AMP Electronics Star Song: Orbital optical rotating sequencer
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AMP Star Song · Source: AMP Electronics
AMP Star Song · Source: AMP Electronics
AMP Star Song · Source: AMP Electronics
From the minds of A Magic Pulsewave comes a cosmic sequencer programmed by a rotating optical disc with seven rings of orbital voltage generation. Sounds trippy.
Star Song
Physical sequencers of this kind pop up from time to time as interesting concepts or projects that never seem to see the light of day. But Star Song is an actual product that you can go and buy from Andy M. Puls also known as A Magic Pulsewave or AMP.
Star Song is all about singing the cycles of the spheres. It’s a physical interaction that feeds into our love of touch, visual excitement and connecting music generation with moving parts. The idea is that the optical disc has a number of rings on which you make marks with a marker pen or tape. As the disc rotates these are interpreted by the disc reader and used to play either the internal synth or fed out to other devices.
AMP Star Song
There are seven rings in total. The first three are called “intervals” and select from eight user-defined notes. Next, we have three rings that act as gates over three octaves and are called “registers”. The innermost ring is then used for modulation and is patched to the cut-off frequency of the internal synth’s filter. The Star Song is controlled via some touch contacts for on/off and rotation. You can modulate the Speed control from an external oscillator – that sounds potentially disastrous/fun to me!
Optical sequencing
Star Song looks wonderfully bonkers. It has shades of the Daphne Oram Oramics machine, which used drawings on film and glass slides to generate waveforms and modulations. But it looks like only orbit seven uses the shape of the markings to effect change. It’s difficult to say exactly what’s going on. It is undoubtedly fascinating. You can also purchase extra discs to build up a library of your favourite sequences.
I believe, in order to move beyond the internal synthesizer you would need to add the Wave Expander. It’s the triangular device that brings visualisation along with CV interpretation and connection to other modular gear.
AMP Star Song
It’s all very mystical but also terribly exciting, and I’d love to get to grips with it.
Star Song is available to preorder now for $456 or $777 with the Wave Expander. We expect them to start shipping in a couple of weeks. You can buy additional discs for $13 each.
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- AMP Star Song: AMP Electronics
- AMP Star Song: AMP Electronics
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