DWARFCRAFT DEVICES
SATAN OSCILLATE MY
METALLIC SONATAS
BY LYLE ZAEHRINGER
There’s a passage from horror writer H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dreams in the
Witch House that beautifully summarizes
what it’s like to witness an extraordinary and
radical guitar moment. “The shrieking, roar-
ing confusion of sound which permeated the
abysses was past all analysis as to pitch, tim-
bre or rhythm; but seemed to be synchronous
with vague visual changes in all the indefinite
objects, organic and inorganic alike.”
It’s also an apt, if highly poetic, way
to describe the capabilities of the new
Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas
from Dwarfcraft—a downright diaboli-
cal machine capable of creating walls of
harmonically twisted synth tones that you
can blend with your guitar signal.
I’ve played with a lot of noisemakers in
the past—analog synths and various circuit-bent keyboards. Even so, it’s hard to know
exactly where to start with the SOMMS.
The controls are not clearly marked and
their layout is unusual. As such, a desire to
tweak and experiment is required from the
outset. If you’re open-minded, it’s a refreshing approach—one that removes a lot of
preconceived notions and makes you work
in a more intuitive mode.
to hear audio clips of the pedal at
premierguitar.com/mar2012
CLICKHere…
The Spawn
The Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas
(henceforth referred to here as SOMMS)
builds on ideas explored in two other curiously monikered pedals in Dwarfcraft’s line:
the Thumping Double Squaresnakes and
the Rot Yr Brain. Though both of these
units evade simple definition, the Thumping
Double Squaresnakes is essentially a sound
generator with a pair of square-wave oscillators. Rot Yr Brain is a sound generator
with four square-wave oscillators that are
controlled by two level controls and two
ultra-cool joysticks. The SOMMS combines
features of both devices, including four
square-wave oscillators and a joystick. But
it also allows you to blend in a clean input
signal alongside the brutal synth tones.
Typically a synth pedal tracks the incoming tone from your guitar and, depending
on pitch, uses it to tune oscillators that produce the synth tones. With the SOMMS,
your input signal and the synth signal are
entirely independent. The idea is to use the
synthetic wall of sound as an accompaniment to your instrument.
out all of the highs and most of the mid
frequencies. As the control is increased, your
guitar signal can be heard, but the overall
output of the synths is also brightened. At
noon, the synth and guitar are at equal levels,
and the synth output is at its brightest. At
this setting, the bright artifacts of the square-wave oscillators light up the high-frequency
spectrum with the ferocity of a buzz saw.
The five additional controls alter the pitch
and volume of the oscillators. Within the
SOMMS there are four square-wave oscillators. They’re unnamed on the pedal, so I’ll
invent some names for the sake of reference:
Osc1, Wide, Demon1, and Demon2. Osc1
and Wide each have independent pitch and
volume controls. The pitch range of Osc1 is
within the range of melody, and setting this
It takes a bit of tweaking to understand the
function and dynamics of the controls, especially given that a single control can have two
functions and affect the performance of other
controls. For instance, the blend control on
the far right does not simply blend the synth
signal with your guitar input. At its minimum setting, the blend control isolates the
synth signal. But it also darkens it, sucking
Joystick
Four
square-wave
oscillators
