A micro Buchla Music Easel

#1

Hello everyone. I've just finished a new synth after 5 months of work. It's a micro music easel :

This is the sound demo : www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7IrjJ7MmoY

This patch is using only around 40% of DSP load but I can't add any other object without overflowing the Board.

I had a lot of help from many of you especially sirsicksik. this patch took me more than 2 months to develop.

For hardware I've used the Teensy 3.2 to add more analog and digital control, and a MPR121 capacitiv touch sensor for the keyboard. Programming and coding the Teensy was the hardest part for me. Every pin is used...
The 15 faders are soldered to the axoloti, but all other controls are soldered to the Teensy.

About the patch sharing. The patch look really unusable with tones of controls and it's hard to know what you can touch if you don't know it. What I want to do is a final object and share it to the community. But the problem is that I don't know how to make a final liscensed object like all others do to share with the community. I mean I understood with parents parameters how to build the object, but not liscensing and sharing to the library. I need to do it for 3 objects, the wavefolder, the Complex oscillator, and the final object. So if somebody is able to explain me how to do that, I will share the final object with pleasure !

I've made another 15min full tutorial video about all functions of this synth : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uBTyjKZKpg

And I can share with you some pics of the hard soldering time and other building process :slight_smile: :

IMG_4590.JPG2579x3869 1.34 MB

IMG_4589.JPG2579x3869 1.38 MB
IMG_4610.JPG3869x2579 1.52 MB
IMG_4604.JPG3869x2579 1.26 MB

29 usd Axo synth, scam? Who's mini Easel is this?
29 usd Axo synth, scam? Who's mini Easel is this?
#2

Sweet lookin job..!!:grin:

#3

Thanks gavin, I'm pretty happy to finally finished it, and can play with it ! :slight_smile:

#4

It sounds - and looks - great!
I wish you the best with this little beauty :kissing_heart:

I might have dropped a word here and there :wink:

#5

WOW!!!!
Congratulations!

#6

This is really cool!

Would love to see the patch, if you embed any objects you've customized and save the patch the custom objects will save with the patch and the patch can be shared.

Getting the objects in the library properly requires some github shenanigans.

#7

I will do it next week. I was thinking about making a final object because it's a really complexe patch to understand with ton of objects everywhere. just a picture can be a good exemple :

Capture d’écran 2019-12-18 à 13.18.18.png1162x686 188 KB

But I think few people is able to understand it and modify it if they want. So I will make a final object "Open", and drop it with objects I've customized like my wavefolder and my complex-OSC.

Can you just tell me more about Github "shenanigans" ? what is that ? I've never used github to upload something...

#8

Ha, it looks like my patches!

See here for the github stuff

#9

So, my patch is here. I think it's easier for me to just drop here files you'll need exactly as I use them myself. I've made a Help patch with all explains you'll need to understand everything.

In this patch you'll see many k-filter lowpass. I really care about the clicking noise I can ear in most of object when you turn a dial. these filter is here to de-noise the knobs I feel that are important to de-noise. :slight_smile:
Another things you have to know, if you play with the arpeggiator, the keyboard switch must be on OFF mode, because if it's not, the oscillator will recive the keyboard notes + the arpeggiator notes, so in one octave you'll have two...

It's a bit hard to understand if you don't know yet how a real Buchla Music Easel work. If you can find the plugin Buchla from Arturia, I think it's gonna be easier to start with it, and go back to this patch after understanding functions in the plugin.

Also I drop you my Arduino code, you'll need to download library "MIDIUSB" and "Adafruit_MPR121"
And take care about "int tresh = 1200" it's the treshold of my touch plates, octave switch and last key for my touch sensitiv keyboard. they are soldered directly to touchpins input of the Teensy 3.2 it can be a different value if you use another metal or dimensions etc... Try with the serial monitor before to see the best number for your treshold when you touch and don't touch your key or plate.

So, here is the files :
buchla_easel.axh (6.7 KB)
Easelcommunity.axp (56.2 KB)
ComplxBuchla.axs (4.6 KB)

And arduino :
https://mega.nz/#F!t4tGmIgQ!2P_UQ9ltYP6IZpanRWHflA

Hope this months of work gonna be fun for you too.
Happy to share this project with this great community :slight_smile:

#10

This project is wonderful, I watched the YouTube tutorial... and then I saw the little underground house... amazing!

#11

Thanks a lot @tele_player , I'm preparing my bag to go back to this house in few days with my new mini Easel, for making music all this winter. It's gonna be sweet to play with this boy in front of the fire in the wood stove just seeing trough the window the snow fallin :slight_smile:

#12

Did I see a piano in your house?
I also loved the cartoon movie.

#13

Yes I've placed an acoustic old piano at home because some days my solar panel can't produce the energy I need to power my synths, but I want to continue to make music so it's magical to have this piano here. It sounds wonderful even if it have 100 years.
The cartoon is made by my friend D8CH, a toy designer for kids in Canada. So thanks for him ! He is so talented...

#14

Hey, amazing to see you here (we met one or two times in le wonder, I lived in the first one in st ouen :slight_smile: ), you made an incredible job with this synth! Your build is absolutely lovely too.
I'd love to try your patch, the only missing object is the Wavefolder, did you include it somewhere?
Cheers!

#15

Hi Simon, nice to see you here, hope you are good :slight_smile: ! Thanks for the kind words.

About the Wavefolder, to share the patch with the community I've included the wavefolder directly inside the oscillator ComplxBuchla.axs subpatch. So everything is here for testing my patch.
But if you want to use my wavefolder for your other projects,
let's get it here : WaveFolder.axs (3.2 KB)

#16

hi there! i'm starting thiking about building one of these beautys for myself.

is there anywhere where you explain cables, knobs, touchplates soldering in general? in order to build ir physically.

sorry about my english :slight_smile:

#17

If you're brand new to working with electronics, start here.

Once you're comfortable with that, this tutorial is very instructive.

Someone has made an Axoloti object which allows for capacitive touchplates here, but the person who made the micro Buchla attached their knobs and touchplate to a Teensy, which sends MIDI to the Axoloti.

If you've never done any coding before, prepare to do a bit of that too. Don't let that discourage you, I learned coding because of my Axoloti project.

#18

I read that you couldn't add any more modules to your patch, but then I noticed on the screenshot of the patch that you've patched up multiple times (from lower modules to modules higher in the patching area. If you make sure your wires only go from left to right and from top to bottom, you should be able to free up some more memory.
Also, if you're not using the presets and mod-sources, you can set these to 0 in the view/settings tab, this should also free up some more memory.
Lastly, if there are any modules that uses big arrays (any declaration with [...] like "int32_t array[4]") you could put these into the SDRAM to save even more (take a look at the table allocation modules, copy and paste the local data and init data and rename the declarations. For example, if you're using a FDN-reverb module, you could put these array's in the SDRAM. The module will ask some more CPU, but free up a lot of memory for you to add more modules.

#19

hi there!
has anyone else has started this project on his/her own?

#20

Hey juanvalente,

Don't know if you ever saw my reply above, but start here:

The stuff in these videos cover how sliders and knobs work. For your purposes, knobs and sliders are the exact same things just shaped differently. Once you feel comfortable with that, we can see whether you need to use a Teensy like s8jfou did (a little computer that helps your Axoloti do some things), or if your Axoloti still has enough space to plug all your controls in there.

If you haven't worked with electronics much before, just take all these things one step at a time. There's no fast way to do it, but you'll learn things along the way that will make you want to do more projects.

Feel free to ask any questions.