Ciat-Lonbarde Rollz-5 Project

This will be the thread where I post about my ongoing Ciat-Lonbarde Rollz-5 project.
Preface:






Rollz-5 is a primordial drum machine.

I am taking the original paper circuit designs and converting them into the following:
Twin 6-Roll
543-Roll
Twin AVDog
Twin Gong
Twin Ultrasound Filters

Inclusions: Richard Brewster worked on some modifications to Meng Qi’s version of Rollz-5+ and some
of these modifications I will be including into my own Rollz-5 project.

The first 3 Boards are almost complete.
Twin 6-Roll

543-Roll

2-Roll LFO x8


2-Roll did not exist as a Paper Circuit, however Meng Qi and Richard Brewster both played around with a design, so I modified it to fit the Paper Circuit aesthetic and chopped up a 3-Roll and created my own 2-Roll LFO circuit - This will be ran as 8 with + Pulse Out Modifications as well as 16 nodes that will interact with the androgynous nodes on the rest of Rollz-5.

2-Roll will be designed as a complimentary circuit and will be housed on its own.

I will update this thread with more relating to Rollz-5, Rolzr, Plumbutter, and various other iterations of Peter B.'s Rollz circuits.

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2-Roll LFO x 8 Update:

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Oh wow. If that’s in kosmo format…

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lol, it is not - it will be a desktop unit - it only connects to Rollz-5… if you connect it to anything else… well… lol you’ll likely fry it - or sent about 8 volts out. one of the two.

The outer circle is Positive Pulse Outs with Grounds next to each - the inner ring will be Brown Banana Jacks and these are androgynous nodes that will inter-connect with eachother or into an AVDog, Ultrasound Filter, or Gongue.

:slight_smile:

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update with some Graphics.

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:grin:

lookie what I figured out :smiley:

That was a pain to mask that area… lol

moar render.

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The 2-Roll LFO x8 Desktop Companion for the Rollz-5 is complete :smiley:
Imgur
^ Panel - Top
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^ Panel - Bottom
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^ PCB - Top
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^ PCB - Bottom
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^ Bottom Panel - Top or Bottom
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^ Bottom Panel - Top or Bottom

(discord wouldnt let me add the pics because they were too big, so they are hosted on IMGUR.)

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2-Roll and 3-Roll effect on Lil Sidrassi

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Lmao, it worked, and then I realized certain things were not in the right spot and it works even better now - too late to record anything, but I’m stoked for this project lol.

Also - A Rungler circuit to slap into the mix…

“Let me now describe a circuit topology that I think further abstracts the idea of circuit bending. In 2009, Rob Hordijk, a synthesizer builder in Netherlands, introduced his concept, called “Rungling”, which is a two part circuit idea. On one hand, there is a pair of oscillators set to any frequency by means of a continuous input control voltage. On the other hand, a binary shift register encodes the difference tones between the two oscillators; it makes an arbitrary decision based on the states of the two oscillators, and this decision is the essence of encoding. The encoder stores these decisions in eight bits of memory, providing a persistence of state for the arbitrations. Furthermore, the rungler circuit includes a feedback loop from the output of the encoder, which is converted back into an analog signal by means of resistor network, and fed into the oscillators as their frequency modulator. (Hordijk, 2006). This looping of progressive encoding, decoding, with analog “misinterpretation” in between generates a richly chaotic sound world with great sensitivity to initial conditions. In 2009, I invited Rob to lead a workshop in Baltimore to introduce locals to his synthesizer, the Benjolin, and to have a chance to build one. I was captivated by his coining the term “Rungler” which I thought perfectly abstracted circuitbending. For the context of this paper I include a topologically simplified, map-like image of a paper circuit. It actually can be assembled using a printout of this paper along with some transistors (see ciat-lonbarde.net/paper), but that is not the purpose of its presentation here. Rather, it is to schematize the interaction of coding and the resulting slippage that occurs due to pragmatic realization in the analog domain; it is a machine of misinterpretation. It should be thought of as a loop of two elements, with neither in precedence over the other, but rather mutually influencing each other; however, we shall read from left to right. A binary encoder stands on the left with square aesthetic, and to the right is a dual oscillator with organic layout. In the middle is a speaker amplifier, for the circuit is conceived as an introduction to synthesis circuitry. The dotted lines on the edge represent strands of communication between the elements of the feedback system; these nodes can be crossed with other nodes on the same circuit, or on other circuits to further “codebend” the resulting assemblage. I would compare this act of circuit bending to the Ancient Greek theoretician who stratified arbitrary pitches and Avant Garde musician who picked radical new tunings from texts to oppose the established norms. What is important about the codings is that at their received point they have become metamusical; without analogous recording they represent an abstract music, and allow for reinterpretation and generation of new creative material.”
~ Peter B.

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Rungling - a different Rungler…

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2-Roll and 3-Roll gating Lil Sidrassi

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Roolz-Gewei is another of Peter’s instruments that implements Rollz circuitry - though these are a bit different - with a multi-vibrator circuit acting as the “Serge” and a row of Transistors connecting to each Roll to create the “Arp” Assemblage.


So I spent some time staring at his weird ass drawings…
3-Roll


4-Roll

5-Roll

6-Roll

These versions of Roolz make up the Verso and Inverso Inputs Plus Tempo adjustment which is seen on the Plumbutter
plumrolz
" The core, as I said, is rhythmic pulse machinery based on geometrical concepts of the Rolz-5 drum machine.

Basically, there is a 3-roll and a 4 roll. The 3-roll makes a sort of chaotic paradox sound that is highly reactive to outside influence. The 4-roll is a stable, rhythmic oscillator.

Brown bananas are androgynous pulse nodes. Orange bananas are strict outputs. Blue bananas are strict control inputs, which are labeled with a V for Verso, and an I for Inverso. V means that a positive-going input causes the oscillator to speed up, and I is vice-versa.

Each Roll has a knob to control its rate. The brown jacks, it must be emphasized, are androgynous in that they are both inputs and outputs, which means that a pulse output can be connected here as well as a pulse input. Connecting two brown bananas to each other merges the rhythm of their rolls. The reason there is one orange output per roll, is to provide some information about its state in control voltage format, to modulate other things. Here it should be said that brown bananas deal in negative pulse spikes which are not compatible with control voltage circuitry. Thus, like in the ideas developed by Serge and Buchla, there are really two types of signal: pulse and control, plus audio signals as well."

The idea behind this is to make a Rolzer +
Rolzer:


As Rolzer is the CV Roolz WITHOUT Verso and Inverso Inputs or Tempo Knobs.

I followed suit on Roolz with odd Geometry - No LED Driver.

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Next time I have to go number two, I’ll tell my wife I have to go unearth an androgynous pulse node. I’d been going with spawning brown bananas.

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The topic of “mido”:
Mido is Peter’s way of referring to a middle voltage between Vcc and ground.
Mido has been depicted in 2 ways -
mido1


1 being some type of voltage divider to produce 4.5v
mido2
the other being a voltage divider being buffered by an op-amp (this is at least my basic ass understanding of it - but i’m likely incorrect lol)

I have added the non op-amp version of mido to the Power boards.

I will likely breadboard and test both.

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They do the same thing, but the plain divider only works for very tiny loads; once you start pulling a non-trivial current from it the voltage will shift away from the midpoint, since you’re basically putting another resistance in parallel with the lower 22k. Adding a voltage follower lets you leverage the opamp’s drive capacity, which isn’t a lot compared to e.g. a voltage regulator but will handle 10-20 mA or so.

Note that if you’re using your constructed “dual supply” to drive opamps, you need to use opamps that are at least somewhat rail-to-rail, otherwise you’ll find yourself outside the input or output ranges very quickly (a TL07x typically doesn’t like input voltages below ~4 V above the negative rail and cannot drive the output closer to 1.5 V from the rails).

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@fredrik What kind of op-amp would you suggest?
the mido is apparently around 4.5v
Power would be from the 9v into that 22k.

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For what part of the circuit? The 4.5 V supply or the elsewhere in the signal path? Pretty much any single supply opamp can be used for the supply (e.g. an LM358), but if you’re going to use opamps elsewhere things may get trickier (but hopefully the schematics has some suggestions for that case).

(I tend to feed ±12 V also to lower-voltage things I’m integrating with the rest of my “system”, since I have both voltages anyway and I can power most opamps from the dual supply even if the rest of the circuit is single supply, but that’s obviously not an option for all builds (e.g. this thing uses a ±12 V TL072 to generate a variable 2-6 V rail for the CMOS stage, but the output stage is powered with ±12 V instead of a 12 V single supply as in the original).

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Just on that little power board to produce the mido - which goes into the multi-vibrator afterwards. (up in those roolz diagrams)

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I have to admit that my brain isn’t really compatible with ciat-lonbarde stuff; it tends to drift away a paragraph or two into the descriptions. (I like the notion of complimentary transistors, though :grinning:). There are no opamps in the circuits what I can see and the half rail is only used to offset the transistor bases so the simpler divider probably works, unless he says otherwise somewhere.

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Here is what someone else said about mido in a Ciat-Lonbarde group:
“the mido is a “virtual ground” or voltage reference- using just a +9v battery as power, you use a divider to make 4.5v, and use that where “0v” or “ground” would be in a +9/-9 circuit for example. Most decent synth circuits want a nice wide voltage range, like +12/-12. In these cases the two rails swing between a center of 0 volts. But now you want to make the same circuit work on a 9volt battery. You don’t have negative voltage, so you use ground it’s place. But now you need a center for the rails to swing between, a voltage reference. So you use the middle, between 0 and 9, 4.5. There are other problems as mentioned above but that’s the principle. It’s often referred to as a voltage reference (or vref) but Peter likes to use his own code words, so he renamed it Mido.”

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