The Ladder and its family
The Ladder is the filter of the classic 1970s monosynths: four stages in a loop, warm, a little thick, and able to sing on its own. KiMiA also has its two closest relatives: the squelching Diode ladder and the smooth Poly.
- Hear the warmth and the singing peak of the Ladder
- Make a filter sing on its own
- Tell the Ladder from the Diode ladder and the Poly filter
01Fifteen flavors
The four classic types of Module 5 are honest tools: they shape the brightness and stay out of the way. The other fifteen types on the Type row add something of their own. Most are modeled on famous filter circuits, built from what is published about them; the rest are special shapes that ring at a pitch, talk, or play several notes.
KiMiA · Edit · Filter 1
Everything from Module 5 still applies: Cutoff, Resonance, Key tracking, Touch → brightness, the filter envelope, Drive, and Filter 2 with its routing. What changes is the character. A circuit filter colors the sound as you push it, its resonance has a voice of its own, and some of them sing on their own at the top of their range.
| Lesson | Types | What they share |
|---|---|---|
| 6.1 | Ladder, Diode, Poly | Four stages in a feedback loop: warm, thick, singing |
| 6.2 | IR3109, SSM2040, CEM3320, MS-20 LP and HP, Steiner | The voices of famous polysynths and monosynths |
| 6.3 | Morph, Multimode, Low-pass gate | One knob for many shapes; a filter that also plays the note |
| 6.4 | Comb, Vowel, Resonator | Tuned filters: they ring at a pitch, talk, or play a chord |
02The Ladder: warm and singing
Choose Ladder on the Type row. The Ladder filter copies the transistor ladder of the 1960s and 70s monosynths: four filter stages in a loop, each fed back from the last. At first it sounds much like the 24 dB low-pass. Compare the two at exactly the same settings:
Low-pass and Ladder at the same settings
Two things make the Ladder’s character. Its feedback loop takes energy from the low end, so a resonant Ladder sounds slimmer and more vocal. And every one of its stages saturates, as the transistors of the original do: a loud chord or a driven oscillator thickens the sound and tames the resonance, instead of making it whistle. Now hear it move:
A Ladder sweep at Resonance 80%
The Ladder loves Drive. Push the oscillators a little harder and its peak softens while the sound thickens: the classic recipe for a bass that growls instead of whistles. 06 · Ladder Bass uses Drive 20%.
03When a filter sings by itself
At the very top of its Resonance range the Ladder feeds back so strongly that it keeps ringing on its own. It becomes an oscillator: it produces a pure sine wave at the cutoff frequency, even with no sound going in. Synth players call this self-oscillation.
The Ladder singing on its own
The patch behind this example uses a trick worth remembering. Key tracking at 100% moves the cutoff with the note, and the Cutoff is set to 261.6 Hz, the frequency of middle C. So whatever key you play, the cutoff, and with it the sine, lands on that note’s pitch. The Diode, the Poly, the three chips, the MS-20 and the Steiner all sing too at the top of their range, each with its own voice.
A self-oscillating filter makes its own sound at full strength. Raise Resonance past 85% on these types only with the Level down, and never on a sound you haven’t played through at home first.
04The Diode ladder: squelch
The Diode ladder replaces the Ladder’s transistors with diodes, as the little silver bass machine of acid house did. Its four stages load each other, so they don’t act one by one: the slope starts gentle and steepens, and the resonant peak is sharp and rubbery. As on that machine, the resonance loop leaves out the deepest bass, so the low end keeps its weight as you turn Resonance up: the squelch sits on top of the bass line instead of hollowing it out.
The Diode ladder: a squelching peak
KiMiA places the Diode’s Cutoff where it matters most. With no resonance, the Cutoff marks the point where the filter is 12 dB down, as on the Ladder; with resonance, it marks where the filter rings. So you can set the Cutoff by ear on a plain sound and it still lands where you expect once you add the squelch.
Acid lines live on two moves: an accent and a slide. Load 06 · Acid Diode. Play hard on some notes: the filter envelope opens it further. Overlap two notes and the pitch slides (it is in Legato mode). Then ride Cutoff with one hand while the other plays: that is how the records were made.
05The Poly: smooth and compressed
The Poly type follows the filter chips of the early-1980s polysynths: four stages in a loop like the Ladder, but each stage saturating gently on its own. Pushed hard, it compresses and thickens rather than slimming down.
Poly against Ladder at the same resonance
Lesson 6.2 goes further with three real polysynth chips. The Poly is their common ancestor in KiMiA: the safe choice for pads and chords that should stay smooth under any playing.
06Try it
- Low-pass against Ladder. Load 06 · Course Init. Set Slope 24 dB, Cutoff 700 Hz, Resonance 60%. Play a note and switch the Type between LP and Ladder. Then raise Drive to 50% and switch again. Describe each difference in two words.
- Make it sing. Load 06 · Ladder Whistle and play a melody. Then lower Resonance slowly: listen for the moment the whistle stops and only a short “tick” of noise is left.
- Squelch. Load 06 · Acid Diode and play a repeating line of eighth notes. Move Resonance between 50% and 85%, and the Filter envelope’s Decay between 0.1 and 0.4 s.
- Three loops, one chord. Load 06 · Poly Pad, hold a chord, and switch the Type between Poly, Ladder and Diode. Which one would you use under a singer?