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Making Other Synth Drum Sounds
In the Making an Oscillator patch, we created a kick drum which decays to an inaudible tone below the
range of human hearing. To create a higher-pitched drum, such as a tom-tom, we will need a VCA to
cut off the audio after the drum decays.
Raise the pitch of Channel A using the sliders or Channel B’s
Offset
knob. You should hear a steady
tone between Channel B firing. Now we’ll route this sound through Channel B’s VCA. Unpatch the
cable going to the mixer and patch it into
Audio Out B
instead. Patch a cable from
Env Out A
to
Audio
In B.
Now you should hear a similar drum sound, but it will be silent between hits. If you are using the
exponential modification in the previous patch, you probably will want to dial it back because the VCA
itself has an exponential response.
To add some noise to the sound, you can patch an external oscillator into
Audio In A.
Then move the
patch cable going from
Env Out A
to
Audio In B
so that it goes from
Audio Out A
to
Audio In B
. The
external oscillator will be amplitude modulated (AM) with the synth drum sound, and this resulting
sound will be VCA’ed with Channel B’s envelope. Play with Channel A’s sliders and
Rise/Fall CV
knobs
to hear the range of possible sounds. Next use any of the
Env Out
jacks to modulate the external
oscillator in time with the synth sound.
Try adding slight modulation to the
Time CV
of Channel B to create organic, naturally changing drum
sounds. A slow LFO or a CV sequencer will work nicely.
Page of
11
20
Rise
Fall
Rise
Fall
Rise
Fall
Level
Rise
Fall
Cycle
Follow
Follow
Trigger
Time CV
Rise
Fall
Time CV
EOR
In
In
Fall
Rise
Level
Offset
Offset
Slow
Fast
Slow
Fast
Audio B
Out
Out
Audio A
A
B
VCA CV
VCA CV
Trigger
B
EOF
ENV
OUT
OR
A
Env
Out
Slow
Fast
Med
Slow
Fast
Med
Dual EnvVCA
A
Cycle
off
To mixer/output amp
Cycle
on
Switches to
Fast
.
Rise
and
Fall
sliders
control attack and
decay of kick drum
Sliders set the base
pitch and waveshape
Rise/Fall CV
fully to
the left
Rise
switch to
Fast
.
Fall
switch to
Med
.
Level
controls
amount of modulation
Level
controls volume
From trigger source
(gate sequencer,
clock, manual trigger,
etc.)
Optional: Sound
source to be AM’ed
Optional: To mixer/
output amp