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Kniferide wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:08 pm

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:37 pm
That is awesome. Care to describe what's under the hood there? If it's a trade secret I understand!

It is 8 simple square wave oscillators made from Schmidt Hex triggers (probably CD4584's but I cant remember). They are wired so you can set the volume and tune each Osc, and either let them drone free or flip a switch that sends them through the momentary switches to be played like a keyboard. They all get mixed through a master volume and master kill switch at the end. It is a box of really angry bees. Fun to build because from a single 14 pin dip you get 4 oscillators using only a single cap and pot for each OSC. Mega cheap easy way to make racket.

So this is kinda like a Lyra-8(9?) w/o the touch plates or FX section? Do the oscillators interact or cross modulate?

turnbullac wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 10:41 am So this is kinda like a Lyra-8(9?) w/o the touch plates or FX section? Do the oscillators interact or cross modulate?

I've made a few drones. Some times I use the lfos to drive LED/photo resister VCA than can modulate the other LFOs, sometimes I make optical theremins out of them. I'm not familiar with that thing in the video, but it looks cool. THe things I build are mostly just giant noise machines. This one is fairly playable.

numberthirty wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:30 pm
Just to go into just how interesting this thing really is...

You can do a whole lot of crazy stuff with it. Mostly I just let it go nuts for a while and cut interesting loops out of the output, string them together in reaper, but its really fun to get one driving a synth and on driving a drum machine. It's great.

turnbullac wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 10:41 am

Kniferide wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:08 pm

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:37 pm
That is awesome. Care to describe what's under the hood there? If it's a trade secret I understand!

It is 8 simple square wave oscillators made from Schmidt Hex triggers (probably CD4584's but I cant remember). They are wired so you can set the volume and tune each Osc, and either let them drone free or flip a switch that sends them through the momentary switches to be played like a keyboard. They all get mixed through a master volume and master kill switch at the end. It is a box of really angry bees. Fun to build because from a single 14 pin dip you get 4 oscillators using only a single cap and pot for each OSC. Mega cheap easy way to make racket.

So this is kinda like a Lyra-8(9?) w/o the touch plates or FX section? Do the oscillators interact or cross modulate?

nice noise machine, Kniferide!

and no, the Lyra 8 is a bit more complex. I own one and it's fantastic!!!!! a couple of years ago I googled "drone synth" and came across the Lyra 8. I've spent days playing around with it. the analog delay alone is amazing. you can turn of the oscillators and make beautiful noise with the just the delay, driving it into feedback. coolest synth I ever owned!

nice noise machine, Kniferide!

and no, the Lyra 8 is a bit more complex. I own one and it's fantastic!!!!! a couple of years ago I googled "drone synth" and came across the Lyra 8. I've spent days playing around with it. the analog delay alone is amazing. you can turn of the oscillators and make beautiful noise with the just the delay, driving it into feedback. coolest synth I ever owned!

I played my Lyra 8 (w/pedals etc.) at the camp out. There may be video coming at some point

Kniferide wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:08 pm

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:37 pm
That is awesome. Care to describe what's under the hood there? If it's a trade secret I understand!

It is 8 simple square wave oscillators made from Schmidt Hex triggers (probably CD4584's but I cant remember). They are wired so you can set the volume and tune each Osc, and either let them drone free or flip a switch that sends them through the momentary switches to be played like a keyboard. They all get mixed through a master volume and master kill switch at the end. It is a box of really angry bees. Fun to build because from a single 14 pin dip you get 4 oscillators using only a single cap and pot for each OSC. Mega cheap easy way to make racket.

Very nice! A year ago or so I started spending those insomniac nights drawing up some detail for a drone synth design using said triggers. I was going to try and get a little nutty with lots of options for each oscillator on a switch/pot matrix. Wanted at least five oscillators with at least an lfo for each, at least a master low pass filter (with lfo), and hopefully some sort of ring mod and PT2399 delay. It would be great to have the pitch and volume modulated, but at that point we are talking a shit ton of oscillators and parts, especially if I were to find a way to cheat some extra waveforms out of each one. But a key part of the plan was to get some nice long slider pots for pitch and volume for each oscillator with a bank of five sliders dedicated to each respective function. This way you can use two hands to manually modulate the volume and pitch of each oscillator pretty fluidly. Likely need a fine tune for each also.

Thought about a way to add further triggering for an outboard box, but obviously we are getting complicated and I clearly never built any of it so... I should probably do up something like you did and figure it out later.

This looks cool


“Reverb” might be a stretch but the platform invites play & experimentation for sure. I think it could sound sweet run through another actual reverb. Doesn’t look too complicated either…

If you're trying to "noise" on a budget...

You can do a ton with simple stuff like: a cheap microphone, cassette decks and/or walkman, a cheap mixer, and scrap metal.

If you want an analog synth, here's some inexpensive / entry-level ideas: Arturia Microbrute or Minibrute, Korg Monologue, Volca, or Monotron.

Any combo of the above with a cheap distortion pedal and some kind of delay... you're all set for starters.

For recording, I honestly just use a Behringer U-phoria interface into an old Apple laptop with Audacity (free multi-track recording / editing program). Audacity is limiting, but does the job just fine. I've heard Reaper is a better free program, but I haven't looked into it.

Facebook reminded me of this weird thing. Cranking the gain on a mic and using your mouth to play feedback synth. Its a lot of sound.