Sidrax CIAT-LONBARDE

Supplied with a Patch Point universal power supply (PSU).

Text by Peter Blasser

The Sidrax Organ follows a lineage of touch-based instruments. It has been redesigned twice, first as the Sidrassi , then as the Sidrazzi . It has seven wooden bars that you press to activate the seven oscillators. Each oscillator has its own precision adjustment slider, integrated directly into its bar.

In addition, there's a master knob for pitch control and a master chaos knob. The Master Chaos knob transforms the instrument from a pure triangle wave sound to a noisy, chaotic mess. It does this by gradually increasing the modulation from one oscillator to the next in a circular pattern. The Sidrax has enough bars to build smoother melodies from triangle waves, while the Tetrax is a simple four-bar unit with a tonal complexity for funky bass lines.

There are 44 modulation points in the form of banana jacks. They are arranged in seven columns, representing the seven bars. Their arrangement is diagonally offset to allow the inputs and outputs to be close to each other. This is so that the instrument can be played by touch; you can make metal banana jack studs that can be crushed by hand to patch the instrument.

The entrances are the cool colors: blue, green and grey.

The exits are the warm colors: red and orange.

The grey jacks are parallel inputs with the master potentiometers: the two on the left are for the pitch master, the two on the right are the master chaos.

The color assignment for each bar is as follows:

Two orange jacks, representing the movements of pressing and releasing on this tensioned bar.

A red jack, which is the pure triangle output of this oscillator.

Two green jacks, which are "glitch" inputs. They allow the boundary conditions of each oscillator to connect to each other. A modulation inspired by "circuit bending".

A blue jack, an FM modulation input for this oscillator.

The Sidrax organ has a stereo mini-output on the back. Each bar outputs to different channels during the press/release cycle. In addition to the stereo mini-jack output, it offers the option of a power switch and built-in batteries, or the option of an external 9-volt battery.