Tampura/Tambura Electronics Drone Project

[alex frias]

Anybody knows about some analog project emulation of the traditional indian stringed droning instrument? I know about those comercial digital products. In youtube there are some examples.

I thought about a four strings one, with adjustable pitch and some kind of sequenced triggering timing adjusting too.
So with a four triggering sequencer to control the envelopes of the four oscialtors. Maybe some subtle frequency modulation to make up the dullness of the oscilators sound...
When I saw the Tim Escobedo "Drones" idea I thought about that, and seeing SeekWah and VanishingPoint I figured out the CI used to sequence the events on those projects could serve the same purpose to a Tampura emulation.

Any clues, ideas, comments and suggestions will be very wellcome. I think that kind of box may be a good company for loop imrpovisation, studying or fun with an electric sitar or a Jawari/Psychtar user.

I hope not being much off topic to a stompbox site, but my plan is to have it in my pedalboard.

For now I use my BOSS RC-2 with a sample of a real tampura in D...

[alex frias]

The comercial products are generally digital samples and some sounds very good and even have a loudspeakear already built in.
An example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcHCH1BO3hI&feature=related

The real instrument:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfAzxaiX-5Y&NR=1

And a little drones oscilators based on 40106 created by BeavisAudio:
http://beavisaudio.com/Projects/ArmageddonProcessor/index.7.jpg

[sean k]

Google Dronelab.

[alex frias]

Thanx!!!

It's a good, complex and interesting resulting sounds, but different from what I would like to build.
I thought about a simpler and possibly more limited and focused project. But some very good ideas are there, undoubtedly!

I will try to organise a bolck diagram...

[moose23]

Here's another commercial unit:

http://www.mastermusiconline.com/musical-instruments/raagini-tanpura.shtml

Would be very interested in diy version of these things but only getting my head around simple oscillators yet myself.

[alex frias]

OK, that one is a very well known model, and is about US$250. It uses samples of the real thing. Very good gadget indeed!

I'm trying to get some simpler project, as I said before.  If anybody could point out some kind of simple envelope generator triggered by a pulse from a 4017, which I think may be used like the control sequencer, please tell me!  I will look after some autofilters to see if I can stole some good ideas from them. Maybe some envelope with trimpots to adjust the attack and release times. I think if the attack is very sharp, it can sound too much percussive, so very small ramp up will be needed, and obviously a very long decay ramp will do the rest. With best values found, we could replace the trimpots for fixed resistor values.

A raw idea: