[sdiy] v/octave standard ?

[Tom May]

TooManySynths <p8051 at yahoo.com> writes:

> So, I'm thinking should I leave off the coarse tune
> control on my VCO's and put an octave switch on
> instead. I could use an external control to provide a
> coarse sweep if desired?  

I like octave switches because tweaking the tone by changing a VCO's
octave is so easy and useful.  So on my ASM-1 I used octave switches
and a fine tune that covers an octave and a fifth.  This works well
for me.

I tune 0v to C since that's what my MIDI-CV converter expects.  I
tuned one VCO sightly flat so the fine tune could drop it slightly
below pitch as well as raising the pitch.  It's easy to use the fine
tune to bring it back in tune with the other one when I want.

I find that just having some tick marks on the panel allows me to get
the sound "close enough" to a patch I've written down, then I can fine
tune it by ear.  If the sound is particularly sensitive to some knob
setting I'll make a note of that and try to record it fairly
precisely.  Having things calibrated seems kind of geeky.  In real
life the knobs are just set by ear.  I don't need to know what is Fc
on my filter, what is the attack of my ADSR, etc., it just needs to
sound right.

fTom.