#940

Right thanks. I guess I just got confused by their extolling the Gate input on the 0Coast as something unlike what is found in their other modules.

#941

I’ve just been watching the Tony Rolando ContinuuCon talk again and found the part about the dynamics section particularly interesting too.

I typed the section out as it’s provoked some questions for me and figure it might be interesting for other people reading through this thread too:

“The Buchla instrument shipped with two stage envelopes, which were quite a bit simpler than the four stage envelopes that the Moog instruments shipped with. And my theory behind that, is that it kinda all ties down to the dynamics sections. The Buchla used an element called a vactrol, which is a light dependent resistor that’s mashed up against an LED, and it’s a very gorgeous sounding component, it is very low distortion, it’s wonderful - except that it’s also very slow. And what happens if you patch an ADSR into a low pass gate - that’s the circuit that Buchla used for controlling amplitude that utilised that vactrol element - it basically slurs the whole thing into something that looks like two stages anyhow. So it’s almost like you’re spending the money to put a four stage envelope in an instrument that really cant make use of it. On the other hand, on the East Coast, Bob Moog had developed a transistor based VCA that was very fast and because it was very fast, it was able to respond to the very sharp edges and all four stages of the ADSR envelope.
The really interesting thing to me here, is that the Buchla instrument was designed to be played with sequencers, while on the East Coast the Moog instrument had a black and white organ style keyboard in front of it. It was asking to be played in a way that had sustaining notes and for creating sustaining notes, the ADSR is just infinitely more useful. And so the combination of that fast VCA and the four stage envelope and the keyboard made it a much more humanly played instrument. Where as on the West Coast, the use of the two stage envelope and the really slow gain control element and the sequential controllers made the Buchla instrument more prone to being programmed - machine music essentially.”

So this raises the question — would pairing Make Noise’s Contour with Optomix and not Dynamix essentially be a waste of the virtues of choosing the four stage envelope in the first place? Does anyone here have Contour and Optomix or another vactrol based low pass gate?

@hermbot I’ve been watching your YouTube videos and really enjoyed the Make Noise Low Pass Gate comparison — condiment rating system included — have you used Contour with any of them?

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#942

mm sorry i feel like this is a bit retconned. tony should take another close look at 180, 110, 281, 292, and maybe a listen to electric weasel, buchla/rosenboom etc.

the earlier EG module (180) has 2x ASR sections. but, they have different S durations, and the outputs are designed to be OR’d. so you can make an ADSR, or an ASDSR. (plus both the 180 and 110 are totally transistor based…)

the later EG (281) has 4x ASR sections arranged in 2 pairs, and a dedicated “blended OR” output for each pair - so, effectively simultaneous ADSR outputs (which can also produce something like an ADADSR with quadrature engaged.) and the later VCA (292) has opamp “gate” paths in addition to the vactrol “lowpass” paths.

(just to be clear, here’s how you patch an ADSR on 281:

  • take your gate signal (which has a sustain section)
  • mult it to A and B stage gate inputs
  • put A in “transient” and B in “sustained” mode
  • take “A or B” output
  • voila, your “OR blend” knob is your sustain level)

there are ADSR plucks all over the place in that music, and of course driven by gates from touch kbd or envelopes/schmitt triggers from external sources.

(in fact when i think about my dad’s sound world, it’s like he always wanted to be surrounded with these percussive trills, these clean transients and ringing undertones. bird and gong music. drones, less)

at the same time i guess i would agree that don had applications in mind that most others did not. (e.g. quad panning, and yeah more complex generative structures.)

but yeah, this “made for sequencers” sounds like a mort S perspective, but there was a lot of interest in direct gesture goin around as well.

(really, this whole east/west notion has been forced all out of proportion. it’s weird. “identity thinking,” vs appreciating the particularity/concordances of people/things/events.)

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