Put a Rings on it.

If you like it, put a Rings on it, she said.

So I did.

I bought a Mutable Instruments Rings.

The module came this morning in a nice package, with a proper printed manual and a cool spinning top.

Rings arrived

Rings is a resonator : it simulates vibrating structures like strings, tubes or membranes.  It has a kind of polyphonic mode where a note is sustained, while the next is playing.  It can be excited by pretty much anything : envelope clicks, trigger pulses, noise or any other audio source.

My other planned modules are more into the traditional synth voice : VCO, VCA, VCF with some LFO and envelope generators.  So I think it will be a nice addition to the lot, especially as I want to go into some percussive sounds.

Rings installed in my temp rack

Now, I have a proper, thought very limited, synthesizer.

Here is a bit of sounds from the above patch.




The Sample & Hold clock is connected to the strumming input of the Rings, so notes will happen at the rate of the clock.
I choose the 4-voice polyphonic mode and the standard modal resonator.   I don't connect anything to the audio input, so this is the sound of the internal noise burst generator.  This gives a bell-like sound.
The brightness of the sound will be modified by the random voltage output of the random module.  The frequency will be modulated by the sample & hold output.  
First brightness and position are slowly increased.
Then I increase the clock rate while diminishing the damping.  And I finish by decreasing the rate and increasing the damping.