Fun with the Doepfer Ribbon Controller!
Life Drawing
Here is a lovely piece about life drawing made my my good friend Gani Naylor, in which some of my music appears!
Minimoog keys . . .
I recently found a decent minimoog D and have been trying to bring the keyboard action back to life. It takes patience but is basically straight forward to sort out I think.
First I removed the base and then the mod wheel module, and then unscrewed the four screws holding the keyboard mechanism in place. Between the screws and the mech there are some wooden spacing blocks, and they are different on the front and back so you need to mark them up!
Then I took off the key tops so I could give them a good clean. 30 years of finger grime is grim. It’s pretty straight forward, you just need to unscrew the flat head screw at the top of each key and then carefully slide the key tops forward.
The next step was to remove the springs at the back of the keys. There are actually two different strengths of spring, one for the black notes and one for the white. If you put them back the wrong way round (which I did) the action just feels all wrong. I just made a small pile for the black note springs and one for the white. Also care needs to be taken to not over stretch the springs (which I did) when they are being removed as they will deform and loose their springiness.
After that, I lifted up the back of the metal key bar to get to the key bushings and give the whole thing a good clean.
The stem at the back of the keyboard is sort of bent out so that the metal key bar is held in place, so quite a bit of force is needed to lift the key bar up. I took my time over this as the actual switching mechanism underneath looked very delicate, and I’m not sure those bits would be possible to replace!
Here’s a picture of the key top removed and the metal key bar lifted up. If you then push this key bar away from the keyboard, the key bushings are revealed.
Key bushings for this keyboard mech are pretty readily available. My keyboard was a bit clunky sounding and some of the keys were a little un-even in height. Theoretically you are meant to change all bushings at the same time so as to give an even feel across the keyboard, but I just changed a few at first as a practice run.
Once the metal key bar is removed it’s pretty easy to pull off the old key bushings, and then slide on new ones. However, once re-assembled the keys that I changed the bushings on were really sticky and sluggish. I think that sometimes when you get key bushings they are lubricated already, but mine weren’t, so I got some Dow Corning 7 Release Compound to lubricate both the new bushing and the old transparent plastic domes that are under each key. This is the lubricant recommended by a few sites I found, and seems to work well. I have read of other people using corn starch or vaseline as well . . .
Here is an old key bushing (front) and lots of dirt. The bushings do have a ‘right way up’, and it’s pretty easy to figure this out by looking at how the old ones are arranged. Take care when removing the metal key bar that the transparent little plastic domes don’t come off with them and disappear somewhere.
Next I took a look at the key contacts. I had a few notes that didn’t trigger properly and a few that didn’t hold pitch well when played. Both of these problems were sorted out by very carefully cleaning the contact bars. The contact springs look really delicate so I took some time over it. I just used cotton buds to wipe away some of the dirt and left it at that. I have read of people removing the whole bar for cleaning, but that seemed un-necessary to me given that it wasn’t that dirty. The ‘double’ contact bar is for gate triggering, and the single one is for pitch tracking.I’m happy to say that after about 4 hours of cleaning, the keyboard is in much better shape and the pitch tracking and gates are all working fine. Apart from the spring that I half broke… which is now living down on the little used F# at the bottom of the keyboard!
Sequentrix Cirklon
I recently got a Cirklon sequencer…..it’s made in sunny Scotland, and is my latest attempt to get away from computer sequencing! This is my first attempt at a track using only the Cirklon for notes. It’s pretty basic but even with these 4 or 5 tracks going it’s taking me a while to get my head round it…. practice practice practice!
It’s a great piece of kit though I think, and although its pretty pricey, to get the same functionality out of more traditional analogue sequencers would cost way more I think.
It’s really easy to set up multiple patterns of different lengths, and you can configure the CV outs in loads of different ways.
Radio!
I’m very excited to have my first radio play in France, thanks Fab 
Just about to finish another project so more music soon
Arp-ish
I built a case with limited space (see DIY case) in the hope that it would stop me buying more modules. Ah well….
So onto the next project. I recently played with an ARP 2600 for the first time (a late starter on this one) and really loved the way that there were so many modulation possibilities built into it, and mostly without patching. Patching is great but sometimes I find it quicker to get interesting sounds just by messing with lots of sliders! This inspired me to put together a modular project that used some of these ideas. I didn’t want to start to try and copy the ‘sound’ of the 2600 by getting right into the correct filters / VCAs / envelopes, but I did want to have some of that modulation flexibility.
I had a couple of Analogue Systems RS95s to use as oscillators, and put a Doepfer CV mixer next to each one, and wired each input of the mixer with LFO / EG / noise / ‘other’ osc sin output. The same mod sources go to the CV mixer thats attached to the Filter CV. That’s broadly how the 2600 is set up. I only have 2 oscillators here as opposed to the ARP’s 3, but it’s a good start. A lot of the synth is internally wired so that you can get a sound out without patching too much – EG1 goes to the filter, EG2 to the VCA etc.
I also added the Doepfer Spring reverb (A-199) and SEM filter (A-106-5) which add some great flavour. And the Expert Sleepers ES-3 which I LOVE.
Here’s a little demo of some of the easy to get to modulation capabilities.
DIY Case
So when I started this modular project, I was intending to make it ‘keyboardless’. As Brian Eno apparently said, it takes a week to learn to play a synth and years to learn not to play it. Or something.
However, I’m a synth player at heart and so felt that it was about time I made a proper synth like case for my main set of modules. In reality, I end up triggering them from sequencers most of the time, but I find having a permanently attached keyboard makes getting sounds initially much quicker and more fun for me.
The case is very much modelled on the now un-available Analogue Systems Sorcerer case. This seemed like a good basic design to me. The power supply is from Analogue Systems as it provides plenty of power on all 3 rails. Following my ‘synth’ mentality, I have hard wired some of the patching. For example, the 2 Doepfer mixers to the left of the keyboard are normalled to the input of the main osc CVs and the filters respectively. Then, the 2 LFOs are nomalled to the first two mixer inputs, so I can easily send LFOs to the oscs or filters in varying amounts with no patching. I know this totally goes against the concept of the patchable synth to an extent, but on the other hand, I really like the semi- modular nature of things like the MS-20, so it made sense to follow that idea in this project.
Also, a DC offset goes to an input on the pitch CV mixer, giving me an ‘overall’ tuning pot for all 4 oscs, and the pitch CV also goes to the filter mixer so I can send varying amounts of keyboard tracking to the filters.
The Keyboard is a standard Fatar 4 octave, no after touch or touch sense, but that suits me fine as I prefer the faster action (well…. higher key contacts effectively) of the non touch sense actions for this style of synth. Then there’s an Analogue Systems Midi-CV converter hidden in the case, and a little patch wired to the CV and Gate outputs, so it ‘feels’ like a ‘proper’ CV keyboard! 
The case is made from 18mm Oak, which is WAY over the top, but is what was available to me at the time and feels very substantial!
The Doepfer ribbon controller was sort of an after thought. It would have been nice to incorporate it into the case, but it’s also nice to be able to remove it.
The Modules are:
Expert Sleepers ES1 / Analogue Solutions CV Buffer / Macbeth Dual VCO / Doepfer dual attenuator / Analogue Solutions VCO / Analogue Solutions VCO-SUB / Analogue Solutions mixer / Analogue Solutions LFO x2 / Analogue Solutions Sample and Hold / Analogue Solutions EG x2 / Borg 2 Filter / Analogue Systems RS100 / Doepfer Dual VCA / Analogue Solutions Headphone OP / Doepfer Ribbon controller / Doepfer CV mixers x2
And if you would like to hear what some of it sounds like:
Oberkorn
The Oberkorn sequencer from Analogue Solutions is a 3×16 step CV sequencer with 2 gates and various clever ways to control it. I wanted to have a simple way to change the stepping order, and the Oberkorn has a pretty extensive MIDI implementation, but at the same time I wanted to keep the concept of NOT tweaking stuff on the computer all the time. So, I set up some transformers and mappers in the Logic environment so that I could have some buttons on my controller keyboard that effectively change the playback mode of the steps. This means that I can set up a sequence and then experiment with various ways of playing those CVs. It also means that I can skip or repeat steps, but that is a little more involved and takes away a bit from the concept of ‘getting away from the computer’.
The Logic Environment looks like this:
I have 5 buttons assigned to the various modes, and can add more modes as time goes on to make it more interesting. I also added a midi delay line which repeats the steps independently of the clock time. This can give some really interesting results when combined with the various step modes. I made a mode called Snake, inspired but the Rene sequencer, as I thought it was a very cool idea to map the 16 steps on an x-y axis and step though them with that in mind. Its pretty easy to do a number mapping in Logic to make this possible.
Here’s a video showing some of these step modes in action:
