitting the three C f giving
"the beat". Now try to open the B filter level. Raise it. It's important that you don't have a coupled ground
on B, or in another words you have to unplug the Audio IN cable from the B and turn up the B level. This is
sufficient to activate this Drop Level possibility. You have to raise the volume close to max to have a clear
increase of presence of drops, but now you can.
Remeber that this is audio signal now, not an EG modulation. So everything affecting the regular audio will
change something also in your drops.
Ok, this thing, as allways in all "Fantasia" designs, can lead to some problems. You will notice that when
compressing a BD (the SD have better behaviors due to its mid frequency content) you'll hear the "drops".
First: in VERTICE the audio signals generally are thounsand times bigger than drops.
Second: if it annoys you just raise down the B level or just plug a cable connected to some turned on but
silent machine. This two solutions are valid by their owns and lead to the same results: you'll have zero EG-
modulation-sound into the B filter, 'cause in both case the mentioned 47kΩ resistor is wired to ground.
Drip, drop, drip, drop.
Rain is falling down.
Drip, drop, drip, drop.
Splashing all around.
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