Hallo! So dig this – we made a passive thing!

Well sort of. Electricity isn’t magic like that. Let me rephrase – we made a thing that can take in various gates and other errant signals from a whole myriad of energy sources such as solar panels, microbial fuel cells, as well as the usual sequencers, gates and control voltages to make strange sounds that could be construed as drones. Or beats. Or chirps. Or whatever. Even better, is has three channels that are normalized to each other so you can be all massive drone or three channel beat monster all in the same unit, hence the whole drum and drama classification.

Here’s how it came about. Sometime in the early part of the last decade I designed a synth called TicoTron while I was still living in Costa Rica that was presented as the first of what would eventually be a whole bunch of workshops that’ve been presented across the planet over the course of the past 15-ish years or so. And part of said thingy was a sequencer which worked by replacing the power supply of each module with the fluctuating voltage of the sequencer, effectively turning that module into a passive module of sorts when the sequencer was engaged. As time went on, the oscillator section of said instrument evolved into the VF Eyecillator instrument and later the EyeTron and the sequencer section was kind of left by the wayside – and in some ways, it kind of also still is – BUT – as my own interests in sound and electronics shift towards exploring sustainability in electronic music, I decided to revisit the concept behind this circuit, but with a bring-your-own sequencer and/or power source type vibe.

So here’s how this works. There’s three channels on this beast – they’re all normalized together so if you only have one source it’ll transfer to all three. If you have more than one it’ll interrupt and then you have two channels or potentially three if you so desire. To make this thing do stuff, it’s a matter of patching some sort of signal and voltage into this thing – ideally DC and probably between +2 and +9 volts, or roughly thereabouts. If it’s more of a stable source, you’ll probably get some sort of chirping drone. If you send it some sort of percussive or gate signal, you’ll get something more drum-machiney. Run a sequence into it, you’ll most likely end up with some sort of wacky acid. Or one can hope. Can’t say I’ve done that yet. Ala controls, the three top pots control the base frequency of each voice while the bottom three control the volume. All said, it’s kid of fun – and will hopefully be the basis of a couple fun projects over the next couple months.

As is tradition, I should also probably explain a bit behind the name. When dreaming up this thing, I was also dreaming up the concept of organizing some sort of experimental new music festival in and around my homestead in Ithaca, NY – and, as my gooftroop town has a whole bundle of waterfalls, otherwise known as cascadas in spanish, the thought was to name to festival something along the lines of “Cascamor” or something pretentious-sounding like that. And to fund the whole “pay artists actual money and cover operating expenses” thing, the plan was to have these things out and into the world as a fundraiser of sorts. Which is still kind of the plan – but as it turns out, the logistics behind organizing one of those things if pretty heavy, especially when there’s a finite amount of time between inventing fundraising material, booking acts, confirming guarantees, advertising and promoting, etcetcetc. Not to say that it won’t happen, there’s just a little more legwork that I should probably take care of to not have this be all Fyre Fest in the Finger Lakes here.

So in the meantime, the plan is to scale things back a bit – instead of trying to fund a big-ticket fest, what about using this to develop a fund for touring acts to pay a decent guarantee when time allows, ideally building awareness of the Ithaca scene, incentivizing musicians to come through and paying it forward in some sort of cyclical musical economy type dealy. Or one can hope – I’m prone to fits of utopian idealism from time to time.

Oh right – and it also comes in Euro flavor:

Business Stuff

Price for this guy is $69, which includes shipping and handling (whatever handling actually is). Sorry for the higher-than usual price point, but trying to rock this whole indie builder thing thing in our current geopolitical climate is only getting harder. I’m dedicated to keeping this venture going, but until the dust clears and those in a position to profit over human misery have been brought to knee, such is the new normal. However, please keep in mind that each one of these is lovingly built by hand and while we’ve spared no expense on quality, we have spared expenses on marketing, packaging, merchandising and other general business necessities. In other words, don’t expect a neat box with a glossy zine promoting other products or an interactive DVD where you can compare models, etc. We went this way intentionally in order to provide you, the public, with an affordable, quality module without up-selling you on the fluff. What can I say, we’re practical weirdos who stand behind an honest product and would rather not subject you to a sales pitch. Why? Because after over two decades of being firmly entrenched in the world of diy experimental music, it’s all we know. Maybe one day this will change, but until that watershed moment, we’re still here to offer you honest gear at an honest price and write about our singular endeavors in the collective third person.

If you decide to take the plunge, we ship priority mail from Ithaca, New York, typically from the mail room of a large research institution that dominates the general economy of said town, for anyone really into specifics. In the case of international orders, we’ll do whatever we can to get it to you in a reasonable amount of time with tracking attached – but kindly remember that this decade is currently defaulting to perpetual toxic weirdness, so patience is probably a good thing to muster. Either way, I’ll do what I can to get things to you in a sane and reasonable manner.

Additional Info

• Power is provided via experimentally attaching signal via 1/8″ audio jacks to the three inputs and seeing what happens. Ideally, you should keep this in the range of +2-9-ish volts or thereabouts. Various Eurorack signals tend to work fairly well.

• As with all audio electronics that have exposed circuitry, I am in no way am responsible for electrocution, injury, loss of life, etc. due to misuse of this product, act of angry deity, etc. I trust that you’ll do the right thing in the end and not do something foolish like lick this or perform in the bathtub or something, but hey, gotta cover my backside.

• Finally, as with all our products, this one comes with our usual blanket, all-encompassing, non-expiring, totally transferrable “if we can fix it, we will” guarantee. I build solid and stand behind my wares, but in the event that something happens, I’d like to think I have your back. Just don’t do something asinine like melt it into a block of styrofoam or douse it in lucite. That might complicate things. Just frame that one and put it on your wall. Whatever you did, the story is worth more than the object.

• Finally finally, if any questions come up, please feel free to get in touch. We’re people persons – honest!

Media

First Jams – total proof of concept, but hey, here we are.

Second jam, where things begin to get classy.

Third jam, where things begin to get weird.

BOM

Resistors

3x 1k

3x 10k

9x 22k

3x 100k

Capacitors

10x 0.1 uf

3x 1 uf

3x 10 uf

IC’s

3x CD4093

Misc

6x 100kb 9 mm potentiometers (trim-style preferred, if using standard pots you’ll have to drill the panel to add 1 mm for each pot)

3x 3mm LED’s (color doesn’t matter, cathode to the right)

4x Thonkiconn jacks

Download

Eagle and Gerber files can be found here.