Hacking Make Noise 0-Coast: 14 things you may not know it could do

This video provides an intro to 0-Coast as well as 14 hacks/ideas/tips/things it can do that you may not be aware of. In a nutshell… here they are:

  1. Even though to 0-Coast is a one-oscillator synth, its AD slope can be looped and pitched quite easily to play paraphonic drones in parallel to the main oscillator.
  2. Slighlty more difficult and yet completely doable, the AD slope can also be played chromatically with proper knob settings and 1v/octave control. This turns 0-Coast into a truly paraphonic synth.
  3. Concurrent MIDI and CV control: By using a keyboard such as Arturia’s KeyStep or Novation SL MK3, you can control both paraphonic notes on the 0-Coast.
  4. This trick shows how to use 0-Coast’s AD slope as a subharmonic oscillator. Imperfections in the way this trick works can create interesting subharmonic variations as you play up and down the keyboard.
  5. This trick shows how to use 0-Coast’s Contour slope as a subharmonic oscillator.
  6. Once they’ve been turned int subharmonic oscillators, with a bit of extra patching throug the “math” section, the AD slope and Contour can be combined with the main oscillator to create compelling 3-note chords.
  7. If you need the AD slope / Contour envelopes, you can actually use 0-Coast’s built in clock divider as another subharmonic oscillator.
  8. It turns out there’s a hidden slew limiter in 0-Coast – the Contour Gate input isn’t what it seems….
  9. With our newfound slew limiter, it’s quite easy to generate an envelope follower as a modulation source.
  10. This trick shows how to use the envelope follower to create a level-sidechain effect by inverting it and adding it to the keyboard gate level.
  11. 0-Coast has a build in square wave oscillator – but what if you wanted to change its duty cycle? You can, sort of, using the LIN FM input and a loop-back trick.
  12. Now that we’ve changed the square wave to a variable pulse-width oscillator, it begs the Pulse Width Modulation question. You’re going to need an external VCA though if you don’t want to do this manually.
  13. 0-Coast’s MIDI B CV and Gate outputs can be configured in multiple derent ways, but once they are, you can’t visually tell what they’re going. 0-Coast’s math section can help.
  14. 0-Coast’s random sample and hold generator jumps from one random voltage to another. That can often be useful, but not if you want smoother transitions, say, if you want to imitate R2D2. Running it through our newly discovered slew limiter solves that problem…

7 thoughts on “Hacking Make Noise 0-Coast: 14 things you may not know it could do

  1. Nice tutorial on the 0-coast it really is a fun and wacky little semi-modular synth. I was wondering can you use the slope and contour to modulate a Eurorack modular system and how would this work? Also, I am trying to figure out how the envelopes work. I can get the decay to work by patching the 1V/oct to the DCY patch point but I cannot get the rest of the envelope generator functions to do anything useful. Curious- what cables are you using with the 0-coast? I’d love some of those to have more patch options.

    1. Yes you can use the slope and contour outputs to control external gear, and re cables I used whatever was around the house. These days I prefer tendrils

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