Tortured DB-01 filter harmonics soothed with a Big Sky (no talk, possibly no music)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"I like melody. Looking back at when I played synth-punk live back in the day, the music then probably had too much melody. Well, I'm making up for it here. It's just playing with sweet-spot harmonics made bearable by the newly-bought Big Sky. Too nuanced? Too nerdy? Not even music? Maybe, but look at them harmonic peaks :D

In my recent post asking whether I should send back this glowing blue reverb cliche a sizable group voted for "Make some videos and we'll let you know". It's got to be some praise for the Big Sky that these droning harmonics suddenly became sweet to my ears. In fact I didn't intend to make a video about this at all. I was just booting up the new Big Sky to make sure it worked (after my sad experience of a DOA Line6 DL4), got to preset number 2, tweaked it, twiddled the DB-01's filter knob, and here we are.

So there's some hesitation in posting this since it seems incredibly obscure. Five minutes of resonant squeals? Yet I found it strangely hypnotic and satisfying. The only other filter I've come across which was even close to the Polivoks in twiddle-fun was the classic Moog ladder on my now long-departed Sub-37. It is also fun to discover separate tones with tiny filter movements. OTOH maybe it's just the Big Sky doing all the work?

Perhaps it's best to look on this as you would a dreamy session on a Lyra-8: It's not so much music as a brainwave meditation session. And that's not bad at all for a little mono bassline synth.

As usual there is absolutely no processing other than what you see: A DB-01 and the Big Sky (plus the old sci-fi samples).

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DB-01 reunited with the Zen delay - "It's not you it's me"

video upload by Richard DeHove

"The trusty DB-01 teamed again with the Zen delay. What you see is what you hear - there's no other sound processing of the music, not even a final limiter. Nor is there any volume tweaking of different parts. It was all recorded in one pass although it was cut down from about 5 minutes to three. The vocal samples are from a 1958 sci-fi movie 'The Day the Sky Exploded' about a swarm of asteroids threatening the Earth and the world uniting to destroy them.

The silly title 'It's not you it's me' refers to me having bought the Zen delay for the third time - a new record in the cycle of GAS and regret. But I'm reasonably confident I've finally accepted what I don't like about the Zen and the fact that I will never find the perfect delay - the 'Zen' name adding a final dollop of irony to the whole thing.

The re-buy was also helped along by the sad story of my new 'blackout' Line6 DL-4 delay. Imported it from Thomann in Germany and it was dead on arrival. Well, not quite dead, it would work for anywhere between 30 seconds and two minutes and then freeze. A shame because it sounded pretty good from the little previews I managed to hear.

You may notice I added another cable to the DB-01 rear from the clock out to the gate in. It adds little sixteenth note clicks. The waveform displays the interesting left-right variation created by the Zen.

In other news, it may be time to create a DB-01 'masters' school. Your rank will be determined by how much text from your interface has been rubbed away. At least with my two machines I can tell which one I bought first.

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The drum machine pedalboard Ep1: Roger That & Future Factory

video upload by Richard DeHove

"The first episode in a new series which will explore different pedal and routing combinations with the LXR-02 drum machine. First up are two Roger That pedals from Fairfield Circuitry (for left-right stereo), a Boss GEB-7 EQ and the Future Factory stereo delay from Free the Tone. Some might recognise the pedal setup from my last video with the DB-01. I liked the stereo effect so much it seemed a shame not to swap out the DB-01 for the LXR-02 and give it a test.

0:00 Intro (the only talking)
1:12 Tippy Tap
2:34 Grinder
4:09 Industry Anthem
5:32 King Pong
7:11 Ping Kong
8:49 Rubberman
9:36 Bass Poker
10:41 Modem Dancer

All ideas for the series on combinations, routings or types of patterns are very welcome.

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Two "Roger That" pedals & the joy of dirty bass in stereo (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Any discussion about an interesting mono pedal will eventually devolve to: 'If only pedal X was in stereo'. To which some production savant will quickly reply "Just buy two!". Can it really be so simple?

Here we have a DB-01 running through the most excellent Boss GEB-7 bass EQ, then into a simple line splitter for the left and right "Roger That" pedals from Fairfield Circuitry, and finally into the Future Factory stereo delay from Free the Tone. No DAW audio processing.

There are 10 short audio examples. Each to their own but I'm now a convert to dirty stereo bass. Even when the two units are closely matched there are differences which no mono-only modulation can give.
Next time I'll try the two Rogers on some drums :)

0:00 Machine bass
1:22 Acid runner
2:33 Doom keys
3:37 Industrial drone
4:11 Fuzzy square
6:34 Poker echo
7:02 Sharpy arp
7:42 Two step
8:40 Fully rogered
9:12 The Scraper

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DB-01 with Light pedal feedback - and JPTR FX Add Violence

video upload by Richard DeHove

"There's something very satisfying about the DB-01 and dark, deep drones. Maybe it's the Polivoks filter and that big knob.

In this setup the DB-01 is going into the Gamechanger Audio Light pedal in Feedback mode with everything cranked. From there into the JPTR FX Add Violence pedal and then into the Nemesis delay. This order seemed to work better than the Light pedal after the distortion. There's no audio processing in the DAW. Quotes come from a 1940s movie through the Valhalla delay.

The original noodle - which I was trying hard to keep short and sweet - was eight minutes, but how much grinding feedback drone is too much? So here we are at about four. In hindsight it would have been good to have something after the Light pedal that could more severely mess with the feedback tone. Next time :D

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Squeezing variations from 16 steps with the DB-01

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Even the best 16-step pattern gets stale after too many spins. Here I look at a few simple ways to create variations without actually writing any new steps or copying patterns. The LXR-02 helps out in the background. The routing is just the DB-01 into the Boss GEB-7 EQ and then into The Glove pedal. The LXR-02 stereo out is being used as two channels - one into the Boss delay, the other into the Mosky Audio muff clone. The snare sounds are panned mostly to the delay and the bass drum mostly into the Mosky.

The DB-01 is the clock master and one voice of the LXR-02 is simply following the melody from the bassline. The 2-bar LFO on the LXR-02 melodic voice gives it a slow wave effect.

As usual there are no other effects, tweaks or modifications to the sound - only what you see.
ps: Still having some camera wobble issues. I'll solve it next time for sure :/

0:00 No talk variations demo
3:27 Routing setup & FX
6:40 Variation by LFO
8:06 Adding sustain
8:53 LXR doubling
9:32 Key mode mute
10:15 LFO sustain
10:45 LXR tinkles
11:35 Add a pedal

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DB-01 Doom metal pedal test

video upload by Richard DeHove

"In guitarland many people have remarked how closely the Joyo Double Thruster pedal replicates the sound of the Darkglass B33K. Given that the B3K is one of my favorite pedals I bought an ugly Double Thruster to find out how it goes on synth. Originally I thought I'd do a straight comparison with waveform and frequency response blah blah but in the end it really came down to two things:

1) For me the B3K only has one 'sound' and you just dial in more or less of it. Excessive knob twiddling just degrades the effect
2) The Joyo captures about 95% of the B3K sound and has identical controls even down to the bass and mid-boost options and the feel of the footswitch

So forensic analysis seemed a bit pointless. Instead I did what many who lament mono-only pedals do: Run two identical pedals left and right to achieve a type of stereo. That worked pretty well imo and you can see the slight differences between left and right in the waveform display. I also did a quick A and B comparison, but please forgive me the video wobbles - my camera was badly clamped :/

I'm still not sure about the whole clone thing though. The ethics seem to be about defining who's being ripped off: The company or the consumer.

0:00 Stereo demo
2:01 Talk about Joyo and B3K
4:09 Raw sound
4:40 Sound comparison

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Acidbox III Fully cranked

video upload by Richard DeHove

"The Erica Synths Acidbox III stereo filter with everything cranked. Team it with a DB-01 and you've got a Polivoks filter going into another Polivoks filter. Both resonances on full, input saturation full and then an added 20dB of input gain on top. Why be subtle?
A few normal DB-01 patterns are mangulated at the start before forgetting about any sort of input at all and just playing latent noise and resonance through a Shiftline Astronaut pedal. We end somewhere among the Krell on Altair-4.

0:00 The setup
1:06 Pattern one
1:40 +20dB input gain
2:52 Pattern two
4:23 Pattern three
5:00 Control input config
6:12 CV input
8:33 1950s sci-fi
9:58 On Altair-4 (no more talk)

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The many moods of the Future Factory delay (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Future Factory by Free the Tone is a stereo delay most often heard creating beautiful ambience. But is is also easily able to do chorus, vibrato, flanging and overdrive (listen around the 9 minute mark for the filth). So here it's teamed with the trusty DB-01, both synced to the same MIDI clock, and the knobs twiddled. The delay comes pre-loaded with 128 presets showing off many of the settings. The interface is certainly unusual but is quite fast to access the various parameters. In the video I mainly tweak the 3-band EQ, modulation and drive. As usual my aim is to give you an idea of what it's like to actually operate and tweak the pedal rather than an idealised selection of sounds. And also as usual I bought this with my own money at full price.

0:00 Sweet and thick
1:34 Dirty and thick
2:37 Flangerish echo
4:38 Ping pong
5:00 Max feedback
5:34 EQ fun
7:03 Long delay
8:19 Tip in the dirt
10:05 Hard modulated
11:30 Metallic scrapings

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DB-01 sound design from bleedin' obvious to drum phase offset

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Sound design on a one oscillator bass synth? Yes, a surprising amount. A lot is tied up with the sequencer but there are also some pure synth tips in there as well. Some of them, like filter tracking, I've talked about before so perhaps this is like a "best of" compilation. But it still seems to make sense to have them all in one place. For impatient veterans perhaps only the last section on LFO phase will show anything of more hardcore interest.

0:00 Intro
0:18 Don't crank
0:34 Do crank
1:15 Calibrate
1:55 Waveforms
2:38 Clicky McClick
3:47 Tracking (again)
4:19 LFO rant & vibrato
6:00 Portamento
6:36 Audio rate LFO
8:40 Fake delay
9:24 Gate joy
10:35 Arp gates
11:11 Phase is best
12:51 Hello DFAM

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Solina Strings controlled by the DB-01. But why?

video upload by Richard DeHove

"The Behringer Solina Strings is controlled by the DB-01. At first blush it seems a bit silly but there are some interesting reasons you might want to try it. And one thing I forgot to mention in the video: The DB-01 is of course in 'scale' mode, in this case E-Minor.

0:00 Smeary arp
1:46 Octaves
3:10 Slowing it down
5:00 Sequencing
6:00 Generative fun

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Acidbox III dark ambient with the DB-01 and Perkons

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Last time Perkons got the Acidbox IIIfilter, this time the DB-01 gets a turn. And it turns out two vicious filters in series, both with sample and hold LFOs running in sync but with different times, gives some interesting tones. The first few minutes is me explaining the patch, then at 4:32 I shutup and just twiddle. But maybe it would be better without the talking?

0:00 Blah blah blah
4:32 Sound sound sound

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Acidbox III extended demo with Perkons

video upload by Richard DeHove

"A stereo filter at the end of an instrument with four multimode filters? Why not, makes sense to me. I've been hunting an interesting filter for ages - preferably stereo. I've churned through the extreme Retro Mechanical Devices long-name-bigbox to the more recent Elta Polivoks, Source Audio Ultrawave and even the filter on the Strymon Mobius. All the of them are gone now except the Mobius.
With the Acidbox III I think I'm close to the answer. Of course the filter itself is the essential core, but two other aspects make this shine: a syncable multi-waveform LFO, and the classic Erica feature of overdrive on the input. Here I noodle around on a single Perkons pattern with a rare touch of the DB-01 just for a sonic change. Routings are explained in the video. There's no other processing than what you see.

0:00 Routings setup
1:06 Acidbox III overview
2:49 All twiddle no talk

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Perkons meets the Geiger Counter

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Am still in the "getting to know you" phase with the Perkons so am here combining a simple pattern with a couple of kit changes and a lot of track muting.

But the vital part is the WMD Geiger Counter pedal. I was very fortunate to find one of these brand new to buy (in Germany). I paid more than the old list price but everyone raves about how good this pedal sounds. And it is certainly a good fit for the Perkons. It's also helping with my color issues :) I don't touch any of the Geiger Counter's controls so this is not a showcase for the pedal but will get to that soonish. Or very soonish if there's any interest in a deep dive...

Here channel one of the Perkons is on its own output to the DAW and is otherwise completely uneffected.
The other three channels are all going through the Geiger Counter then into the Boss EQ.
No other effects or processing in the DAW this time except of course for the added samples - a two and half minute drum solo would have been too much even for me. You'll also see a few video edits where I've chopped this down from the 11-minute original.
Finally, the pattern actually starts on beat 13, which reminds me of the bad old days with the DB-01 before it got its "pattern rotate" feature and you could change the start point. Well, live and learn guv'nor.

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Smell the EHX Glove

video upload by Richard DeHove

"If you don't know the movie 'This is Spinal Tap' this video isn't going to make much sense, so here's a quick explainer. Spinal Tap is a 1984 fictional documentary about the rock band Spinal Tap. Among their many problems is the cover of their new album 'Smell the Glove'. The band wanted a greased woman on all fours smelling a glove - shops and the record company say no.
So the video intro is a few seconds from the movie and images are my AI-generated prompts attempting to create a 'Smell the Glove" album cover.
As for the audio: The DB-01 is going into the Oceans-11 reverb (which is usually off) then in The Glove, then to the Nemesis delay. There's a tiny bit of EQ in the DAW.
Drums are from the Perkons going into the Death By Audio Rooms reverb. That then gets another layer from the Fabfilter Saturn plugin in the DAW. So hardly a clean or produced drum sound but meh, this was meant to be a simple demo of the Glove pedal, but that got 'out of hand' hahahahahaha.

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Chugga Chugga Perk Perk

video upload by Richard DeHove

"What a stupid title. It's a combination of the Chug pedal used on the synths (DB-01 then the Behringer Cat) as well as the Perkons doing drums. The title coulkd have been more useful but then I'm beginning to suspect my dry and useful titles make absolutely no difference to anyone or any metric.
This piece started as a dull test of whether a DI box made any difference to the performance of the Chug pedal. It did - it made it worse. Then I just started noodling with the pedal to see whether I could coax some different sounds out of it. Couldn't do that either. It sounds good but it only has one way it grates the audio.
So then I thought I'd better add some drums so the Perkons got it's first run. It's so huge I have to work out a way to get multiple items in frame without everything looking tiny.
Against my usual policy I added some effects on the Perkons (but not on the synths) in the DAW. The Perkons got a little EQ to take out some of the massive bottom end, a little Fabfilter Saturn to dirty it up and a touch of Pro-R reverb. I wasn't using individual outs so it just got slathered over everything. A few gratuitous samples to finish.

0:00 DB-01 and Perkons
2:15 Cat and Perkons

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Canyon delay - A complete walkthrough (on synth)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"It may look like something from a themepark gift shop but this is a mighty little delay full of some extreme capabilities. Here I go though all 10 delay modes and the looper using the DB-01 as a sound source.

0:00 So ugly
1:44 EHX fail
3:01 Factory reset
3:30 The controls
5:33 Tap tempo
6:14 Secondary controls
7:51 - Echo mode
10:16 - Modulated mode
12:53 - Multi mode
15:35 - Reverse mode
17:48 - Memoryman mode
21:00 - Tape mode
23:45 - Verb mode
26:36 - Octave mode
30:12 - Shimmer mode
32:48 - Sample and Hold mode
35:30 - Looper mode
39:24 - Final 2c

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Chug pedal on synth

video upload by Richard DeHove

0:00 Intro blather
0:52 Blood and dragons
2:00 Pedal talk
2:10 Music begins (talk ends)
4:50 Knob twiddles
6:54 On duophonic synth
9:08 Final thoughts (talk starts)

"I like pedals that mess up synths and give them an edge. Sadly a lot of distortion, drive and fuzz pedals simply don't work well with synths. At least half the pedals of this sort I buy are almost useless on synth and never make it as far as a video. Instead they go straight into the "buyer's remorse" bag to be resold. There seems no way to tell ahead of time which will work and which will just sit there with the knobs having almost no effect. So it's an anxious lucky dip. The Chug pedal by Solar Guitars is a reasonable success on synth, tried here with the DB-01 Bassline and the Behringer Cat. Some of the gain controls do almost nothing but overall you can sculpt a pretty nasty sound and, depending on the synth, do some extra shaping with the gate control. Strangely the gate was vital to reduce noise on the DB01 but wasn't even needed on the Cat.

I bought this pedal with my own money at full price. I haven't communicated with Solar Guitars other than as a regular customer. The links here are for your interest only:

More details on the Chug pedal:
https://www.solar-guitars.com/product...

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One patch, two sounds - modulating the DB-01 filter

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Modulating the filter is one of the golden rules of using the DB-01. If it's not adding a gentle wave, beefing up the rhythm with a synced pulse, or acting as an extra envelope, then how about some FM? Here the LFO is unsynced, and running fast as a sine wave. By turning the main filter knob up or down the FM effect is revealed - as well as the very high resonance.

Although the music here is slightly chopped up from my meandering 12-minute jam, it's all from one take and none of the other controls (well, except octave up and down) are moved. I think the DB-01 does well getting so many flavors from this one patch.

As usual absolutely no other processing or effect than what you see.

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Behold the power of the DB-01 triangle

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Saw is everyone's friend, square is famous, so where does that leave triangle? The quiet one of three three, but beautifully formed and hides many talents. This is sort of a jam video, a tribute to the triangle but also a way to demonstrate a few different techniques to use when playing live.

First, the triangle is the only primary waveform used here to generate all the sounds. That varies from the cute little plinky sounds of a pure high triangle to the almost brassy sound when the sub-oscillator is layered in. The pattern consists of just three notes spanning three octaves so it's incredibly basic. But the contrast between the low hits and high plinky-plonks going through the Nemesis delay rhythmic setting creates the illusion of a much richer - even layered - pattern with drums. But of course it's all just one layer on the monophonic DB-01.

I'm playing the DB-01 arpeggiator over the top of the pattern and this causes the pattern notes to sometimes be "overwritten" and drop out which appears like a pattern variation. Then by varying the length of the arpeggiator gate you can get apparent note length differences between the pattern and the arp. The LFO synced to a 6-beat loop on a saw shape adds to the variations.

As usual there are no other effects used or DAW processing. But I did do some chopping up of the piece to trim it back from its magnificent 18-minute original :)

Images are all original creations on the theme of triangles using the Stable Diffusion AI platform.

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