KASTLE DRUM 1 (Beats and Noise)

The Kastle Drum from Bastl Instruments is based on their original Kastle semimodular synthesizer - but it’s really a very different sort of device. In this first video about it I discuss the Drum’s design, some of the fundamental sounds and grooves, and also delve into making different types of noise with it. Thanks for watching! TIMELINE 00:00 STARTER This is an overlay of two 1-wire Kastle Drum patches (I don’t have two, btw, just the magic of cinema...). The beats patch is just the CLK into the DRUM MOD. The noise patch is the DRUMS audio out into the DRUM MOD (covered below). I’m using the Korg NTS-1 for reverb (Plate on the drums, Space on the noise). 00:22 INTRO 00:50 FIRST... A FUNDAMENTAL BEAT PATCH I feel like this one patch sort of explains the entire Kastle Drum (i.e. take a Kastle 1.5 and think about how you could modify it to get a flexible percussive groove). 02:08 SIDE BY SIDE As per above, I think a lot can be learned about the Kastle Drum by comparing it to the Kastle 1.5. 05:39 MORE ABOUT BEAT PATCHING Just some of the basic features and functionality for rhythmic patches. I start using the “ears“ here (audio out of the I/O with DRUMS out on the I/O LEFT, NOISES out on the I/O RIGHT. As pointed out in the video, watch the volume doing this (getting a simple inline attenuator is super helpful - search “headphone volume control“ or something along those lines). 14:00 A SLIGHTLY MORE COMPLEX BEAT PATCH Another beat patch, this time varying the timbre and envelope of the sounds with DECAY. 18:13 NOISE... AUDIO FREQUENCY LFO AND TWO BASIC PATCHES I guess an audio frequency LFO isn’t quite what I think of as ’noise’, more of a wave - BUT, it is important to think about using the LFO/TEMPO very high to get noisy behavior (again, watch audio levels doing this). The two patches are 1) NOISES to PITCH MOD and 2) DRUMS to DRUM MOD. 23:22 A SLIGHTLY MORE COMPLEX NOISE PATCH This one is sort of a round robin of the device. It’s CLOCK to PITCH MOD and NOISES to DRUM MOD. Add some FX and this is like a whole video or show... 27:12 OUTRO Setup for the next part. 30:25 RAINDROPS PATCH AND A VARIATION If you stuck with the video this long (or jumped to this part) then here’s something kind of different: a patch that really doesn’t make any “sense“ but is actually interesting and super easy. It is TEMPO MOD to DRUM MOD. Tons of cool sounds. I’m using the Korg NTS-1 for the reverb again. The tempo circuit has enough of a voltage fluctuation at the modulation patchpoint to trigger the drums in a sort of chaotic way (kind of a raindrops or dripping water motif). I spotted this patch when I made 50 random patches using my Kastle DNA software (see video of about 6 months ago) modified for the Drum (really just some label changes since it’s the same faceplate). There is a logic to not strictly following logic in this sort of thing. Then, a variation on this Raindrops Patch that uses the LFO into PITCH MOD. The nice thing about this is that the fast, drippy, percussive hits from the first wire are independent of the LFO, so the LFO can be used for a slower modulation. You might also want to try slowly modulating the DECAY parameter this way too. LINKS