From: Christopher List <Christopher_List@sonymusic.com>

Subject: Used my modular in a show this weekend...

Date: 19 Jun 96 14:53:02

This isn't really DIY, but I thought I'd share a little with you guys, since DIY's been slow lately and I'm not really following AH...

I used my modular, "Betsy"...Quick aside here - The name has nothing to do with Ric's "Bernie". Rather, the name was picked by my manager here at work who said "You have to give it the name of a big, buxom woman, like they did with the bombers in WWII - something like Maralyn, or Maxine, or Betsy". After months of having him ask me "How's Betsy doing?" I got so used to the name that I started using it myself...

Anyway, I used Betsy for a show on Thursday and Saturday last week. I didn't do too much crazy stuff with it. I basically tried to set it up with 2 or 3 big patches that were as flexible as I could make them. Both nights were 50 minute "main event" type shows so I didn't do too much repatching.

The first patch was a synth lead and was mainly controlled by the cv/gate on my 303. The sound, BTW, puts the 303 to shame and the audio output of my 303 didn't see any action on either night. I used two VCOs, VCO1 driving the PW and FM of VCO2. I could play with the depth of each. VCO2 had it's square wave and saw wave going into a state-variable filter (with mixer inputs), then through a timbre modulator then out.

Ob DIY content:I <<strongly>> urge anyone making the EN#?? state-variable filter (this means all you folks making Gene's ASM-1 boards!) to set it up so that you have a knob to mix the HP and LP outs. I made this change to mine two days before the show and it was infinitely better than switching or re-patching. Just connect the LP out to one side of a 100K pot, the HP out to the other side. Next convert the inverting-summer used for the notch output into a unity voltage follower connected to the wiper of the pot. Add a switch to select between this out and the bandpass out. This is the only way to go - sweeping the knob does a total phase sweep sound-shift kinda thing...

Anyway, I had the pitch for the VCOs connected to my CV mixer so that I could change the tuning on both oscillators with the "offset" knob and so that I could throw in a random sample and hold pitch voltage for the "fax machine noises" we used in our intro.

My other patch was for processing an 808. I ran the 808 into an amplifier / follower. I had my sequencer clocked from the gate on 303. I used one row of the sequencer to set the pitch on a VCO. The VCO's sine wave output went to one side of a ring mod. The other side of the ring mod was the 808 audio. This works like a pseudo frequency shifter on the 808 (with a lot of carrier feedthough - which sounds kinda neat if it's a sinewave and it changes pitch in time with the beat). The output of the ringmod went to a state variable filter I made from a CEM3350 - the frequency of which was modulated by the envelope follower. This processed output went to one side of a x-fader, the other side of the xfade had the 808 audio clean.

The performance went well, everything out of the modular sounded totally unique and made people crazy. After we were done I set it up in test-pattern mode as a sort of little light show while we were breaking down. (Got this idea from Juergen) I clocked the sequencer from a VCO who's frequency was controlled by a random-sample and hold being sampled every 2 seconds or so. I clocked the up/down cv input from another slow LFO. The lights would all blink, then click across slowly, then change direction, then jump, then all light up, etc, etc.... People were asking me how I got the lights to synch up with the music the DJ was playing - just lucky I guess...

- CList