One number on the level of what passes through it. At one it changes nothing, below one the sound is quieter, and up to three it is louder — which is what a stage taken down by a filter, a blend or a shaper needs to get back before the next thing hears it. Gain is an input as well as a knob, and that is the other half of the module: an envelope patched in opens and closes it as a note is played, an LFO makes it a tremolo, and a second voice brought up to audible speed multiplies the two, which is what a plain voltage-controlled amplifier has always been for — the ring modulator is that last one as a module, with the sound that went in kept beside the product. Gain amount is how far what arrives moves it, and below nothing it moves it the other way, so the same envelope ducks this path instead of opening it. It is the plainest module here on purpose: the mixer is where four paths come together and carries a level for each of them, and this is one level on one path, for the places where bringing in a mixer to turn one knob is more patch than the job is worth.
Four notes played on Keys, passing through it on their way out.
A Juno-6 as its panel was left: pulse, sawtooth and the sub-oscillator together, the pulse width swept by the one shared LFO, a ladder filter tracking the…
The finished blues trio from a zine that builds a 12-bar blues one instrument at a time. Two choruses: the first with held organ chords, the second with a…
Stage 6 of a 12-bar blues built one instrument at a time. The whole trio from stage 5, now arranged into the full twelve-bar blues: three lines of four bars (A…
Stage 5 of a 12-bar blues built one instrument at a time. The organ from stage 4 through a homemade Leslie (a spinning speaker): a Tremolo pulses the volume, a…
Stage 4 of a 12-bar blues built one instrument at a time. Drums and walking bass from stage 3, plus an organ built from three sine waves, the note and two…
Stage 3 of a 12-bar blues built one instrument at a time. The drums from stage 2, plus a walking bass: one note per beat, stepping through the chords A, D, A,…
Stage 2 of a 12-bar blues built one instrument at a time. A drum kit made from scratch: a sine-wave kick with a quick pitch drop, a snare from a burst of…