Sidrax

Triangle to chaos 7 voice polyphonic touching wood synthesizer organ

Text by Peter Blasser:

The Sidrax Organ follows a lineage of electronic musical instruments based on touch. It was redesigned twice, first as Sidrassi, then as Sidrazzi. It has seven wooden bars that you press to express seven oscillators within. Each oscillator has its own fine tuning slider, embedded right within its bar. Also, there is a master pitch knob, and a master chaos knob. The master chaos knob makes the instrument go from pure triangle tones to a nest of noise. It does this by gradually increasing modulation from one oscillator to the next in a circular pattern. Sidrax has enough bars to construct sweetest melodies from the triangle waves, whereas Tetrax is a simple four-bar entity, with complexity of tone for funky bass.

There are 44 modulation points brought forth as banana jacks. They are arranged in seven columns, representing the seven bars. Their layout is shifted diagonally, to allow inputs in proximity to outputs. This is for touch-playability; you can make banana jack metal studs that can be squished by hand to gesture-patch the instrument. Inputs are cool colors: blue, green, and grey. Outputs are hot colors: red and orange. The grey jacks are parallel inputs with the master knobs: the one on the left is for master pitch, the right one is master chaos. The color allotment for each bar is as follows:

• Two orange jacks, representing the press and release gestures on that bar in voltage.

• One red jack, which is the pure triangle output of that oscillator.

• Two green jacks, that are "glitch" inputs. They cause the boundary conditions of each oscillator to wire to the output of another. A modulation inspired by circuit bending.

• One blue jack, an fm modulation input for that oscillator.

The Sidrax organ has a stereo-mini output on the back. This is because each bar, outputs in different channels during the press/release cycle. In addition to the stereo-mini jack, it has an power switch, and optional built-in batteries, or an external, 9volt battery snap.

Comes with universal 12v PSU