I am often fascinated by the amount of control and possibility that gets loaded onto a module designed to make one particular sound. In a regular synthesizer or drum machine the kick drum is pretty well defined, and if you’re lucky, you might get a decay or tone control. In Eurorack, you seem to get every control you can think of, which makes me wonder whether anyone is happy with their kick drum. Do we need to be constantly tweaking it into something unique, or at least something else?
Winter Plankton seem to be well aware of what you could turn a kick or bass drum into. So much so that they’ve amusingly changed the name around as if to prove that this isn’t just any old bass drum; no no, this is the DassBrum.
The DassBrum starts with an analogue sine wave pumped out of the VCO and playable over five octaves. Stick a sequence into the Pitch input and, provided you trigger the internal analogue envelope, you have a tune. It has a single Release control, giving anything up to 12 seconds. There’s no Attack, and the leading edge has a satisfying thump to it, which is probably exactly what you’re looking for in a percussion module. To further its sonic versatility DassBrum has four wavefolding options: Hard clipping, Serge‑style waveshaping, Custom and Hard + Serge. These amount to pushing the sine into a square‑ish shape, two flavours of gentle folding and then harder clipping. These can be set post or pre the VCA, which offers an almost discernible difference.
The combination makes for a really perky synth voice. The simplicity of the Release and Fold sliders makes it very playable, and adding some modulation to the Fold brings in a wonderfully wobbly bit of PWM style. There are a couple of small annoyances to mention. Firstly, the Fold modes are represented by the colour of the button, but the difference between ‘soft orange’ for pre VCA and ‘orange’ for post VCA is so slight that you’d never know by looking at it and are constantly having to cycle through all the modes to remind yourself which you are on. Secondly, the Fold CV input can control either the Fold amount or the Fold mode but, for some reason, they’ve decided to put the switch for this on the back in the tiniest form I’ve ever seen — or rather could only see once I’d donned my DIY magnifying glasses. Switching between the two modes could be a useful variation tactic so having it on the front would be fabulous, but hey.
Right, interesting synth voice aside, we’re here for that kick drum. And for that, you need to look no further than the two knobs in the middle. These handle the Decay and Amount of the digitally controlled pitch envelope. I’m certain there’s some sort of scientific equation of Decay‑to‑Amount ratio that forms the perfect 808‑style analogue kick, but you can find plenty of candidates just by fiddling with those two knobs. If you unpatch the Pitch, Fold, Accent and other modulations you can get some really solid sounds. This is enhanced further by the Sweet Spot button, which restricts the range of the Decay and Amount knobs by removing the extremes and keeping the full sweep of the knob in the most kick‑drum‑friendly area. It’s a neat idea.
It does a fantastic job of being a funky and fascinating synth and bass‑drum party.
When you have everything happening at once — folding, accents, sequences and modulation — it does a fantastic job of being a funky and fascinating synth and bass‑drum party. Having DassBrum as purely your kick drum would be to underutilise its versatility massively.