A soundscape built around revised "Beeps" module

video upload by ParadisoModular

"This is a demo of one of my vintage modules that I just radically updated. First, a bit of history. Circa 1988, I was browsing the Hosfelt Electronics catalog, and saw a bunch of little circuit boards there that made different 'emergency' siren sounds. Of course, I couldn't resist buying all eight of them that they had, and designed a synth module around them that allowed me to switch (manually or via external signals) the audio output from any of them into the left or right channels on a common stereo mix. In addition to a linear mix, I also combined them via a chain of exclusive ORs (the VCOs on these units produced square waves), again selected by the same gates - this produced kind of a ring modulation sound (Exclusive OR's can be thought of as 1-bit multipliers). On the front panel, I also provided outputs from each oscillator independently, as well as the ability to inject independent voltage control into each oscillator.

Despite my attempts to leverage this module into different patches, it retained a distinct identity - e.g., the sound of a major urban emergency - that limited its usefulness. You can hear a short demo excerpt I recorded on it circa 26 years ago here- http://Paradiso.media.mit.edu/Outgoin... - I'm switching outputs from the alarm circuits randomly to left and right channels throughout - the first half features the linear mix and the latter half the XOR mix. You can clearly hear that this module makes a very strong statement -as such, it didn't appear much in my pieces over the years.

But I still saw big potential in it. 8 oscillators aren't much by today's digital standards, but as I can switch them into different paths dynamically, it's got promise. The main thing I had to do was to be able to turn off the LFO control of each oscillator that made the siren sounds and think about coordinated ways to control this bank.

So a month or two back, I embarked on this journey, enabling the LFOs to be switched out of the audio oscillator voltage control paths (but giving independent access to them all, providing LFO outputs on the front panel and in most cases voltage control of LFO frequencies), plus providing adjustable voltage control of each oscillator as well as different kinds of ensemble voltage control (e.g., controlling all 8, controlling the top vs bottom 4, controlling even vs odd channels), as well as being able to adjust the base frequency of the ensemble and the base for each independent oscillator. Witness the massive augmentation of the front panel, as well as the wild nest of wiring below to do this hack in the midst of this video.

But low-and-behold it's done. This isn't a voiced device - the oscillators are linear, hence don't hold tune collectively as you shift frequencies. This, for me, justified the hack - I've got plenty of oscillators that I can already voice and track harmonically - this unit is now about nudging frequencies collectively and independently to go through different kinds of dissonances and occasionally sweet spots in a deep ensemble fashion. Plus, if I want to, I can switch channels back into siren mode, or use their LFOs in more flexible ways (each of the LFOs sports a different kind of waveform).

OK, IMO it grew into the monster that I hoped it would become, as you can hear in this live recording. Here I routed both the linear and XOR outputs through different complex reverb units, fading them up in different ways and at different times, and switching the oscillator outputs dynamically into different channels using digital gates coming from other modules in my system (occasionally I would hold some or all of the gates to just let the thing drone). I also injected different kinds of ensemble control (all, even/odd, top/bottom) at different times to bend the frequencies a bit, driven by triggered envelope generators. All sounds come from this revamped 'Beeps' unit - one voice was routed through an octave divider to bring it lower, and some effects were used, plus the reverbs nicely put this beast into a dense dreamy space. Despite the complexity, it's one of the simplest patches I've made - you can see it in the little bit of pan-around video I put into the middle of the clip.

My usual disclaimer - heck, only 8 oscillators with simple control paths could be done trivially in software now (one of my hero-pieces, Dave Wessel's 'Antony', an inspiration here, used hundreds on IRCAM's 4x (or 3x back then?) circa 30-40 years ago), and there are probably Eurorack modules around like this now too, including some that I may already have. But this connects to something I made in my relative youth, turning it into the sonic tool that it wanted to be. I hope you enjoy this demo!"