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EXPLORING SPECTRAVOX (Continued)
You can process any external instrument through Spectravox by patching
that instrument’s audio to the CARRIER input on Spectravox’s patch bay. This
will override the VCO on the CARRIER MIX—swapping the VCO for whatever
audio is coming in through the CARRIER. By processing synthesizers such
as Matriarch or Mother-32 you can create malleable new resonant textures.
Running a drum machine (such as DFAM) through the Spectravox filter bank
also sounds great, or try any audio from your phone!
Finally, raise the VCO FREQ back up into audio rate (12 o’clock, for instance)
and move the VCA MODE switch to EG—the sound will disappear. Pressing
the TRIGGER button will trigger an envelope whose decay is controlled by
the DECAY knob. With its 1V/OCT input for the CV and TRIGGER input for
the envelope generator, you can use any external keyboard (Grandmother
or Matriarch, for example) or sequencer (such as the sequencers found in
Mother-32, DFAM, and Subharmonicon) to control and sequence Spectravox as
its own sculptable resonant synth voice.
SPECTRAL SYNTHESIZER
Spectravox can be made to generate
interesting percussive voices by
setting the RESONANCE of all
the filters to its maximum setting,
“pinging” all 10 filters. You can try
this out by setting the VCO WAVE
to SAW and unpatching any inputs
you currently have patched to the
CARRIER input. Make sure CARRIER
MIX is all the way down (pointing to VCO/CARRIER), and as you turn down the VCO FREQ as low as
possible you will hear the resonant tone “break apart” into separate resonant filter pings. Sculpt these
pinged percussive sounds with the FILTER BAND levels and SPECTRAL SHIFT control. You can insert
triggers into the CARRIER input to ping the filters from external trigger/gate sequencers or keyboards
to create rhythmic marimba-like tones.
NOTE: When using Spectravox simply as a filter bank, we can take advantage of the
PROGRAM input and use its 1/4”/XLR combo jack (or 3.5mm input in the patch bay)
and preamp to add gain to line level signals that might be a bit too low for the CARRIER input. Patch your
external signal into the PROGRAM INPUT combo jack and add gain with GAIN LEVEL. Then, on Spectravox’s
patch bay, take the PROGRAM output and patch it to the CARRIER input. This will send a stronger signal into the
synthesis filter bank. In addition, you will have a global envelope follower from the PROG ENV F output and 10 (!!)
band-limited enveloper follower outputs!
If this is a bit confusing at the moment, come back to it after we’ve walked through the Vocoding functionality
and once you have a good grasp of the dierence between the PROGRAM and the CARRIER.
CARRIER
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CARRIER MIX VCO FREQ
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