Building an Analog drum module

I just received everything I need to build my own Analog Drum Module:



Someone managed to convince me that by doing this I will be a even cooler musician, so here I am...digging on resistors, diodes, wires and meaningless boards!



The module is a DS7 Drum Synce (DC860)and the smaller one is a simple Gate To Trigger Converter.

The DS7 Drum Synce (DC860) is a little analog percussion synthesizer from the 80's made by CORON. This drumsynth was dedicaced to drummers : the DS7 was fixed on the border of a drum to be played/triggered by hitting the drum.

The DS7 contain a VCO +VCA chain. The VCO is modulated by a cheesy LFO and a simple decay envelope trigged by the piezzo cell pulse. The cell work as a pressure/hit sensor. It can be replaced by a jack to be used with any kind of trigg pulses or even gates. In this case the "decay" pot become a "Release" pot ... The VCA is directly controled by the envelope. The LFO can drive the VCO from slow modulation to hi-speed to produce FM like sounds.

I needed some new analog raw meat for the distortion chain... let's see how long it takes to build it :)

Some Kickdrum samples with PAiA modules

The blog has been dormant for a while due to personal music production priorities. However I am collecting stuff from people sending me suggestions so I plan to post a little more from now on.

My friend Furio loves analog modular systems. He builds his own modules from kits often modding them to suit his needs. We've been talking about the employ of such machinery into modern industrial music and the end was that he should have done a few samples for the blog, so here we are with some Modular Kickdrums.

This is how the chain has been set up:


PAiA 9720 Dual VCO / MODULATION

Dark Side SSM2044 VCF/VCO

A-132-3 Dual linear/exponential VCA

The results are some clean and punchy kicks, ready to be slaughtered with the most inhuman distortion techniques!

Il modulatore è praticamente un inviluppo AR con attenuatore, settabile via switch in modalità LFO che modula in continuo un VCO. L'Attacco corto, da l'effetto dell'impatto e il Relese più lungo, la sensazione di coda della vibrazione di membrana e corpo della cassa.

L'onda modulata è filtrata in un VCF SSM2044 per aggiungere carattere, dinamica e risonanza. Dal VCF ho passato il suono in un VCA in tecnologia CEM usato per aggiungere ulteriore carattere e regolare la preamplificazione, prima di entrare nei Pre e Convertitori ADC AKM standard/onboard della scheda audio (ultra low jitter) RME HDSP2496.

I suoni son stati prima Campionati in un unico file e poi frammentati i campionamenti in questi file distribuiti, su SO GNU/Linux e Editor Audio FOSS, via server audio JACK@ALSA che permette controllare e sapere di non aver avuto perdite di dati nel flusso audio.

The sounds have been sampled in pristine quality with a high resolution audio server and here they are provided in both 32/96 and 24/44.1 formats.

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