14.12.2024 Elements: Modulation, effect design workshop

This is the second event in the series of our effect-design workshops. The goal is to give you all the tools, knowledge and a bit of intuition to start designing effects yourself!

This workshop is focusing on modulation and use of control voltage in audio circuits. What we'll cover:

• Sources, transformations and destinations that we can use Control Voltage (CV) with;
• Tremolo and Ring modulation effects;
• Adding CV control to almost any circuit.

What's included

These are a few breadboard modules we've designed specifically for this workshop:

• AttVert – 2x attenuverter module
• Mag – 2x exponential & 1x linear VCA module
• Longwave – LFO module with multiple waveforms, tap tempo and CV control

As an extra perk, people who participate in the Elements series of workshops are welcome to join any future Design Days to work on their own circuits and get help. These are the second days of Elements 1 or a dedicated day at the shop that we'll announce separately. Those happen at least once a month.

What's covered

• Basics of generating and manipulating Control Voltage:
  • Voltage sources
  • LFOs
  • Attenuators, inverters, attenuverters
  • Summing and subtracting voltages
  • Limiting voltages
  • Exponential, linear and logarithmic control
• Basic usage of VCAs:
  • Amplitude modulation (Tremolo)
  • Ring modulation
  • CV-enabled Blend controls
  • Modulating CV with CV
• Examples of advanced usage of VCA chips:
  
  • Adding control voltage capabilities to (almost) any circuits
  • Simple voltage-controlled oscillators
  • CV-controllable filters

Time & Place

We start at 11am and finish at about 4pm.

Location is our shop on Weichselstr. 32 12045 Berlin (HEADS UP there are two streets with the same name in Berlin, you need the one in Neukölln, not Friedrichshain).

Prerequisites

This workshop requires some basic knowledge of electronics. We teach these concepts at our Elements: Gain & Tone workshops:

• Current, Voltage, Impedance and how they are related to each other (Ohm's law);
• Audio (AC) signals, frequency and phase response of a circuit;
• The basics of how resistors, capacitors and opamps work;
• Amplifying and summing signals with opamps.

What to bring

• Wired 3.5mm jack headphones
• Sound and CV sources if you like
• If you don't have the parts from Elements 1, please choose the "Elements 1 parts included" option
• If you already have the parts from Elements 1, please bring them:
  
  • Protato
  • Breadboard
  • Jumpers
  • Resistor kit
  • Capacitor kit
  • Transistor kit
  • Set of diodes
  • Set of opamps
  • Set of potentiometers with breadboard adapters

Cancellations

You have the option to cancel and get a refund up until 1 week before the event. We would of course refund everyone if we have to cancel the workshop for any reason.

Other workshops in the series

Here are some of the other workshops in this series we are making. The Gain & Tone workshop is good to start with if you are just starting out with electronics of audio.

• Gain & Tone is our beginner-friendly introduction to analog electronics of audio. The goal is to give you all the tools, knowledge and a bit of intuition to start designing effects yourself!
  
  
• Delay lines workshop is about creating time-based effects: delay, reverb, vibrato and chorus. As the foundation it uses a PT2399-based delay line, but the principles apply to any other digital or analog device.