If it wasn’t clear already, ADDAC System have made it their business with the ADDAC300 series to create as many unconventionally expressive methods of interfacing with your modular system as possible. The latest is the ADDAC310 Pressure To CV, a similarly conceived module that uses your breath as its control source.
This it does by way of an oesophageal‑looking melodica windpipe, which connects to the module panel via a curious looking air filter. Two identical but independent channels of CV are available; these can therefore be used either to send CV to completely different destinations or to variously affect different facets of the same destination. Fair to say one couldn’t ask for more functionality than ADDAC have included here: in addition to the linear wind‑to‑CV function, each channel offers a gate output with adjustable threshold, a variable response curve (that is, between exponential and logarithmic) and even an envelope‑style slew limiter which can slow the attack of your wind‑generated CV or add decay to it after you’ve stopped blowing. There’s an inverted CV output for creating counter‑functions and also a gate‑controllable Hold button, which in effect turns the ADDAC310 into a sample & hold module — only it’s your breath as the voltage source.
Of course, many developers — not least the heavy‑hitting likes of Yamaha and Roland — have historically gone to great lengths to create controllers befitting of even the best wind instrumentalists. While the ADDAC310 indeed seeks to bring that style of expression into Eurorack, it behaves in no way like a conventional wind instrument, primarily because its mouthpiece and wind pipe has no real airflow, in that there’s nowhere for any air to escape. This, say ADDAC, is to allow even the subtlest of changes in air pressure to have an impact on the module’s output and thus reducing the need to take many breaths. I found that it made blowing rather hard work, though with practice I did begin to get used to it, and was soon patching it to filters to create swelling chords, triggering drums with beatbox‑style bursts of air and modulating an array of different parameters in both positive and negative directions. I could even ‘blow’ reverb into a signal, which was a thrill. Prepare for a learning curve, but if wind is your thing, the ADDAC310 will be too.
£399
$399