Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

So while waiting for my MOTM kits to arrive, I've been kicking about some
ideas. And now that I'm on the list, I can finally punt and test the
"feasability" factor. (Keep in mind that I've never built a modular before,
am not terribly hot with basic electronics, etc., etc. In other words, have
mercy. ;)

It seems to me that just about every analog synth out there is equiped with
oscillators that have sine, triangle, pulse, and sawtooth shapes. Then
there are a few virtual-analogs which have wavetables. Why not make a 100%
analog wavetable? I can see two possible ways for this to happen:

1) The extremely expensive route. Have between 2 and n (16?) oscillators
and cycle through them rapidly. Essentially n oscilators + a sequencer
(arpegiator?) to cycle. To trim down the price, you could fix the
individual oscillators to a single traditional shape (e.g., sawtooth). To
be really obnoxious, each indiviual oscilator could have the features of the
MOTM-300 (ouch!!). I believe this idea is total overkill. Let's try option
#...

2) The somewhat-less expensive (more traditional wavetable?) route. Have
between 2 and n (16?) voltages and cycle through them rapidly. For each
"step", you could select the voltage level. Globally you might select the
ramp between steps (linear, hard-step, exponential), and the time between
steps. Perhaps a setting to select how long a voltage is held for a step--
between immediately go to next step and hold for some short number of
microseconds. To get really fancy, the hold times and ramp selection might
be adjustable per descrete step. Perhaps the number of steps could be
variable?

I don't know exactly how pitch is / would be controlled... perhaps the CV
pitch in sets a level for the voltage steps to modulate around?

Does this sound remotely appealing to anyone? I'm excited by the idea of
the various shapes that could be employed, and the ability to mutate the
shapes in real-time.

--PBr