A week ago I wrote about (circular) mechanical sequencers and a lost post that I’d seen on a (re)construction of one for modular use. I still haven’t found the post, but in my searches for material on linear FM yesterday did come across this circular cardboard sequencer. There’s a fun video in addition the post on how to build it.

And that reminded me of some funny little bits tacked onto the end of some episodes of Reply All. Here’s one, and here’s another.

I was watching a video of Lars Lundehave Hansen’s Lunar Eclipse and got to thinking of mechanical sequencers (to take a step even further back than the analogue ones). I seem to remember seeing a post about someone constructing an electro-mechanical sequencer with control voltages so that it could be used in a modular set-up. I unfortunately haven’t been able to find my way back to that post, but remember it as being based on a circular switch similar to the one found on the 1959 Wurlitzer Side Man. It also go me thinking of the Polyphons that inspired the sound-sculpture that Ida Raselli presented in a recent Frankenstein’s Lab. Finnish sound artist Martin Bircher used a similiar Symphonion as the basis for a hand-cranked MIDI sequencer.

In a way it’s surprising that circular forms aren’t more common in sequencer design. There’s the Buchla 250e (that Benge used in his tour of sequencing modular systems) or iOS apps like Patterning or dot Melody. I can’t think of much else.