鼓菇菇 gǔgūgū Mushroom Drum Synth

[Ruebezahl]

This drum synth is housed in a mushroom shaped mosquito light. It can be played by drumming on the mushroom head, or using the internal sequencer, based on a CD4089. The Sequencer can be controlled by 4 switches for the logic inputs of the 4089, or light sensors (housed in the mushrooms head as well) respectively. The sound is a pitch bent square wave oscillator with variable decay.

About the name: The chinese characters meaning is literally Drum Mushroom, but the pronouncation is gǔgūgū, which makes it sound very funny

Here a little video of me playing it, both by hand and automated: video

The available controls are:
- Sensitivity (of the trigger pad)
- Sequencer Speed
- Decay
- Pitch Decay
- High Pitch
- Low Pitch
- Tone (Filter)

Like so often, i had the basic circuit running very quick, but many little details i wanted to add, and decisions i had to made resulted in around half a year that this mushroom finally made sounds. It’s a mosquito trap in mushorom shape, and i housed the circuit in both the head, as well as the body, so there are quite a lot of wires running between the two boards, just through the 4 thin plastic sticks, which made wireing also a little challenging.

This mushroom i found in a thrift store, but i have the plan that this is just the first of many to come, so i already found some others online, Each mushroom drum will have a different color (both body and LED’s) and a different sound. Also they will all have trigger and sync ins, so later on i might trigger them from a master sequencer, or play them by hand like a drum set. So it will be like a big rythmic mycelium.

But so far this little guy is still all by himself, i think already pretty fun

The next mushrooms i am planning on:

-Xor-Drum, for metallic percussion

-twin-t drum

-maybe a simple one, mainly for hihats

-Super Space Drum Clone ( Original by Electro Harmonix)

for the sequencing i guess there are many options, i like patching around with cmos chips, so i think i might build a sequencer with lots of different logic chips.

another one i find quite interesting is a classic Electro Harmonix "Clockworks"

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