2. Getting Started
High Towers can be used to great effect without understanding the intricacies of it’s operation.
It has two main modes of operation; ‘Gates’ and ‘Cues’, selected by a switch on the front panel.
When in the ‘Gates’ configuration, High Towers performs much like a regular clock divider that you may already
be familiar with, just with added features. Patch the four ‘out’ sockets to whatever you want to receive clock
divisions, feed a clock to the clock input, and then play with the ‘division’, ‘preset’, and ‘mode’ knobs. ‘Gates’ is
great for everything you’d use a clock divider for; controlling sequencers at different rates, creating drum
patterns, etc. See
for more information on this mode of operation.
When in the ‘Cues’ configuration, High Towers sends out short pulses ‘on cue’ at an interval. The cue for when
the pulse occurs can be shifted with the 'mode' knob, and the intervals can be changed with the 'division'
knobs. An example use of this mode would be triggering a snare on every 7th beat of a 16 beat measure. Patch
the four ‘out’ sockets to whatever you want to trigger (eg drum sounds, samples, filter pings, etc), select some
intervals with the ‘division’ knobs (or pick a set with ‘preset’), and then select when events occur within the
intervals with the ‘mode’ knob. See
for more information on this mode of operation.
When addressed via CV, all of High Tower’s knobs become attenuators. The CV range is 0V to 5V.
3. Functionality Explanation
High Towers Block Diagram
High Towers has 4 clock dividers – labelled
A
,
B
,
C
, and
D
. They all receive clocks from the same source, but
are not set to specific clock divisions. Instead, the divisions are selected using the division knobs and the
presets knob – see the
section.
In ‘Gates’ mode, the clock dividers can be set to count up, down, or to one of a variety of modes that oscillate
between counting up and down – see the
section.
In ‘Cues’ mode, the clock dividers function very differently - see the
section.
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