analogue ring modulator

[Jazz P Bass]

I found this students project interesting & professionally done.

Ring Modulator.pdf

[eschertron]

I found this students project interesting & professionally done.

[ATTACH]38832[/ATTACH]

Please note that the project was done in a 400-level course

[rjb]

Wondering what type of oscillator DIY ring modulator users employ for the carrier input, and what kinds of sounds they produce.
Waveshape, frequency? Variable frequency? Frequency sweep? How controlled while playing?
I'm guessing my preference would be a variable frequency sine wave generator that could be accurately set to musical pitches.

I find much of this "musical".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjzXb0CdSUs

I find much of this "not so musical".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0hR-HASR6Y

Advice?

EDIT:
Although the Don Ellis (2nd link) is starting to grow on me, I'm asking advice on producing "subtle" vs dissonant in-your-face effects.

[Mick Bailey]

I feed the ringmod in my synth from two different audio oscillators that will go from a few Hz to just on the limit of my own hearing range. Both can be independently modulated - usually from a pair of LFOs with variable wave shape. With square waves I can also simultaneously modulate the duty cycle.

The effects are pretty impressive; when set up for a bell/chime/gong sound you'd swear you were hearing something metallic being struck. The sounds are so incredibly musical and in no way dissonant when set up this way and played from the keyboard.

The other way I like to use the ringmod is to manually shift one frequency against the other and get those dissonant sounds.

In the same light as a true ringmod, I've played round with bit crusher pedals with guitar - commercially the WMD Geiger Counter and a few DIY builds. I built a guitar pedal using a wah shell that controlled the oscillator frequency and this worked superbly. I put in a switch to select between three ranges. The nice thing is that you can track the fretboard with the pedal to sync the effect. Some strange results came out of this; with the pedal at a certain position you can play an open string and it's the same pitch when fretted at the 12th. Some really nice harmonized notes can be had, too.

[Enzo]

rjb, then you would absolutely HATE Karlheinz Stockhausen. I rather enjoyed his works back in my days of...um... consciousness enhancement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Stockhausen