Midweek Modular: Ground Control, Wobbler2 and Broken Tape Trackers
This week Endorphines put Ground Control in a box, TiNRS put drums into Wobbler, Error Instruments makes everything sound dodgy and ST Modular has some drums.
From SOMA Labs we saw the Pulsar-23 Utilities box. It’s a desktop unit that adds a bunch of extra modules to the Pulsar-23 drum machine. This includes a range of VCAs, sensors, CV generators and other bits and bobs. While designed for the Pulsar-23, you can patch it into anything. Just be aware it uses crocodile clips as patch cables. Read more about it here.
Midweek Modular
Here are the most interesting bits and bobs of modular that I came across this week.
Endorphines Ground Control Standalone
Ground Control is Endorphines 4-track MIDI, CV/Gate performance sequencer. It offers three melodic CV/Gate tracks and an 8-trigger percussion track that can all run independently. Velocity and CC control can be recorded over MIDI and you can send MIDI back out to sequence stuff at the same time as the CV/Gate. There are many cool things like rolls, ratchets, arpeggiations, slides and transpose. There are mutes, scales patterns and projects. All of it is controllable from the front panel and the natty little 2-octave keyboard.
So what’s different about the standalone version? Nothing really; it just comes in its own powered case. And while that’s not particularly innovative, freeing the Ground Control from your rack could give you a lot more versatility and easier access to the controls. It also saves you the trouble of doing it yourself, and at about £50 more than the regular version, it’s probably cheaper too.
This Is Not Rocket Science Wobbler2
When TiNRS decided to rework the fascinating Wobbler LFO module, I didn’t expect them to build in a drum synthesizer. It doesn’t feel like a natural fit, but then TiNRS rarely plays in the land of the conventional.
The Wobbler advanced LFO is still very much front and centre. It gives you a unique take on modulation that aims to take the chaos from the natural world and have it inform upon the movement of the voltages. There are 5 waveforms to play with, 2 of which are drawn from physical modelling. These include a regular sine wave LFO, a self-phased LFO, Twang, Pendulum and Sample & Hold. The shape can be modified, and you get a pair of outputs (for phase shifting) and a pair of triggers that fire on every cycle. You’ve got to love the two LED arrays that keep you aware of what’s going on.
So, what about this drum synth? Well, if you hit the appropriately named “Bang On!” button the 5 shapes can also be employed as drum sounds. Each shape can be manipulated into a whole range of different sounds, but as a general rule, you have a Big Drum, Block, Sproing, Snare and Hi-Hat. There are loads of control over the character of the sounds, the decay, pitch and envelope. Feed some CV into the Shape knob, and you have a useful linear drum machine.
We did see it at Superbooth last year but it’s taken its time to get to market. I can’t wait to have a go.
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- This Is Not Rocket Science website.
- More from TiNRS.
Error Instruments Broken Tape Tracker
Error Instrument’s mission in life is to make the world lo-fi and glitchy as artfully as possible. The Broken Tape Tracker is the perfect example. It is a beautiful-looking module that immediately transports you to some alternate reality. The Speed knob in the middle is the main source of interest which applies disastrous tape effects to your signals. You can also approach it via the light sensor and wind up the feedback, pushing it into more distortion.
The VU meter at the top shows the current state of the glitchiness, and it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. The wet/dry knob lets you blend the madness into your original train of thought.
Error Instruments modules are always fascinating and bring a unique sense of the otherworldly to your Eurorack.
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ST Modular TrommelMaschine
TrommelMaschine is a 3-voice hybrid drum synthesizer based around the Mutable Instrument Peaks. It has a digital drum voice switchable between kick and percussion with pitch and tone controls along with three modulation controls depending on the mode. The analogue voice has decay, drive and a pitch envelope with further controls over pitch and length. Lastly, we have a noise generator with colour control and a decay slider.
Each voice can be triggered independently and have level controls to balance the voices through the mix output. Or you can use the individual outputs. It looks like a very hands-on module with lots to play with.
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