DIY Electronic Music Box Inspired by Buchla's Music Easel

via /Manu: "Sigma-blog document's the development of my Electronic Music Box DIY performance synthesizer inspired by Buchla’s Music Easel. Everything is going to be under a 6U rack format engine bonnet. The density of controls is something between Doepfer and MOTM. Color-coding is little from Buchla (blue and red) and I am using nice NKK-switches and Alpha-sliders with LED’s inside (take a look at Henrik Nydells Modulator).

The heart’s of this design are my two Oakley VCO’s that I am going to take apart and give a new life as complex VCO’s. Jörgen Bergfors has designed a beautiful Complex VCO here. The core of my Complex VCO is Oakley VCO. Waveshaping is by Bergfors and Ian Fritz. Two waveshapes can be selected by voltage and mixed to MIX-OUT. The second VCO is simpler with just basic waveforms and Buchla’s timbre generator from Music Easel. Timbre can be modulated by voltage.

8-step VCP sequencer is from Fonitronik. It is an interesting design where you can select Gray code patterns (256 patterns) with voltage.There are three options for every step; normal 8-step sequence, skipped, ADC-controlled gray code. I am going to integrate Electric Druids TAP-tempo clock to this sequencer so that you can choose the tempos on fly.

There are two LFO’s that use the same PIC-chip as in the sequencers TAP-tempo clock. This is a very versatile digital LFO-chip with TAP-tempo/external clock, six waveforms, wave distort and tempo multiplier. More information is here.

To save time I decided to order Doepfer-modules that I am going to adapt in my own design. A-149-1 and A-149-2 generate random quantized and stored voltages as in Buchla’s Source of Uncertainty. Two A-101-2 LPG’s as Buchla’s Low Pass Gates. A-134 PAN can do voltage controlled panning or two signal morphing."

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