buggles

buggles · modulation

Chaotic random voltage source — clean-room functional implementation of the Buchla / Make Noise wogglebug archetype. One roll of the dice per woggle tick, five correlated views of it. Internal "woggle clock" emits triggers at the RATE knob (0.1-50 Hz, log); outputs are SMOOTH (slewed random), STEPPED (sample-and-held), CLOCK (woggle gate), BURST (probabilistic clusters of 3-7 triggers) and RING (smooth × sub-osc ring-mod). RING is typed audio so it reaches the audio path, but its carrier is a QUARTER of the woggle rate and therefore SUB-AUDIO everywhere on the dial (0.025 Hz at the bottom, 0.30 Hz at spawn, 12.5 Hz flat out) — a slow shuddering product to modulate with, not a tone. CV inputs modulate rate + chaos; EXT CLK replaces the internal scheduler when patched. The "Wogglebug" name is Make Noise's trademark — BUGGLES is our name; no proprietary schematic is copied.

A chaotic random-voltage source in the Buchla / Make Noise wogglebug tradition. One roll of the dice, five correlated views of it. An internal 'woggle clock' fires at the Rate you set (with Chaos adding timing jitter), and each tick rolls a fresh random voltage that sprays out across five outputs at once: a slowly-slewing SMOOTH voltage, a jumpy sample-and-held STEPPED voltage, a CLOCK gate pulsing on every woggle event, an occasional BURST of clustered triggers, and a RING output that ring-modulates the smooth voltage against a sub-oscillator. Patch SMOOTH into pitch or filter CV for warbling drift, STEPPED for brittle melodic randomness, CLOCK to clock a sequencer, and BURST for stuttered fills — and because all five come from the same roll, everything you patch drifts together. RING is the odd one out: it is typed as audio so it reaches the audio path, but its carrier is a quarter of the woggle rate and therefore SUB-AUDIO at every knob position (0.025 Hz at the bottom of Rate, 12.5 Hz at the top), so it is a slow shuddering product to modulate with, not a tone to listen to. You can also feed it an external clock to lock the chaos to your tempo.

the faceplate

3 inputs · 5 outputs · 5 params

about this module

Hover a control, or open the patch panel and hover a jack.

inputs

id	cable	what it does
`clock_cv`	cv	CV that sums onto the Rate knob, speeding up or slowing the internal woggle clock (sampled at each woggle event rather than continuously). control voltage (CV)
`chaos_cv`	cv	CV that sums onto the Chaos knob, modulating how random/jittery the voltages and timing get. control voltage (CV)
`external_clock`	gate	External clock input: when patched, its rising edges replace the internal woggle clock — each pulse fires one woggle event (new random voltages + a CLOCK/BURST output), so the chaos locks to your tempo. The internal clock resumes about a second after the pulses stop. gate / trigger; trigger — fires once per rising edge

outputs

id	cable	what it does
`smooth`	cv	A slowly-shifting random voltage: it slews toward each new random target instead of jumping, so it behaves like a lazy random LFO — good for warbling pitch, filter, or pan modulation. The Smooth control sets how lazily it glides. control voltage (CV)
`stepped`	cv	A sample-and-held random voltage that hard-jumps to a fresh value on every woggle event — brittle, steppy modulation for random melodies or jumpy timbres. control voltage (CV)
`clock`	gate	A gate output that pulses (~5 ms) on every woggle event — a chaotic clock you can use to trigger sequencers, envelopes, or drums; its rate and jitter follow Rate + Chaos. gate / trigger; trigger — fires once per rising edge
`burst`	gate	A gate output that, with probability set by the Burst control, fires a cluster of 3–7 closely-spaced trigger pulses on a woggle event — for ratchets, stutters, and fills. gate / trigger; trigger — fires once per rising edge
`ring`	audio	The SMOOTH voltage ring-modulated against a sine sub-oscillator running at a quarter of the woggle rate. It is typed as audio so it patches into the audio path, but the carrier is SUB-AUDIO everywhere on the dial — 0.025 Hz at the bottom of Rate, 0.30 Hz where the module spawns, 12.5 Hz flat out — so what comes out is a slow shuddering product, not a tone. Use it as a modulation source with more life than SMOOTH alone, or as the input to something that can hear it; do not expect a Buchla 'complex random' timbre straight into the speakers. audio signal

params

id	label	range	default	curve
`rate`	Rate	0..1	0.4	linear
`chaos`	Chaos	0..1	0.3	linear
`smoothness`	Smooth	0..1	0.5	linear
`burst_probability`	Burst	0..1	0.2	linear
`level`	Level	0..1	0.7	linear

controls

control	what it does
Burst	Chance (0..1) that a given woggle event fires a BURST cluster instead of a single pulse — 0 never bursts, 1 bursts every event.
Chaos	Chaos depth (0..1): at 0 the stepped output is a clean S&H of a stable random walk and timing is steady; turning it up makes each step a fresh independent value and adds up to ±50% jitter to the woggle period.
Level	Output scaling (0..1) applied to the SMOOTH, STEPPED, and RING outputs (the CLOCK and BURST gates keep a clean 0/1 swing regardless).
Rate	Internal woggle-clock speed (0..1, log-mapped to roughly 0.1–50 Hz): how often new random voltages are rolled. The Clock CV input adds to this.
Smooth	How lazily the SMOOTH output glides toward each new target (0..1): low is almost a step, high stretches the slew to about twice the woggle period for very gentle drift.

source

buggles.ts on GitHub.