Seed 3 Dev Board Diversion
I forever have too many things I'm trying to do, so what's one more?
I still don't own any Ciat-Lonbarde gear, but I'm a tremendous fan of Blasser's whole steez. One thing I think about all the time is this video on Hainbach's youtube where he and Jan St. Werner are discussing the Clicker and they use the phrase (which Hainbach also used in his video title, wisely) "orchestra in a microsecond." This idea felt like noticing a door in a room I've lived in for six months that I've never noticed before.
So, so, so much of my musical practice is based around the idea of hiding change. In my last post on Kevin Drumm and Taku Unami, I reached for the analogy of staring at a hill in the distance. The hill isn't moving, obviously, but over time it may seem to move as details emerge or clasped in shadows. I love that and am striving for it all the time in my work. And that's all well and good right up until it isn't: sometimes I fear a sudden jerk in vibe or volume and avoid it and stillness gets turgid. It's a fine line!
All of this is background to the fact that I want to explore making something for myself that isn't intended to be slow or subtle.
I've had this image in my head of a handful of little rubber balls chucked down a hallway, bouncing chaotically. What if I could simulate that somehow? There's a lot of ways to get there, but the Daisy Seed 3 just came out, and that seems a good enough way to get there. I went ahead and cooked myself up a really simple dev board for this idea. Who knows if it will be any good, but I'm excited about it today.
The design is dead simple:
- Five analog inputs to drive parameters
- Four analog outputs, plus a sum of all four, for CVs.
- A couple buttons because why not.
- Little bit of power supply so I can use a guitar pedal wall wart I've got laying around.
I'm planning to use high dollar OPA1662 op-amps because they're rail-to-rail which will let me confidently get closer to Eurorack voltages without needing to use a full +/-12V bi-polar supply which would've required me to buy a new wall wart. I'm being cost-efficient. I'm jamming econo.
Here's a link to the preliminary schematic if you're curious. I've got a placement and rough route done on the PCB, but there's a bit of clean up to go still.