Drone Lab operation
The Drone Lab is completely analog. There are no presets or modes of operation, just lots of knobs and switches to tweak. The controls are fairly straight forward but can be a bit confusing at first. Here are few steps and tricks to get you started on making your first drone.
Here I will describe the 3 parts of the Drone Lab followed by the steps for creating your first drone.
The 3 parts of the Drone Lab
-Drone
-Effects
-Tremolo
DRONE
The core of the Drone Lab is four independently tunable oscillators. The “Drone” section is where you can set the frequency and volume of each oscillator. There is also a master volume setting and an input volume setting.
The four oscillators and the input signal all mix together into a single audio signals before continuing to the EFFECTS stage.
EFFECTS
After all of the oscillators and the input signal have been mixed together they pass through a series of filters and distortion circuits. This is the EFFECTS section. The mixed signal goes through a low pass filter, then distortion and then through two band pass filters.
Low pass filter
-cut adjustment. Effects the tone of the sound
Distortion
-Amount. This effects how extreme the distortion effect is. Turning this all the way up introduces feedback as well as distortion
-Volume. Amount of distorted signal mixed with clean signal.
Band Pass Filter
-Frequency 1 and 2. These are both basically “wah wah” type effects tuned to different frequency ranges.
-Balance. Determines how much signal passes through the filters. Turning it all the way UP will create a drastically filtered effect. All the way down is a VERY light filter.
TREMOLO
This part is more complicated than the others.
The tremolo effect is used to rhythmically chop the volume of the individual oscillators. There is one master clock and then each oscillator has a divider adjustment to divide that master clock.
Master Clock
-Clock on/off switch. This turns the internal clock on and off. It will NOT turn off external clock signals.
-Rate. Sets the speed of the master tempo.
-Clock interface. These jacks allow you to control the tremolo effect using external clock signals.
-=-Input jack. Control the master clock using external clock signals.
-=-Output jack. Send the clock to other devices.
-=-Through jack. Allows for daisy chaining several devices together.
Voice Tremolo settings
Each voice has it’s own set of tremolo controls.
-Division. This setting divides the incoming clock signal to create sub frequency clock outputs. The state of the divided clock is indicated by the LED above the division knob.
-Tremolo on/off switch. Activates the tremolo effect for that voice. The volume for that voice must be turned up in order to hear the tremolo effect. The volume of that voice will go high whenever the LED is ON.
-Invert switch. This inverts the volume state of that voice. In normal mode, the volume is high whenever the LED is ON. Activating the inversion feature reverses this effect.
NORMAL MODE: LED ON=sound. LED OFF=no sound.
INVERSION MODE: LED ON=no sound. LED OFF=sound.
Your FIRST drone
The best way to build drones is through an additive approach. This means you zero out all of your controls. You start with nothing and build it up gradually. This approach will drastically improve your technique.
First start by setting all of the knobs as indicated in the diagram below.
Once you have set your Drone Lab as shown above move through the following steps.
MAKING A DRONE:
1. Turn up the master volume part way
2. Turn oscillator 1 volume up a third of the way. Adjust the master volume or amplifier volume if necessary, but leave oscillator 1 volume where it is.
3. Turn oscillator 1 coarse pitch half way up.
4. Turn oscillator 2 volume up a third of the way.
5. Turn oscillator 2 coarse pitch half way up until the two oscillators are at the same frequency.
6. Use oscillator 1 fine pitch to tune the oscillators to exactly the same pitch.
7. Now turn oscillator 1 fine pitch up by a few degrees. This should leave the two oscillators slightly de-tuned. You will hear a pulsing sound emerging from the dissonance between the two oscillators. The rate of pulsing will increase as the difference between the pitch of each oscillator increases.
A good way to tune two oscillators together is two listen to the rate of the pulsing. As you tune them closer together, the rate will get slower until there is no pulsing and they are perfectly tuned. But perfectly tuned oscillators isn’t what we are looking for. Digital synths do that all too well. What the Drone Lab excels at doing is providing a play ground for tweaking the pulsing effects that emerge from slightly de-tuned oscillators.
Try playing with the volume of the two oscillators. Fade one in and the other out. You will here the phasing (pulsing) effect increase and decrease as you do this.
ADDING MORE OSCILLATORS TO YOUR DRONE:
Once you have made a drone as described above, try adding the other two oscillators.
1. Turn oscillator 3 volume up a third of the way.
2. Turn oscillator 3 coarse pitch up until it is in tune with oscillators 1 and 2.
3. Turn oscillator 4 volume up a third of the way.
4. Turn oscillator 4 coarse pitch up until it is in tune with oscillators 1, 2 and 3.
5. Now use oscillator 3 coarse and fine pitch to set the pitch one octave above the drone.
6. Do the same with oscillator 4. Listen for the slowing pulsing effect to hear as the oscillators go into tune with each other.
7. Try setting all of the oscillators at different, octaves of the same note.
8. Play with the volume levels of each oscillator. Fading each oscillator in and out will change the over all character of the sound and density of the drone.
THE LOW PASS FILTER:
Once you understand the drone controls it is time to start exploring the effects.
The low pass filter is very straight forward. Adjusting the lpf cut setting basically controls the tone of your drone.
DISTORTION:
Lots of effects can be achieved with the distortion effect. The distortion highlights pulsing as well as introducing feedback tones at high levels. The kind of effect this feature creates is greatly dependent on the volume of the oscillators. The effect is more extreme when the oscillators are at lower levels.
1. Before starting, make sure the Tremolo master clock switch is turned OFF.
2. Start with a two oscillator drone at low volume. A third of the way up is good.
3. Turn distortion volume all the way up.
4. Slowly turn up distortion amount. You should hear the pulsing effect become more pronounced as you increase the amount.
5. Turn the oscillator volumes all the way DOWN and the distortion amount all the way UP. This should create a squealing feedback tone.
6. Now turn up oscillator 1 volume just part way. The feed back tone should give way to the oscillator tone. Some interesting results can be achieved by playing with this effect.
7. Turn up oscillator 2 volume just part way. The drone should emerge when oscillator 2 is turned up just slightly. Like the effect described in step 6, you can get some interesting results by playing with this.
BAND PASS FILTER:
Tweaking the two BPF frequency knobs creates a very pronounced “analog synth” filter effect. These are the most immediate and gratifying knobs on the Drone Lab. They are very straight forward to use and don’t require much instruction.
1. Get a drone going.
2. Make sure the BPF balance knob is all the way UP.
3. Turn the BPF freq 1 and BPF freq 2 knobs in turn and note their different effects.
4. Turn the BPF balance knob is all the way DOWN to hear how the drone sounds without the two band pass filters. BPF 1 and 2 will have almost no effect on the sound when the balance knob is all the way down.
USING THE TREMOLO
coming soon.