Author: admin

  • New Gloop Firmware 1.1.0

    Happy New Year and Happy New Firmware! I hope you all had a lovely holiday. I found some free time to work on a new Gloop firmware (V1.1.0), which you can find, along with an updated manual and instructions on how to flash the firmware, here https://github.com/cutlasses/GloopResources Thanks to those of you that sent me suggestions, some of them have made their way into this update!

     

    All the Gloop DIY kits have sold out, but more boards are currently winging their way to the UK as I type, so should be back in stock at Thonk soon. We still have a handful of built modules available at our shop https://www.cutlasses.co.uk/shop/ (currently shipping to UK and US, EU coming soon) with a new batch planned for the near future.

     

    Thanks to all of you who have bought Gloop, and thanks to those that have let me know how much you are enjoying them. Please do share any music or videos you make with it, I get a real thrill seeing how people are using it, and it helps me to improve the firmware too!

     

    All the best for 2025!

     

    Firmware 1.1.0 change log

    Features:

    • Split tape effect into
      • Wobble (WOBB) – applies a wow and flutter off simulating a broken tape player
      • Saturation (SAT) – applies tape saturation
      • Age (AGE) – adds tape hiss and random drop outs
    • Added (equal power) panning per tape head (rather than A/B or A+B). Effects are still mono, so when panning tape heads you may want to disable effects. Old behaviour can still be achieved by having pan at 12 o’clock for A+B, and hard left, right for A/B
    • Added CRSF dial (Cross Fade) to “Effects B” menu. Previously all cross-fades were 5ms. You can now vary the length of the cross fade from 5 milliseconds to 1 second. This results in smoother blends when a loop restarts. If the playhead is forced outside of the loop section (for instance when using the JMP modulation, or moving the loop position), the quick cross fade of 5ms is still applied.

     

    Bug fixes:

    • Fixed issue with tape effect wobble, was previously being applied incorrectly and didn’t sound right!
    • Fixed an issue where, if you were modulating the position of the loop segment and this resulted in the play head being constantly restarted, the audio would sound distorted. This was because the playhead couldn’t cross fade quickly enough to the next position. Loop position modulation is now only applied every 50ms (20Hz). You can modulate at a faster rate, but it will be sub-sampled.
    • Improved gain application of gain pots and A/B input mix (now properly logarithmic)
    • Improved calibration menu

  • Gloop Released!

    Gloop was released on Friday! Currently available at Thonk. I’ll be building a small batch soon, so those who aren’t interested in wielding a soldering iron should join the mailing list here to find out when the first batch is available. Don’t worry if you miss out, if the first batch sells well I’ll be doing a bigger one next. It’s really nice to see something that was only intended for my own use to make its way into the world! I hope those who use it enjoy it as much as I do!

  • Gloop – Update

    Been a bit quiet on here recently, and barely played out live as all my free time has been dedicated to getting Gloop in a releasable state (the last 10% of a project really does take up 90% of the time!). For those interested in owning Gloop there will be exciting updates soon. Please join the mailing list if you want to know more about the plans for release.

     

  • Gloop – work in progress

    I thought I’d share how I’m getting on with Gloop, my experimental eurorack performance looper. This version is built using the Electrosmith Daisy Seed. It allows you to record loops (with overdub), and playback with 4 simultaneous play heads. Each play head can be at a different part of the loop, playing at a different speed/pitch, direction and volume. Each play head can also be playing a different area, or sub-loop of the main loop. This can allow you to trim the loop size, play different sections of the main loop with the different play heads or create granular style effects. There is a jitter parameter which controls how much the start of the loop randomly shifts each time the loop restarts.

    It’s essentially the culmination of many of my digital projects, combining what I learnt from making the AudioFreeze, GlitchDelay and my other Looper. Gloop has one big advantage over my other looper, (apart from having a screen) which is that the Daisy has a whopping 64MB of RAM, so I can record the loop directly into RAM, rather than having to worry about recording to SD card, and all of the buffering issues this presents. This allows me to go much further with the firmware, supporting multiple sophisticated play heads, which wouldn’t have been possible with the original version.

    I designed this to be played live, and I’ve used it as most, this year, at vary iterations and states of completion.

    I still want to spend some more time with the firmware, and have started working on some CV and trigger expander modules that connect via I2C. Also the ability to connect a pedal to start and stop the loop, rather than having to press the button. More about those soon. Who knows, maybe I’ll actually try and make Gloop available for sale at some point.

     

    An early prototype testing the OLED screen

  • Braziers Park

    Had a lovely weekend returning to Braziers Park for the International Film Festival, playing with Amy Cutler as RAVINE/MACHINE, after only playing there a few weeks ago for SUPERNORMAL (which was also brilliant, albeit exceptionally hot). We had some technical difficulties with the 16mm projector (bulb not working), but we were still able to incorporate the soundtrack from it, and it allowed us to put the projector centre stage (complete with my LED augments!).
    Braziers is such an enchanting space. It’s been run as a commune, or ‘Intentional Community’ since the 50s. The neo-gothic house is gorgeous, as was the vegan food they fed us. Great to meet some exciting film makers and artists and generally have a great time!

  • Build a DaisyDrone!

    I’ve made the schematics and gerber files available for download on GitHub here!

    DaisyDrone is a drone synth, with 6 sliders, Inspired by @HAINBACH ‘s use of vintage oscillators and test equipment. This combines 18 sine waves. Each slider controls the gain of a set of 3 sine waves at slightly offset pitches centred around a frequency within the key shown in the display. The frequency of the sines increases from left to right. The magic comes from the way they are summed (controlled by the 3-way switch). Either averaged (boring!), or wavefolded with a sine wave or a triangle wave. The wave folding produces the rhythmic elements. An encoder is used to set the note of the base frequency, displayed in the 7 segment display.

    Here’s a little demo of it..

  • EMF in progress..

    Hello from Electromagnetic Field Festival (EMF Camp)! Having an awesome time. Slightly different vibe now we have a little one, but the festivals caters so well for families, it’s really lovely. Thanks to everyone who came to my talk. I think the video will be available soon. But here are the slides for now.

    Come watch me play live, tomorrow (Sunday 5th June), at 10pm on Stage B.

     

     

  • Electromagnetic Field Festival and recent projects

    I’m delighted to say I’m going to be at Electromagnetic Field Festival next month (2nd-5th June). I’ll be doing a talk on building digital effects, and also playing the Main Stage at 10pm on the Sunday. I’ll be showing off some of my latest projects, DaisyDrone and Gloop.

    Both DaisyDrone and Gloop are projects built around the Electrosmith Daisy Seed. It’s a compact dev board, similar to Teensy, but with high quality audio built in. It also has an enormous 64MB or RAM on board. More than enough for most audio projects I can conceive.

    DaisyDrone is a drone synth, with 6 sliders, Inspired by @hainbach101 ‘s use of vintage oscillators and test equipment. This combines 18 sine waves. Each slider controls the gain of a set of 3 sine waves at slightly offset pitches centred around a frequency within the key shown in the display. The frequency of the sines increases from left to right. The magic comes from the way they are summed (controlled by the 3-way switch). Either averaged (boring!), or wavefolded with a sine wave or a triangle wave. The wave folding produces the rhythmic elements. An encoder is used to set the note of the base frequency, displayed in the 7 segment display.

     

     

    View this post on Instagram

     

    A post shared by Scott Pitkethly (@cutlassesmusic)

     

    Gloop is a looper which is RAM based rather than my previous SD card based looper. This gives a lot more flexibility to glitch up the audio, as you can jump around in the stream a lot more. It takes inspiration from the GlitchDelay. Once a loop is recorded (overdub is supported), you have 4 read heads that can play from it simultaneously. Each read head supports forward and reverse play, varying speeds (which can be quantised to semi-tones), and the ability to have micro loops which jitter within the main loop.

    An image of a diy eurorack looper

  • RAVINE/MACHINE at The Rose Hill

    Really enjoyed our performance at the beginning of the month at The Rose Hill in Brighton. Thanks to all those that came out to see us, and an extra special thanks to the sound person (Abe), not only for giving us great sound, but for reminding me to actually start the cameras that I had setup! Had to make a quick stage exit and turn them on! Not sure when our next performance will be, but not too long hopefully.

     

  • RAVINE/MACHINE Live in Brighton

    Amy and I will be playing as RAVINE/MACHINE again on the 4th December at The Rose Hill in Brighton. We have support from R.Dyer and I AM FYA. I think it’s going to be a great night, and a great way to start the festive season. Come along, there will be mince pies! Tickets available here.

    Poster for RAVINE/MACHINE gig at The Rose Hill