Erica Synths announced the fabulous-looking Bullfrog synthesizer a few weeks ago and described it as a synth designed for teaching synthesis. This photo popped up from a workshop they did recently, and now we can see why. Check out this super-sized teacher version!
Big Bullfrog
Look at the size of that thing.
The picture was taken at a workshop at the German shop Schneidersladen. I imagine the idea is that Girts is demonstrating the synth and then the people are the workshop can follow along on the regular-sized Bullfrog, or play with it afterwards.
It looks like it has built-in speakers, is using full-size jack patch cables and has a sequencer built into the card slot section. What a fantastic idea.
In case you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, Bullfrog is a cool monophonic semi-modular synthesizer created by Erica Synths and Richie Hawtin. It has a single VCO, noise generator and waveform mixer, two looping envelopes, low pass filter, VCA, Sample & Hold and a Delay. The layout is ordered, and everything is nicely placed, and you can imagine the ease at which you can explain how it works. The built-in speaker is also useful in a teaching scenario.
The other very cool thing of note is the expansion card slot. It comes, I believe, from the PICO II System and can act as patch storage or an expander of features. There’s a sequencer one, one with a looper, and one with an acid patch all ready to go. It’s a really great idea.
I’m loving this whole thing and I would be totally into taking the Bug Bullfrog and a handful of little ones and running a bunch of workshops around the UK. That would be very cool.
This photo gives you a better idea of the size of the synth – it’s bigger than you’d think.
No price yet but by the looks of it it’s going to be fairly decent. Bullfrog should be available really soon.
- Bullfrog website.
