THE FACOCTATRON

 The Facoctatron is a crude sample trigger interface tailored specifically to my own twisted needs. I wanted to be able to reach out and fwack off non-rhythmic dronal  samples by hand i.e. drones and background vocals samps  while playing the Swiss Army Bass - but I also wanted an instrument which could be beaten senseless with a pair of drum sticks. It Needed to be as minimal as possible --- With these criteria in mind I had a good stupid excuse to go build some more crazy shit out of copper pipe. -

A.   Collapsible,  sweated copper pipe frame.

B.    Duct tape and wires.

C.   Alessis  D-4 drum module.

D.   sections of  flat garden hose with underlying piaso transducers  these spring lifted sections of hose are floating slightly above the transducers which are affixed to the pipe itself by means of nails, pointing in opposite directions through holes drilled through the pipe. The transducers are coated in aluminum foil as the bottom side of the hose is plated with copper and both are wired with the transducer into the same semi-broken circuit – in this way the actual  mechanism itself becomes a switch (gate, if you will) to insure that the transducer only triggers when that particular  section of hose is hit   - you dig?

E.  The Clutch: Hitting this shifts the D-4 to the next octave up in a continuous loop of 3 octaves.             

F.   The Brake : Hitting this shuts every thing up. critical in  dealing with long, extended samples. 

G.   More duct tape and wires.