This Drum Machine Isn't Normal!

video upload by Oscillator Sink

"At Superbooth two years ago, as I was walking the halls I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice said “oscillator sink, let me show you my groovebox”.

Now whatever gets conjured in your mind when you hear the phrase “groovebox” is probably not the Drop from Mad Sound Factory, but after a few minutes of patching and turning knobs I had it generating extremely aggressive gabber, and naturally I was hooked and named it one of my synths of the show.

In this video we’ll get to know Drop, how it works, how it sounds, how it plays with others - including a discussion of how to get banana jacks and euroracks to talk. As the video is long (because of course it is if it’s on my channel), I’ve added chapter markers throughout, and scattered some small no-talking demos throughout, both with drop as a solo instrument, and in ensemble with other instruments.

Transparency notice: Mad Sound Factory kindly sent the Drop to me for free for the purposes of making videos about it. I get to keep the unit, but no other payment was made for making the video and MSF have been given no editorial oversight for this video.

Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:14 The Tone Section
00:05:50 Interlude 1
00:06:42 The Noise Section
00:14:47 Interlude 2
00:15:19 The Filter section
00:17:14 The Bias control
00:19:01 The Saturate control
00:21:46 Internal Sequencing - Clock Dividers
00:24:43 Internal Sequencing - Clock FM
00:27:01 Internal Sequencing - LFO 2
00:29:04 Internal Sequencing - LFO 2 Gate
00:31:16 Interlude 3
00:31:56 Internal Sequencing - Combining Clocks
00:34:14 Internal Sequencing - Exploration
00:42:06 Interlude 4
00:42:51 Integrating Banana Jacks and Eurorack
00:46:46 External Sequencing
00:54:31 Sequencing the Clock
00:56:56 Interlude 5
00:57:48 Using logic gates to expand the clock divider
01:02:27 Will it drone?!
01:07:37 Triggering with audio
01:08:32 Physical Triggering
01:09:53 Final thoughts