Nano Garden (unpublished)
Attention (10/7/2017): Videos to come within the coming week. Currently pre-order. The first run of the Nano Garden is limited and expected to ship around the end of November. Note that if you choose to pre-order, you must understand that our ship date is an estimation and we ask that if you cannot be patient should it take a couple weeks longer, that you do not place a pre-order. These will ship in the order in which orders are placed. If these are not for sale on this page, it means we're sold out of pre-order but they will become available again. If that's the case, feel free to send us an email requesting an update when they're available again.
The Nano Garden is an acoustic-electronic hybrid designed to create anything from beats and oddities to dense sound scapes. From its inception in 2006, the original garden has gone through many changes and refinements; micro garden, luminist garden and illuminist garden and finally this latest and likely final version. This is essentially the replacement of the micro garden.
The Nano Garden essentially utilizes a single Alter circuit but equipped with a mic pre-amp, and 2 garden (stringed) panels for generating acoustics. By plucking, rubbing, tapping or even bowing, those micro-acoustic sounds become amplified and effected by the Alter in any number of ways. In essence, the garden is a large microphone designed to pick up vibrations.
Note that the effects in the Nano Garden are a selection of 7 specific effects taken from both Alters that we feel work best alone.
effects
There are two Alter 1 designs and 1 Alter 2. Each Alter 1 has seven different DSP effects which is selected by touching the copper hexagon:
1; long delay (capable of near infinite feedback looping)
2; tight, notated granular delay
3; huge plate reverb
4; shimmering reverb
5; distortion and multi-filter
6; pitch delay
7; stutter glitch
Alter 2 has the following effects:
1; analog delay
2; reverb with infinite capture and lp + hp filters
3; choral reverb
4; palindrome reverse delay - backward/forward repeat
5; time stretch
6; pitch shift (notated semi-tones
7; time stretch glitch
control
On each of the Alter sections, the following is present:
- control for the gain of the mic pre-amp or any incoming audio.
- controls for mix, X, Y and filter as well as clock.
- all effects have a variation of a filter which may change effect to effect.
- X and Y control various rates.
- clock control adjusts the rate which controls the DSP which can drastically change the effect. In doing so it does slightly lower the quality of the output signal but the results are fantastic. This clock is not for synchronization.
- mix, X, Y and filter all have CV control inputs.
- Each control level or cv input is visualized on the control panel.
acoustics
Each garden panel is equipped with a contact mic. A contact mic is designed to pick up vibration. The mic pre-amp is specifically designed to deal with the frequencies of the contact mic by boosting certain frequencies and dulling others in order to optimize the sound quality. The mic pre-amp has a gain control so the level can be adjusted according to how you intend to play.
design
The design is simple but beautiful with all of the artwork created by Arius Blaze. The box is thick and heavy bamboo and the 1/8" thick panels are all inset firmly into a slot routed into the bamboo. This increases the resonant vibrations by adding tension to the garden panels. Each spout of strings is bolted in from the back and held in place with a panel under the main board.
We occasionaly get asked "why bamboo instead of some exotic wood?". To that we say - because it's sustainable and doesn't involve things like deforestation or any number of other terrible things.
included
12v power, +tip, 2.1mm barrel type
black and white printed and hand bound manual.
- More instruments in the Electrocoustic Family.
- Other works by Arius Blaze.