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Related Manuals for Kodamo MASK1
Summary of Contents for Kodamo MASK1
- Page 3 We were inspired by the best analog synths to design the filter used in the MASK1, and by early, crunchy digital synths for the oscillators.
- Page 4 Document revision: 1.5 Release date (D/M/Y): 01/03/2023 Printed in France by Imprimerie Maffre © 2022-2023 Kodamo. All rights reserved. Do not discard this manual. A PDF version is also available at kodamo.org...
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Page 5: Table Of Contents
Unpacking & inspection............................7 Precautions................................8 Care..................................8 Installation and setup............................8 Power it on!............................... 10 How to play the MASK1............................. 10 First listening & voice presets..........................12 First steps with the interface..........................16 Layering two voices............................17 Splitting the keyboard............................18 Quick transpose.............................. -
Page 7: Where It Shines
Where it shines Knowing about the strengths of an instrument is important to know what you can do with it. The MASK1 was designed with some key points in mind: Raw sound quality with gritty and powerful oscillators • High quality filter •... -
Page 8: Precautions
• Avoid bad, unstable electrical installations • Unplug the MASK1 from the outlet if left unused for a long period of time or during a lightning storm • where power surges might occur Be careful when using the MASK1 with speakers or headphones. Always use moderate volume to •... - Page 9 Find the power cable and the power brick in the accessories bag. Plug the power cable into an outlet, and plug the cable into the power brick. Then, plug the output of the power brick into the MASK1 power input (6).
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Page 10: Power It On
The Value knob is speed sensitive. Turning it quickly will accelerate your travel through the presets. Slower turns allow you to pass through presets at a more leisurely pace. How to play the MASK1 The MASK1 is a performance-oriented synth. Here is a recap of the ways you can interact with it to make music. - Page 11 Aftertouch is the extra pressure you apply on a key after it has been pressed. Unlike many synthesizers, the MASK1’s keyboard is not just about triggering and stopping notes. Voices will react in different ways depending on the play mode they use: Polyphonic modes: You can play several notes at the same time.
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Page 12: First Listening & Voice Presets
Sustain pedal If you have a sustain pedal you can plug it into the MASK1. Notes will be held as long as you keep it pressed. When many notes are held by the pedal, polyphony may run out and new notes will replace old ones. You can avoid that for important notes that you want to prioritize (usually the bass note) by keeping them pressed. - Page 13 ORGAN Slurred Ethereal organ. Mod wheel alters the tone. BREATH Slurred Warm notch pad POLYMONO Moly Analog-like sound. Play legato for mono, or staccato to let the notes resonate. MOOGI Moly Solo bass-lead. Works the same as POLYMONO PPGEEZ Poly / Poly Layer Resonant pad with harpsichord COZY...
- Page 14 COFFEE Slurred Looped ethnic bells NAPPY Slurred Melodic pad REVOX Mono Voice-like lead MELANC Slurred Wide pad VOCALI Mono porta legato Resonant analog bass-lead CONTEMP Poly Soft piano with delayed pad BITPIANO Slurred E-piano with delay using mask envelopes SPATIAL Slurred Gritty saw pad Slurred...
- Page 15 PURRLEAD Slurred Lead with growl effect SPARKLE Slurred Piano with evolving tone CHORAL Poly Synth choir RHODY Poly / Poly Layer Groovy rhodes + saw KRUSH Moly Percussive lead DRUMS Mono retrig / Poly Split Kick + clap combo ASHES Mono porta legato Ambient sound effect OCHOIR...
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Page 16: First Steps With The Interface
The only one First steps with the interface The MASK1 provides a clean and simple interface. The first row of buttons are general functions (from left to right): keyboard octave transpose -/+, voice selection, voice layering, voice split, initializing a voice, writing a voice to memory, accessing global settings. -
Page 17: Layering Two Voices
Switching voices always loses changes, unless you pressed Write to save it into memory. That’s it! You now know everything required to use the MASK1 interface! Now that you have read this part of the manual and auditioned some of the presets, the next step is up to you! Read the following sections in any order you want, depending on your needs. -
Page 18: Splitting The Keyboard
Press Rec. Play some notes. Then, press Play. The sequence you played will replay and loop. When you start recording, the MASK1 waits for the first note to be played, so the timing when you press Rec isn’t important. However, the timing when you stop the recording is important as it will tell the MASK1 to loop... -
Page 19: Adjusting The Settings
• MIDI CH: The base MIDI channel the MASK1 will respond to. By default, it listens and transmits to channels 1 to 4. Setting the value to 5 for example, will make it use channels 5 to 8. Do not change... -
Page 20: Synthesizer Basics
• RANGE BEEP: For blind or visually impaired people. When enabled, reaching the first and last parameter of any mode will produce a click. This helps with navigation. The click volume can be set from quiet (1) to loud (10). Synthesizer basics If you are new to synthesizers, you may be not familiar with all the terms used. -
Page 21: Filters
Filters are well suited to them because they will remove more or less frequencies depending on how they are setup. You can try on the MASK1 to create a voice using mask #31 (sine) and use the filter: it won’t be effective, since the sine wave already has no harmonics to filter out. -
Page 22: Low Frequency Oscillators
4. You release the key. The envelopes fades out, at a rate depending on the Release parameter. The MASK1 has four ADSR envelopes; one for each oscillator, one for the noise and one for the filter cutoff. Attack follows a linear curve, while decay and release are exponential. - Page 23 Two LFOs are available, which are not shown in this diagram since they can be configured to impact almost any section of the voice. Bitmasking is the technique used by the oscillators in the MASK1 to produce sound. Internally, the oscillators produce sine waves which are then bit-masked to create new shapes. Bit-masking is a digital technique used in computing that we have adapted for sound generation purposes.
- Page 24 These waveform representations are simplified to give you an idea of their tonal quality. Rounded shapes like 15, 31, 47, 63, 79 and 95 produce a mellow sound (fewer harmonics) compared to the shapes with sharper edges. Pure saw (MASK = 7). Close to an analog saw made with capacitor discharge. Square (MASK = 8).
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Page 25: Osc1 And Osc2
Basic oscillator parameters: • MASK: Selects the mask to use for this oscillator • SEMI: Oscillator transpose in semitones (120 semitone/10 octave range) TUNE: Oscillator detune. We suggest detuning the oscillators in a symmetrical way (eg. -3/+3 instead • of 0/+6), to keep the overall pitch of the voices in tune with each other. •... -
Page 26: Filter
LFOs in the MASK1 are always free running, that means they don’t restart their cycle each time you play a note. They also exist on a per-part basis, not per voice, so their effect is always heard in sync across all the currently playing notes. - Page 27 • DEST: Selects which parameter of the sound is controlled by the LFO. 16 destinations are available: ◦ FREQ: Voice frequency for both Osc1 and Osc2. Creates a vibrato effect. ◦ VOL: Voice volume. Creates a tremolo effect. ◦ FILT: Filter cutoff. Creates a wah effect. ◦...
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Page 28: Effects
The MASK1 offers high quality effects that are very easy to use with a preset-based approach. We selected for you many interesting parameter combinations. Most of the effects also alter the tonal characteristics of the sound and create their own stereo field to make them more interesting. -
Page 29: Arpeggiator
Arpeggiators in synthesizers provide a way to automatically play arpeggios that would be quite hard to play by hand. The MASK1 takes notes in the order you played them to create an arpeggio. Press Arp then select an arpeggiator type to start using it. -
Page 30: Pitch Envelope
The arpeggiator only applies to the left-hand voice if you use splits, or to the base voice if you use layers. All sounds that use the arpeggiator make the Arp key blink to remind you it is active. If you control the MASK1 through MIDI, you can have up to four independent arpeggiators running at the same time (one per part). -
Page 31: General
◦ ATK: Attack rate (makes the attack quicker) • V-AMT: The amount of impact the velocity has on the destination • M-DEST: Modulation wheel destination. Destination can be one of the following: ◦ FLT: Filter cutoff (adds to the existing cutoff) ◦... -
Page 32: Creating A Voice From Scratch
opened. In which case, use the poly retrig mode (for individual note resets) or one of the paraphonic modes (first note reset). ◦ MONO: Monophonic. Envelopes aren’t retriggered. Portamento is always applied. Last note priority. ◦ SLUR: Neighbour notes (1 or 2 semitones apart) that are played legato are slurred (pitch-shifted) rather than retriggered. -
Page 33: Creating Your First Sounds
Creating your first sounds Here are some very easy sounds to make on the MASK1. If you have already worked with analog or VA synths you are mostly in known territory except that the masks add an extra layer of sound diversity compared to classic oscillators. -
Page 34: Saving Voices
MASK1 page. It runs in any browser and will talk to the MASK1 through SysEx. It also allows you to create voice banks to share with other people, and import existing banks. Detailed instructions are provided with this software. - Page 35 Finally, you can add effects. Once you get more used to the MASK1, these rules usually don’t apply. You may do everything in a different order depending on what you feel is the most appropriate for the sounds you are looking for. Also, most of the tips you may find in books or online regarding classic analog synthesis also apply to the MASK1.
- Page 36 Smooth out envelope noises The MASK1 uses gritty, crunchy envelopes like early digital synths. If you want pure sounds without the small noises introduced by the envelopes, using the filter in low-pass mode is a very effective way to get rid of them.
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Page 37: Calibration & Testing
Making the timbre evolve over time Timbre changes over time can be done in several ways: With the envelopes. Since the MASK1 has dedicated ADSR for both Osc1, Osc2, Noise and Filter, it is • easy to set up different attack/decay values to make one oscillator start after the other. Envelope... -
Page 38: Factory Reset
Firmware can be upgraded by connecting the MASK1 to a computer with a USB cable. To check which firmware you currently have installed, turn the MASK1 on while pressing the last two black keys on the keyboard. The firmware version will be displayed. Press Param >> to exit. -
Page 39: Midi Implementation
MIDI implementation The MASK1 listens and transmits to four MIDI channels, depending on the Base MIDI Channel setting. If Base MIDI Channel is set to 1 (default), channels 1/2/3/4 will be used. The keyboard always controls the first MIDI channel. Only the voice loaded in the first MIDI channel can have a layer or split enabled, and that voice always controls which effects are used. - Page 40 CC 25 Osc1 envelope level Mapped to Osc1 (Env) > L CC 26 Osc2 envelope level Mapped to Osc2 (Env) > L CC 27 Filter envelope level Mapped to Filter (Env) > L CC 28 Noise envelope level Mapped to Noise (Env) > L CC 29 Osc1 semitone transpose Mapped to Osc1 >...
- Page 41 CC 104 Osc2 envelope attack Mapped to Osc2 (Env) > A CC 105 Filter envelope attack Mapped to Filter (Env) > A CC 106 Noise envelope attack Mapped to Noise (Env) > A CC 107 Osc1 envelope decay Mapped to Osc1 (Env) > D CC 108 Osc2 envelope decay Mapped to Osc2 (Env) >...
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Page 42: Specifications
Specifications Synthesis type Bitmask, subtractive Polyphony 10 voices with Smart Allocation Multitimbrality 4 parts (5 in layered/split mode) Oscillators 2 bitmask per voice with 256 masks each, transpose and detune • 1 noise with programmable sample-and-hold frequency • Filter 1 per voice, two poles (12dB/oct) state variable, self-resonant with pitch tracking and 4 modes (low, high, band pass, notch) Envelopes 4 loopable ADSR per voice (osc1, osc2, noise, filter), 3 delta-decay (osc1 mask, osc2 mask, pitch) -
Page 43: Troubleshooting
All notes get stuck If you are using a sustain pedal, ensure it is not pressed when you turn the MASK1 on. The MASK1 will automatically detect the pedal’s polarity at startup, so if it is pressed when you power on, it will work in... - Page 44 Check you are sending MIDI over the first four channels, starting from the channel set by the Settings > MIDI CH parameter (eg. MIDI CH is set to 3, the MASK1 will receive/transmit only on channels 3, 4, 5 and 6).
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Page 45: Support & Warranty
See the "Calibration" section. The sustain pedal works backwards Do not press the pedal when powering the MASK1 on. Pedal polarity is detected at startup. To make it work the right way, power cycle the MASK1. -
Page 46: Contact
Youtube: Kodamo Thanks Creating the MASK1 was a labour of love. Several people have contributed to its success by creating the voice presets, suggesting improvements to the sound engine, and giving valuable feedback. I would like to thank especially Manny Fernandez, Cyril Colom, Thomas Billiou, Benoit Ruelle, Claire Duran, Masami Komuro and Rob Puricelli for the help they provided, along with my family and friends for their support.
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