Tilde Instruments TouchDog is a new experimental Synthesizer with touch plates based on Peter Blasser’s dogvoice and piezo preamp circuits.
Peter Blasser is a musician and developer of unique, often enigmatic hardware synthesizers. His work is better known under his brand Ciat-Lonbarde. One of his latest projects was the Clicker, an experimental synth collaboration with the music formation Mouse on Mars from Berlin.
His original designs fascinate musicians as well as developers around the world, including Tilde Instruments. It’s a relatively new developer who creates synths in his spare time. Tilde Instruments has developed with TouchDog, a new noisy, experimental synth based on designs by Peter Blasser.
Tilde Instruments TouchDog
The developer released the TouchDog Synthesizer back in September 2024. Until now, it was under my extensive synth radar. It’s good that I’ve found it now and can report on it.
Tilde Instruments Touch Dog has dimensions of 275 cm x 216 cm x 5 cm, is handmade of wood, and the developer offers two different design options: a green or black front panel with blank or circled touch bars. I like the green layout with the circles the best.
Touch Dog is based on Peter Blasser’s original dogvoice and piezo preamp circuits. It offers two dogvoice synthesis voices and six touch bars for interactive modulation.
Like the original Dogvoice, TouchDog uses a chaos oscillator that passes through a lowpass ladder filter. It has big controls for pitch, amplitude, filter cutoff, and resonance.
Things get exciting when you work with cross-modulation between the filter and the oscillator. The hardware has a dedicated switch for activating the cross-mod.
Each synth voice has an AC audio output (3.5mm jack) to a mixing console and one DC audio output on banana pluck for further cross-modulation fun.
Touch Modulation
In addition to the knobs, Tilde Instruments TouchDog also has six touch plates for interaction with the engine. Six piezos are installed under these with preamps that convert the piezos’ values into an undulation. It creates a modulation signal that moves smoothly up and down.
There are four with positive to negative undulation and two with reversed (—+) undulation. A control allows you to adjust the undulation time of each touch bay.
As mentioned, you can find AC audio output (3.5mm jack) per synth voice for connecting to a mixing console and one DC audio output (banana) for cross modulation. Further, you have CV inputs for each voice’s cutoff, pitch, and amp.
Like the Ciat-Lonbarde synths, the Tilde Instruments TouchDog works with banana patch cables, so it perfectly matches the other Peter Blasser synths. The synth has to be played by hand with the touch plates. MIDI is not onboard, but you can use the CV sockets to control it with external gear.
First Impression
At first glance, it is a very eye-catching handmade experimental Synthesizer with a distinct sound that is great for noisy electronic drones and textures.
Peter Blasser’s synth designs often have an enigmatic quality. As an outsider to this synth world, you initially feel a bit lost. The GUIs are very colorful, lack labels, use banana plugs, etc.
Even though we also have non-labeling and banana patching here, I find the TouchDog’s design more accessible and elegant. It’s a lovely project.
Tilde Instruments TouchDog is handmade and available now on request. The price is not available. To get in touch, contact the developer on Instagram or by email at tildeinstruments at gmail dot com.
More information here: Instagram
