Phonogene

The Phonogene is a digital re-visioning of the tape recorder as a musical instrument, named after Pierre Schaeffer's one-of-a-kind phonogène: it records a sound on the fly, layers it by sound on sound, cuts it into splices and replays them in any order, and divides it into genes, tiny grains to step or slide through, with voltage control over every parameter. DSP by Tom Erbe, firmware by Flemming Christensen.

Key features

• Record on the fly to a 2 MB non-volatile buffer, kept with its splices at power down
• Sound On Sound between the live input and the loop, under voltage control
• VARI-SPEED: speed and direction of playback from one control, the sample rate from 88.2 to 5.5 kHz
• SPLICE to cut the loop, ORGANIZE to choose the next splice, an End Of Splice pulse out
• GENE-SIZE, GENE SHIFT and SLIDE for granular playback
• Retired, followed by the Morphagene