Midweek Modular: Tape scrubbing, Cooking sequences and DJ drops
4,1 / 5,0 | 
This week, we will make loops with the uTape Scrubber, create 12 tracks of sequencing with Cuisine, and play with the Stereo FX and DJ VCF from Erica Synths.
Midweek Modular
It’s a brand new year, and I’m already failing in my resolution not to buy any Eurorack in 2024. Here’s what’s in my basket.
BeepBoop uTape Scrubber
BeepBoop Electronics keep trying to push cassette tape into our Euroracks, and frankly, I can’t get enough. There’s something joyful about it that’s more than nostalgia. Tape mechanisms have a fascinating technological poetry to them, and who wouldn’t want that in their modular?
The uTape Scrubber is a CV-controlled, sound-on-sound looper that uses Microtapes, like those found in dictaphones or old answer machines. It’s designed to be a simpler and more idiot-proof version of BeepBoop’s forthcoming 1U Taperack System. Plug something into the audio input and record it to the tape. Then, switch into playback mode and take control of the pitch, direction and range. You can scrub the sound directly using the Pitch knob, and you can also feed in some CV to control the scrubbing.
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You’ll get a single cassette and five tape loops in the box and lots of encouragement to make your own. You can also get more from the BeepBoop website. You have to take some care as you can easily snap your tape if you push it too hard.
BeepBoop is taking deposits on preorders for the first batch now.
Floating Knobs Cuisine
Cuisine is a 12-track modular sequencer and the first release from new modular firm Floating Knobs. It has a strong whiff of Erica Synths about it but once you register that this has 12-tracks, as in TWELVE TRACKS, it starts to have an aroma all of its own.
Four tracks tend to be a lot more common, but it depends on what you’re talking about. A single sequencer track tends to need two parameters, CV and Gate, and so in some respect, that’s already eight tracks in a four-track sequencer. Add in a modulation lane per track, and you’re already controlling twelve tracks of control voltage. With Cuisine, it takes those twelve tracks and lets you assign them to be anything you want within the constraints of the four physical CV outputs and eight trigger/gate outputs. So you could have a classic four-track CV/Gate plus modulation setup, or you could have a twelve-channel drum sequencer, or two tracks of notes, two of modulation and the rest as triggers. It’s really up to you and it can be MIDI if you prefer.
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Cuisine supports all sorts of clocking independence for complex rhythms and polyrhythms. It can handle chord progressions, scales and transposition. It has Euclidian modes for organic pattern generation. Each track can handle up to 64 steps, and you can store up to eight patterns per track.
Interface control
The interface relies on a single knob to control everything. On the one hand that makes it all very easy, on the other you’ve got to keep a handle on what mode and page you’re in. I like the 16 clacky keyboard buttons, but they’ll potentially only show you a quarter of your sequence at a time.
Cuisine can run standalone over USB or be dropped into your Eurorack. That makes it pretty interesting for people with space issues and broadens the appeal to non-modular people. I think it looks great, but it all comes down to how easy it is to navigate. I would very much like to give it a try.
Cuisine is available for preorder for €450 and should ship in the middle of January.
- Floating Knobs website.
Erica Synths Drum Stereo FX and Stereo DJ VCF
The Stereo FX makes use of Erica Synth’s new hi-fi DSP engine and brings together both Reverb and Delay into a very CV-controllable package. You get three different delays and three reverbs, plus the ability to store up to 10 patches. Delay time divisions and multiplications can be synced, and delay time can be controlled over CV, as can the feedback and preset selection.
Meanwhile, over on the decks, the Stereo DJ VCF gives you that turn-left-for-low and turn-right-for-high pass feature that works really well in a live music environment. You also get full control over the resonance to angle your deflectors for the perfect mood.
Both are brilliantly demonstrated in this video.
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- Erica Synths website.
- More from Erica Synths.
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