Hidden · found in the search · Mono synth

The TC-101

A one-voice synth worked out from a small classic mono synth's circuits: one oscillator with its sub and noise, a four-pole filter, an envelope, an LFO and portamento.

Tempo
Swing
Volume
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TC-101 mono synth

Tune
Mod
PW
Pulse
Saw
Sub
Noise
Freq
Res
Env
Mod
Kybd
A
D
S
R
Rate
Time
Accent
Age

Machines found

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  11. TC-101
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The others answer to their numbers in the search.

How to play it
  • Play starts the sequencer, and so does the space bar. A pattern chosen while it plays starts at the next bar.
  • Knobs turn when dragged up or down; hold Shift for small steps, double-click to put one back. With the keyboard: Tab to a knob, then the arrow keys. While the lab plays, a knob an LFO, a duck or the song moves turns with it, and a mark on its ring stays where you set it; a knob the song's lane holds is framed in green.
  • Undo: Ctrl+Z takes back the last change to the lab, a run of changes without a pause being one step, and Ctrl+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y) puts it back; ↶ and ↷ on the rack's bar do the same. A right-click on a region, a note, a lane's point, a track's name or a channel gives what can be done to it. ? shows every key.
  • Parts: every machine has sixteen, A–P, each played from its own steps or from a piano roll; the letters under its name choose the one it plays and shows. Give it a name, and Save as new part copies it, steps, roll and all, to the first free part and goes on there, so a pattern you made is kept to use in the song. Solo lets only that machine be heard: with Patterns on, it loops the part you are writing.
  • Piano roll: Steps or Roll beside a machine's parts says how that part is written. In the roll, a double click on the grid puts a note there (with ✎, press and drag to draw one as long as the drag); press a note to choose it, drag it to move it or its end to lengthen it, double-click it away; with a note chosen, the arrow keys move it and Shift with them lengthens it. The grid is a quarter down to a thirty-second, or triplets; a clip is 1 to 512 bars, and in the song a region as long as its clip plays it through once. Velocities are under the notes, lanes for the machine's own knobs under those. Read MIDI takes a MIDI file's track (its controllers 74, 71, 1 and 72 become lanes, its pitch bends a Pitch bend lane), Save MIDI writes the clip out with its bend, and with Rec on, what you play while the lab runs is written in.
  • Pitch bend: every synth and the TC Sampler bends, every note sounding and every new one, as a keyboard's wheel does. Bend on its panel says how far, 1 to 24 semitones up and down (2 to start). A MIDI keyboard's wheel bends the machine touched last. In a roll, a Pitch bend lane bends it through the clip, the middle no bend; draw a swoop down for a hoover. An LFO on Pitch bend, at a small depth, is vibrato.
  • Step programs: beside a machine's parts, a list of programs to put into the part chosen (‹ › go through them; Undo puts the steps back): the lab's own, with the riffs and beats of the band's remix kits, yours, and the site's. Save steps… keeps yours in this browser, Export and Open… take them as a file, and Share… puts them on the step programs.
  • The TC-101 is written like a TC-303: choose a step and play its note on the keyboard, or on the computer's keys A to K; Rest, Down, Up, Accent and Slide change it.
  • WAV records whole bars of what plays, from the start of a bar, and saves them as a WAV file that loops.
  • MIDI: in browsers that have it, the MIDI button lets a keyboard play the machines. Channel 10 strikes the drums by General MIDI's drum notes; the other channels play the machine touched last, and a TC-303 note struck hard is written with an accent. Controllers 74, 71, 1 and 72 turn the cutoff, resonance, envelope and decay of the machine touched last, where it has them, and the pitch wheel bends it; Start and Stop start and stop the lab.

Every sound is made in your browser as it plays, from the lab's own arithmetic, the band's remix kit and what you load yourself, which is never sent anywhere. What you make is kept in this browser and follows you from machine to machine. The band's studio had machines of these kinds from its first synthesizer in 1997 on; each machine's page says which, and what was made with them. Everything else is in the manual.

About the TC-101

How it is built

One voice, sample by sample at twice the rate. A rising saw, a pulse cut from it whose width the knob, the envelope or the LFO sets, a sub-oscillator an octave or two down, and noise are mixed into four filter stages in a row, the resonance fed back until the filter sings on its own. One envelope: Gate+Trig strikes it on every note, Gate only after a release, LFO on the LFO's beat. The amplifier follows the envelope or the gate. An LFO of four waves moves the pitch, the pulse's width and the cutoff, and portamento glides (Auto only between notes played legato). Accent, the lab's own, opens an accented step further and makes it louder; Unit and Age are as on the TC-303.

How to use it

  1. Choose a step and play its note on the keyboard under the steps, or on the computer's keys A to K; the next step is chosen for you.
  2. Rest, Down, Up, Accent and Slide change the chosen step: a slid step glides into the next without striking it again.
  3. Start from one of its six sounds, then turn Freq and Res while it plays.
  4. Range sets the octave: at 16′ it plays a line where it is written.

In the studio

A software version of this kind of synth was in the band's Studio 7, from 2015 to 2017.

Everything else, the rack, the arranger, the mixer and saving your work, is in the lab's manual.