Ciat-LonbardeQuatrax Organ Wooden Analog Touch Synthesizer

Ciat-Lonbarde Quatrax Organ

A deluxe instrument combining the techniques found in Sidrax and Tetrax, Ciat-Lonbarde's Quatrax is a massive 14-bar wooden analog synthesizer with abundant patchability and thoroughly unique character. More than just a combination of the two, Quatrax provides its own varieties of pitch and timbre manipulation—often in tandem—but continues to draw from the lineage of Ciat-Lonbarde's wooden organs. By touching the wooden bars, you'll activate Quatrax's internal oscillators—a different and unique sort of pressure sensitivity. The left-most knob will set the global pitch range of Quatrax, and each bar features a slider to tune within this range.

In terms of timbre, Quatrax sits somewhere between Sidrax and Tetrax. In the middle of the instrument is a variable timbre control morphing between saw, triangle, and ramp waveforms. Changing this control will have an effect on the pitch, but of course, the global tuning and sliders can compensate for this. And as with the other Ciat-Lonbarde organs, the right-most knob is a chaos control, introducing FM and other cascading modulations from one oscillator to the next in an endless cycle. Consonant tones quickly dissolve into noise and grit, but a variety of rumbles, grumbles, and hisses are achieved by tuning bars across different ranges.

You'll need a healthy stock of banana cables for this one—Quatrax offers a whopping 100 banana jack patch points. This instrument subscribes to the same coloring scheme as other CIat-Lonbarde instruments—inputs use cool colors of blue, green, and grey, while outputs are on warmer red and orange jacks. Each oscillator features seven patch points: four inputs and three outputs, plus the two grey inputs for the global frequency and chaos controls. On the red jack, each oscillator's audio output may be found for creating FM and other modulations, while the orange jacks offer the press and release gesture voltages from the piezos. As for inputs, blue is a frequency control input, while three green jacks represent different "glitch" inputs—inspired by circuit bending and imparting rough sync and reset modulations between oscillators.

Quatrax is an expansive palette for exploring tones, timbres, and gestural performance. It plays well with other Ciat-Lonbarde organs and instruments but would serve as an excellent companion for Serge and other banana jack-laden synths, too.

Quatrax Organ Features

• 14-note analog synthesizer
• Wooden touch bars with piezos inside
• Global pitch, waveform, and chaos controls
• Oscillators morph from saw to triangle to ramp
• Tuning slider per bar
• 100 banana jack patch points
• 1 FM and 3 glitch inputs per voice
• Audio and press/release gesture outputs per voice
• Grey inputs for global pitch and chaos control
• Side-mounted jack for ground
• TRS minijack stereo output