A while ago I became interested in building analogue synthesisers, and I put together a bank of four oscillators, each based on the ‘Super Simple Oscillator’ from Look Mum No Computer, a truly excellent fellow.

Unfortunately, while it sounds great, it isn’t really all that playable, other than as a drone. Because it is so simple, there’s no proper tracking, even though it does have rudimentary control voltage input, and changing the pitch of one oscillator effects that of the others! (Presumably because they share the same power supply?) This renders it interesting, fun, educational, and yet not really of great musical use. So the poor thing lay forlorn and dormant for a time while I moved on to other projects.

But it’s been given new life as a sampled instrument! My interest in sampling was rekindled with the discovery of Christian Henson Music on YouTube, and in turn David Hilowitz and his Decent Sampler. Again truly excellent people, to whom I’m very grateful!

Now, this isn’t a completely faithful recreation of the hardware oscillator bank (thank goodness?) Firstly I didn’t want to overly complicate things in my first Decent Sampler instrument, and quite frankly I didn’t record the ‘secondary’ oscillators very well. I also decided that it would be best to keep the number of samples down, by reusing the same samples for the second ‘unison’ oscillator, with the ability to detune it to thicken the sound or create a harmonic interval.

Included currently are two versions, one uses the full complement of 16 samples, while the other is a ‘lo-fi’ version which spreads a single sample across the keyboard.

Maybe I should do a four oscillator bank at some point though, in keeping with the spirit of the original hardware? I’m also experimenting with some ‘reamped’ versions.

But for now I give you the Buzzy Bee Analogue Oscillator! I hope you enjoy it and find it in some way useful. Thanks for giving it a go!