Rhythmic Drone Synth

[tbone]

So I've been getting side tracked from my pile of items to bend recently with the joys of the CMOS 4000 series. I've been re-reading 'Hand Made Electronic Music' again for the hundredth time and going over lots of posts on the Lunetta section of the electro-music forums.

Here is what I have been spending my time on recently:

Rhythmic Drone Synth

Its basically a 4017 sequencer [clocked with a 555] based around the baby 10 sequencer that can be hooked up to 8 oscillators made from 2 40106s. The outputs from the sequencer basically interrupt the output of the oscillators and allow you to create some rhythmic patters.

There is a little more information on the page for the video. 

[phantompowers]

That is ace. I think it's time I ignored by 'ready to bend' pile and re-read Nic Collins amazing book!

[Circuitbenders]

dammit! It certainly looks ace, but i can't get the video to play without stopping for a 10 second break every 2 seconds. 

I seem to have completely missed this post. That'll teach me to not pay attention to everything, all the time 

[Remork]

looks aw-a-some! need to check this section more often... respect

[tbone]

I seemed to have completely missed these responses, thank you all for your kind words.

@Circuitbenders ahhh yes that is the down side with high definition I guess, videos look lovely but buffering can be a bit of a bitch. It took my laptop about 40 minutes to render the video file after trimming it down and compressing it to fit within vimeo's 500MB upload limit...kind of makes you want to opt for standard definition...

[Remork]

if you have 8 oscillators on 2x 40106, that still leaves you 4 inverters.. why use a 555 to clock then? could've used another inverter, no?

[tbone]

 Indeed I could have used another oscillator on either of the 40106's, but my reason for a 555 was two fold.
Firstly [although I've not really checked this out myself] I've read that using more than 4 of the oscillator's  on one chip can cause some instability, which was something I wanted to avoid for the clock of the 4017. But I realise I could have used one chip with 3 oscillators and one for the clock and then 5 oscillators on the other chip [as if the instability is only affecting audio oscillators it wouldn't really bother me and could potentially even lead to some good sounds].
Which leads me to the second reason of simply not having enough room. If you look at the thumbnail of the video you can see the actual circuit of this build is a fairly small rectangle of stripboard, purely because that is all that would fit with the layout of the controls on the panel. The stripboard is pretty crammed and involved a bit of overlapping of wires and components. I didn't have the room to hook up another oscillator to either of the 40106s but I could manage to fit in a 555 next to the 4017.

[Remork]

yeah i've heard that instability thing before - never quite experienced it, though.
but congrats on great work