Stolen from muffs ( from senor whimsical himself)
A back story
Just Friends has been an all consuming project for the better part of six months. Through the process Whimsical Raps has transitioned through numerous stages of development and decline. These have materialized both personally and professionally, the lessons of which have formed the foundation for how this new creation can be conceived and described.
Originally described as a ‘tempo-relative modulation source’ the design centred on LFOs running at musical ratios relating to one another. Onward this concept was imagined in a simple series of integer-multiplied cycles, then extended to variable relations and eventually embracing an obsession with Harry Partch and the utonal series for an inverse relationship of rhythms. Just Friends follows the habit of other Mannequins modules by itself containing multiple, independent functional blocks, driving them with unified controls while providing ‘relational’ elements. This desire propels the idea of complex interactive systems where small gestures have manifold influence.
The functional endeavour was clearly aligned with the archetypal west-coast universal & function generators. Of course this small world already has enough wonderful recreations of these designs and any effort in this direction would need to look outside of boxes. Nevertheless, some concepts seeped in- three fundamental modes for different kinds of envelopes & LFOs, leading to individual trigger inputs. Reimagining the traditional Attack/Decay mentality replaced with Time/Ramp was a logical borrowing from the Mangrove (itself inspired by the DUSG), which prompted an appraisal of the modulation vs sound source question.
Running modulation oriented devices at audio rates has always been an inspiration- perhaps hearing the Moog Ring Mod transition from tremolo upward was a formative experience. Thus Just Friends was always intended to reach audio rates for some of these effects. It wasn’t until reading some of Allen Strange’s work about the temporal relationships in sound & music that I saw the importance of breaking down this duality, to embrace the many scales of time used in music. While this bears itself out as a panel switch between shape/sound, both modes are capable of control & audio rates (albeit with limited ranges) a principle difference being in their output voltage scaling (unipolar / bipolar).
From this dualistic modulation source / oscillator mentality some refinements of the Curve control were obvious. Ramps needed to approach sinewaves for pure oscillator tones, and inversely squarewaves were a welcome addition. The combination of Ramp allows lovely PWM sounds over squarewaves, and the ‘sliding’ transition from ‘log’ into square is designed to allow EMS-style trapezoid shapes. Frequency Modulation is also indispensible in my own sonic endeavours, so it seemed natural to add that capability here, and utilize the digital nature of the device to implement through-zero sweeps and define sounds not otherwise possible in the Mannequins range.
Rather than a menu system, Run adds modality via CV control. It began with a desire to have sequence-style control amongst the generators which ended up more gimicky than musical. Regardless the seed was planted and instead developed into a way to expand the 6 permutations of Mode & Speed. Of particular note the ability to add a sustain stage, burst generation and lpg-style oscillator pings pushes the device into alternate realms and functionalities. These additions are more of an aside than a driving force though, and they intend to ease exploration of some more complex patches without being intended as primary functionality.
The four fundaments are honed in as the primary direction. Envelopes are incredibly varied and the shaping possibilities are musically oriented. Tempo-oriented LFOs an obvious focus, with reset-style sync allowing for drifting polyrhythms that come back around. Then as an oscillator the possibilities are wide open both in terms of additive synthesis with separate (sub)harmonics, as well as FM & subtractive methods depending on your patching approach. Finally the wave impulses at audio rate push the Mangrove formant concept to a new plateau- Timbres are more gritty & glittery depending on your perspective though with multiple outputs begging for filtering.
