creative usage of CV signals?

marcelds · Joined: May 24, 2011 Posts: 19 Location: austria

hey all, long time no talk -

just built a 5-oscillator chain where each osc modifies the next - i also have a second small "noise-maker" deal built from a 556 cmos IC.
my question is whether i can somehow synch the two up using the output from the first into CV on the 556? the first often oscillates so slowly it would be interesting to see it affect the next.

i'm entirely new to using CV signals, and i'm not sure what i want or really what i am able to do with this. the first machine sounds really great by itself, but i'm also looking for creative ways to push it past what my knowledge is letting me do... is it too naive to assume CV will somehow improve this?
thanks,
marcel

forshee · Joined: Dec 16, 2010 Posts: 46 Location: Hopkins, MN

If memory serves the CV on a 555 or 556 basically controls a divider. So higher CV is lower pitch in this case. If your feeding it a logic signal it will just jump between two pitches. If you mix a few logic signals you could get a pattern generator ala Ken's pycho LFO. CV generally works better with more complex signals like a triangle wave or something. That being said experiment with it at the end of the day if it sounds good it is good.

Let me know how it goes I've been meaning to experiment with that CV input for awhile seems like it doesn't get much use.

synthesist · Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2011 3:38 pm Post subject:

hey marcelds,

there is some nice things to do with the cv-pin. Lets say you got 3 LFOs from the first noisemaker. You drive all three LFOs outputs through 3 potentiometers and then into the cv-pin.
Now you can change the 3 LFOs clocks plus the 3 LFOs volume. The 556 will play a mix of 3 different pitches on 3 different times, depending on the pots.
The CV-pin also takes signals from a sequencer.