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The
Step Brother as we said have a flexibility from the
design and technology used, that allows to take beyond cer-
tain parts that were originally intended to be controls and
that in a certain way they can change the role from mo-
dulator to be signal generators. Is particularly interesting
to change the role of the sequencer to a graphic waveform
oscillator.
The concept would be the following: the sequencer can
reproduce a series of voltages periodically, but instead of
using those voltage variations to control a oscillator let’s
“listen” to those voltage cycles. For it we will use the non
quantized output (figure 9 on the front panel). Due to tech-
nical issues (amplitude and resolution) it is not recommen-
ded to use the quantized output.
We can connect that output to VCF input or even direct to
a VCA input or audio output module for to be able to hear the
result.
Getting up the clock speed to the maximum we will not be
able to obtain enought tonal height, despite the maximum
100 Hz of the clock in its maximum position. This is because
if we use a sequence of 16 steps we have to have in mind that
each cycle advances one step whereby to obtain a complete
waveform cycle the result at 100 pulses per second equals
wavelength of 100/16 = 6.25 Hz. So we will not be able to hear
the fundamental frequency when it is below the 20 Hz lower
limit of human hearing. The sound that we can hear will be
the variations transients of each step, but never a funda-
mental frequency at such a low frequency.
Although we shorten the steps length, in order to obtain
higher frequencies we would not get very far either, a mini-
mum sequence of 2 steps would give us a oscillation frequen-
cy of 100/2 = 50 Hz plus that being only two positions the
result would always be a square wave.
We’re going to need to use a voltage controlled oscillator
that allows to reach sufficiently high frequencies as to “move”
the 16 steps of the sequencer fast enough so that the entire
cycle reaches frequencies of at least 5 Khz, (in that case we
need a VCO that reaches up to 80 Khz. It should be noted that
for this master oscillator function it is recommend to use
shaped oscillators of pulse wave type , with enought ampli-
tude and if possible unipolar (does not pass through the ne-
gative half cycle) able to adjust the pulse width of the master
oscillator since at high frequencies beyond 20 Khz certain
oscillators distort the square wave and may lose the effect
of operating the sequencer, needing an adjustment of pulse
widht to recover the compatible form with this function.
We also use a VCO that follows a Volt for Octave standard,
to be able to use the “graphic oscillator” in a musical way
using keyboards or other sequencers to drive that master os-
cillator.
With this configuration ready, we can draw or compose
the waveform using the tuning sliders of every step. The
speed of sweep is so high that it gives feeling that all the led
lights of each step are turned on at same time, offering a very
visual and direct representation of the waveform that we’re
drawing in real time.
VII. Advanced techniques
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