When does the superposition of tones produced by well-coordinated instruments become a single voice with a complex timbre subtly evolving over time? What are the boundaries between a rich timbre and a musically harmonic chord?
From traditional overtone singing techniques and Gregorian chants to Spectral Music, Helmholtz’ resonators to modern-day Fourier theory, or classical counterpoint to Xenakis’ massive polyphonic clusters, the rich spectrum lying on the limit of these perceptual illusions has been a constant source of fascination, scientific study and artistic inspiration.
Combining additive, FM, phase-distortion and wavefolding synthesis techniques in new unorthodox ways, the Ensemble Oscillator allows you to explore this sonic boundary and exploit it musically. The eurorack-format module is a unified polyphonic voice of sixteen complex oscillators sharing the same sine-based waveforms.
The oscillators take their frequency relationships from a selected scale, crossfading smoothly from one note to the next. The Ensemble Oscillator easily creates a wide variety of sounds ranging from aggregates of pure sine waves to pulsar synthesis or pristine harmonic tones and lush wide chords to rich dirty drones and rumbling glitches. Custom scales can quickly be “learned” and saved using a CV keyboard or by manually by entering notes with the controls.
Specs:
• 30 factory-programmed, user-writeable scales organized in three groups:
• 12TET: all notes quantized to equal temperament, repeating over octaves
• Octave: unquantized notes, repeating over octaves
• Free: unquantized notes, repeating over the interval between the lowest and highest note
• A simple method to program (“Learn”) your own scales manually or with a CV/Gate keyboard
• Three Twist phase distortion effects
• Three Warp wave distortion effects
• Three algorithms of Cross FM for modulating the oscillators with each other
• Mono or stereo output with selectable panning algorithm
• Freeze button and jack to freeze the frequency of some of the oscillators, with selectable algorithm
• Two 1V/oct inputs: Pitch (non-quantized), and Root (quantized)
• High-accuracy, temperature-stable, eight octave range (-2V to +6V), can be calibrated to any keyboard
• Six bi-polar CV inputs (-5V to +5V)
• Two gate inputs for automated Learning and Freezing