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Built in February 2009 and used as my primary instrument from it’s inception until January 2011, when it was disassembled and incorporated into a larger modular system that I’ve used from February 2011 onwards. Like most of the instruments built between 2008-10, Number 8 features three oscillators and two filters, tuned slightly lower than my usual instruments. Interesting to this particular box was its potential for heterodyning, as well as brief moments of stability that allowed for rhythmic, albeit ring-modulated sounds amidst a bed of the usual chaos.

Here’s a video from Matt Davignon’s Rigs series that highlights a performance using this particular instrument.

Number 8 Revisited

Fast forward 6 years. The guts of Number 8 became the basis of Number 20. I’ve moved several times through several time zones, finally landing in Baltimore, Md. long enough to collect my various caches of belongings and take stock of inventory and the like. Somehow the shell of Number 8 came with me through it all – what can I say, I’ve got a thing for nostalgic keepsakes. Not wanting a perfectly good, albeit vintage Radio Shack plastic enclosure to go to waste, I rebuilt it as a dual 4-bit bit-shifter controlled pair of 4093 synths similar to the Eyecillators I’ve been building this year and set it adrift. Currently, it resides in New York City.