#41

Wow, wonderful tracks! And thanks for the thorough writeup. Lots and lots to think about.

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#42

Will just did another limited batch run of the Cowboy Callosum—the double DK, with an idiosyncratic mixer between the two units. Rather amazing, the range and possibilities of 4 shift registers reacting to each other. It can do gentle gamelan sort of music and rubbery funk, and all points in between. Much more complexity than a single DK, I reckon. By comparison, the KM does seem a bit like a 1-trick pony.

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#43

Neat. Would love to hear some examples of the Cowboy Callosum if you have them!

#44

Will do when I get a chance. It is a really rewarding yet elusive device. If you like what you’ve composed, record it, as Allieway Audio sagely suggests. I’ve left the banana cables in a particular set-up that’s produced pleasing results only to find the next time when I turn it on, everything’s obviously different because the shift registers are bouncing off each other in different patterns than before. I found on MW a simple patch that produces “pseudo-random” patterns–really just long loops from what I can tell. Until real life reclaimed me again, I’d just begun to explore Callosum part of the equation, a rather eccentric mixer, that incorporates additional modulation. I’d be over the moon if I could figure out the best way to connect my Keyed Mosstone to the double DK. So far, the KM has been a little shy to join in on the fun.

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#45

Mossy Popcorn.

Master Clock is Pamela’s New Workout. It clocks NE Numeric Repetitor and Integra Funkitus which play Double Knot and Keyed Mosstone. DK shift reg gate out plays Mosstone Envelope Rise. A little playing of Mosstone Keyboard and some gradual patching.

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#46

Hey, so I just tested my mosstone’s rise and fall CVs pretty extensively, and I can say that they do indeed both work in the same way on my unit. However, you are correct, there is some biasing of the input which causes everything to tend toward the further values as you turn the knob - I believe all knobs on the mosstone work this way, upon further examination. However, I do not think this a design flaw or oversight - it allows you to explore several different ranges of control with one knob!

For example, in this following audio demo, I patched a double knot bit output to the mosstone’s fall cv input so that we get alternating “long decay” and “short decay”. I start the demo with the knob fully counter clockwise, and turn slowly clockwise throughout. As I turn the fall knob a little bit, you get small fluctuations in decay time, and then, the further I turn the knob, the more extreme the fluctuations become. At the same time, as I turn the knob a bit further, the longest decay time becomes slightly shorter, biasing more toward the shorter decays, but as you can hear in the demo, this lets me go from exploring more subtle, long decays, to having more plucky alternating tones. This works fell due how fast the decay can go, since, by the time you’ve turned halfway, the longer decay is still reasonably long and it’s alternating with a quick plucky decay - turning further, you get more percussive blips than ‘decays’, which are complimented well by a more plucky “long decay”. I end this audio demo with the fall knob fully clockwise, and as you can hear the resulting “long decay” is short, but still noticeably different from the “short decay” it’s alternating with.

I’m not sure if this is the problem that you’re pointing out - but if so, I really don’t think it’s much of a problem as much as a consequence of the way he’s set up with dual-purpose knobs. I should also mention that the rise cv input works the exact same way - you may just not have noticed because the rise control’s range is very subtle for the first third of it’s rotation, but the cvs shift in a very similar way when using this knob as an attenuator.

If your mosstone doesn’t sound like mine does in the demo when you turn the knob, maybe your unit is defective, but if this sounds familiar than I would say everything is fine - it’s a cool sound and an interesting way of doing modulations in a compact setting, and it compliments the mosstone’s plucky nature, so learn to work with it and embrace it :smiley:

#47

Remain In Tusky Mosstone Light.

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Double Knot is master clock, and plays ‘bass’ and ‘toms’. It also clocks Noise Eng Numeric Repetitor, which plays two of Mosstone’s key inputs, the third is played by a shift reg gate out from DK. Rise and Fall on KM and modulated by this gate also, sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both.
Apologies for bass heavy mix. It was all stereo, live to DAW.

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#48

Allie, thanks so much for all this, but I’m afraid I still don’t think so. At least not for my Mosstone.
The Fall knob is still active when cable is connected with 0v. This can’t just be a slight DC offset. It’s the whole 8v.
Conversely connecting the same inactive gate to Rise and the knob does nothing, maybe the slightest change.
Once CV is applied, with Rise we can cover the full range of the knob. With Fall we can maybe get 1/4 of the range, even when we invert to make the fall time longer.
This is the worst video ever, but there was no way to get a good camera angle, sorry. Still, I think it shows what I’m moaning about :wink:

#49

Every Cable But One

Keyed Mosstone Envelope CV and FM experiment.

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Double Knot is master clock, and plays ‘drums and percussion’ clock is sent to Noise Eng Integra Funkitus and then to Numeric Repetitor, gates from NR play the Keyed Mosstone, and envelope CVs, which are also played by shift reg outs from DK. DK higher sound tri wave is FM-ing KM Osc. Also some random stuff from KM, clocked from DK, spread around. Tuned echoes - Eventide Pitch Factor. No hands.

11 Likes
#50

I watched your video lloyd and tried the same thing on my mosstone and achieved the same results - however, I’m not convinced that the low bar output is unbiased (I don’t think it is at exactly 0v when not touched). I tried a similar test with the ground jack on my gesture arcade which would be a true 0v (you could do the same with your mosstone’s ground jack, just be careful you don’t connect it to any outputs), and you’ll see that the change is a bit less severe. You are definitely correct that the knob continues to have some (though less) influence over the CV, but I also do believe that the rise CV is exactly the same way - the reason you don’t hear it’s effect is because, as I said, the rise has a very subtle increase for the first half of the knobs travel, so the effect is subtle (but still audible on mine IMO).

However, I understand feeling frustrated if you feel it should function another way ideally - perhaps there is a mod that could cause it to work as you imagine (though it’d probably require some way of removing the knob’s cv entirely, potentially with a mechanical switch). I’m not an electrical engineer though. In my opinion though, this is a pretty minor issue, and these are far from perfect instruments - there imperfection is part of their charm, in my opinion, and as my demo showed you still have plenty of control range when it comes to modulating the envelope in musically interesting and fun ways! :slight_smile:

#51

Thanks, Allie.
I guess I’ll get the multimeter out on Monday!

#52

As Patch Point has stopped selling them and Schneidersladen has not started jet, Lorre Mill seem to be not sold in EU at the moment (April 2019)

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#53

The problem with Double Knot.

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Is it sounds so good and it always seems to make some cool rhythm or other… and it takes over your day.
Today I was supposed to be just experimenting and figuring if I needed more logic and gate modulation modules to get what I want from DK and KM…
Allie’s trick of taking one of the opposite shift reg outputs and connecting it to the fill in is great, but with the SR being only 8 long, unless you’re constantly playing the red and grey buttons (and if you do it’s very easy to lose the groove) then the effect (often turning a short drum into a bass sound or similar) can get, maybe, overly repetitive… So I was wondering if I could take these SR gates and make them happen less often, and maybe also play with the gate lengths. Enter Make Noise Maths (gate length, variable) and Noise Eng Integra Funkitus (semi random clock division).
It sounded so musical that I had to make some music with it.
The idea of taking the Lorre Mill clocks and messing with them made me think of clocking Morphagene from DK and then having Integra Funkitus take the same clock and reduce the probability of it happening and have that trigger the Morphagene Record In. Then putting Keyed Mosstone, sequencing itself using DK clock, through Morphagene. That’s pretty much this piece. Some of the tones were a little shrill so I put Morphagene through RxMx, using FXFf as input, and had a slow LFO move around the frequencies.
Then I messed around a little.
I really like the sound of radically playing the Osc CV in Attenuverter on DK. It’s great that it goes from -8 to +8. For this piece, it’s mostly at around 2 o’clock for the bass/drum but switching it all the way CCW creates a ‘key change/bridge’ almost James Brown kind of change. Ditto on the sound of the higher percussion sound.
The other trick I tried was taking another one of the DK SR gates, and feeding it to KM FM in. It’s nasty, but quite nice, I think.

Here it is.

Sorry, Allie. I’ll get to the multimeter ASAP.

11 Likes
#54

i love this whole series of DK/KM recordings!! please keep them coming!

2 Likes
#55

I’m probably not the best person to be testing voltages. But I do own a multimeter. It looks like almost all DK and KM outputs, where we expect 0-8v, actually have about 1.3v offset. Even the clocks. I did compare to the ground and that shows 0v.

Allie is right, up to a point. The knobs work exponentially, the first half of the turn makes very subtle changes only, and that is about all the 1.3 v offset from the lower bar gate adds. Or pretty much anything else from Lorre Mill where we expect 0-8v.

Fall and the Rise behave differently.
For Rise - when a gate, like the lower bar, is connected to the CV in, when the knob is turned fully CW, just the CV offset is added and the rise time goes from the absolute minimum, to slightly slower - what would be about 11 o’clock.
For the Fall, the fall time goes from the absolute maximum, to the absolute minimum, minus the effect of the offset, so about 1 o’clock (which is the same as the Rise, as they work in opposite directions). This is because the knob is adding its own influence PLUS the incoming CV, which it is attenuating.

The difference is most apparent when we apply the gate (+ the offset). For the Rise we get rise time variation of almost the whole range of the knob, from the very slowest to almost the very fastest.
For the Fall we get nowhere near as much variation, we can go from almost the absolute fastest fall time to maybe half way to being the longest, maybe not even that.

It’s quite possible that this is how Will intended the KM to behave, but it’s not what the manual says. I still think it’s a fantastic little instrument and the way the keys work alone is worth the price of entry. But this CV thing seems to be what we from England would call a bit of an own goal.

#56

Just in case there was a suggestion that I’m no longer a devoted Lorre Mill fan boy…

Mossy Insistence. All tones Lorre Mill. Some via Make Noise.

9 Likes
#57

Really enjoying this Lorre Mill recording scene going on this thread!

Here is a track with the Double Knot paired with a BugBrand Crossover Filter, audio and CV is routed via a Meng Qi Arcade Manifold. Also a Delptronics Thunderbell with a Zoom MS70CDr

Here’s another recorded to an old stereo microcassette recorder, DK, LepLoop Multicassa, Ciat Lonbarde Tetrax and Grendel Drone Commander.

7 Likes
#58

That’s lovely, really enjoyed listening! Thank you

#59

love these!! phantom crank reminds me of sun araw a bit. really great album art too. thanks for sharing!

2 Likes
#61

The easiest option is to run the bipolar signal through a diode, this will prevent the negative cycle of the voltage from coming though. This will change signals though. An LFO that looks like this / \ / \ / \ (imagine it connected, weird stuff with the formatting) will look like this -^-^-^. Another option, that does good for me, is to run the bipolar signal through an offset/attenuator then use a scope to verify that you have lifted the signal to remove negative voltage (or run the output through a diode to be safe).

1 Like