Monday, January 21, 2008

The Harvestman Tyme Sefari

As all of you regular readers know, I can't wait for this module. It
is *so* much fun and finally getting a hands-on was fantastic! Scott
has done an awesome job with the panel layout...the module is
definitley one of those ones where you see yourself tweaking a lot in
realtime and the layout makes this really easy, even with cables
plugged in.

The switches are also really nice feeling. The are heavier duty that
the usual switched found on modules and feel like you can be a little
more "enthusiastic" with them during a performance. I'm so in love
with this module.

The Sound Of Thunder expansion module is fantasitc fun too...this is
definite a must have. Getting a wacky loop going and then flipping
those switches brought the biggest smile to my face!

Scott said he's got a few final tweaks to make to it and then its
ready to roll out!

3 comments:

chris n said...

Can you describe what the thunder expander added to the unit? I'm not really sure I understand - I should probably wander through the harvestman yahoo group some more.

I'm hooked on the idea of having this in my modular.. but almost wonder if my Machinedrum UW can already do everything it does.

chris n said...

From the harvestman group:

"They disable or swap various lines on the address bus, which becomes
especially interesting in looping modes where chunks of the retrieved
data doesn't correspond to the buffer address."

felix said...

Ah, nice find. I honestly couldn't have told you what it did technically other than mangle what was recorded in the buffer. It makes some fantastic sounds, which can of course be rerecorded through use of the feedback loop.

You could probably orchestrate similar function out of the MachineDrum UW (one of my particular favorite parts of the MD is it's ROM sample manipulation) but it would have to be carefully programmed and it will still be a simulation of what the Tyme Sefari could do. I could easily see myself performing with the Tyme Sefari, sound kind of sound source, and a filter. I would definitely say that the Tyme Sefari is not like a "sampler for your modular". While there is no reason why you couldn't pre-record a sample to manipulate, the real strength of this module comes out with on the fly sampling/re-recording/manipulation.