Semi-pseudonymous musician and maker Chris, of Sound Werkshop, is within the means of constructing a 3D-printed “expressive synth” designed to get some attention-grabbing sounds out of a Daisy Seed growth board — and he is known as it the Wiggler.
“It is an expressive synthesizer,” Chris explains of the venture, “which suggests it is an digital music instrument that tries to take inspiration from the expressiveness of acoustic devices. For instance, on a violin, together with your fingering hand, you’ll be able to wiggle for a vibrato impact, and [with] your bowing hand you’ll be able to press extra firmly and transfer the bow sooner to make an observation louder. So, the objective of that is to make synthesizers really feel extra alive.”
The Wiggler itself is a compact desktop synth in a 3D-printed chassis and powered by the Electrosmith Daisy Seed, which launched three years in the past. Primarily based on an STMicroelectronics STM32 working at as much as 480MHz and with a beneficiant 64MB of exterior SDRAM and 8MB of flash, the Daisy Seed contains two line-level audio enter and output channels with assist for 24-bit 192kHz sampling plus MIDI enter and output — making it preferrred for audio initiatives just like the Wiggler.
“It is a monophonic instrument,” Chris says of the Wiggler’s design, “and I made a decision to solely provide you with notes belonging to 1 scale to make it a bit extra pleasant and compact. To increase the vary a bit we have got some momentary octave up and down buttons. The center of the machine is one thing known as the ‘flexure.’ So, a flexure is a mechanism the place you’re taking a inflexible piece of fabric and reduce it in a sure method [to] permit it to truly flex in a managed method.”
3D-printed flexures present key motion each vertically and horizontally, as a novel enter. (📷: Sound Werkshop)
These flexures, Chris explains, are related to the important thing mattress with a purpose to permit the keys to maneuver not solely up and down as with a normal keyboard however left and proper too — enabling the kind of wiggle-based vibrato usually related to string devices. Corridor impact sensors measure the horizontal and vertical motion of every key, offering inputs to change the synth patch and tweak the output in real-time.
“I’m truly on a mission to attempt to flip this right into a product,” Chris says of the Wiggler, although on the time of writing no launch date or pricing had been disclosed. Extra info is accessible on the Sound Werkshop YouTube channel.
