FM

Malekko Heavy Industry’s Voltage Block is a CV sequencer offering eight channels of up to 16 stages of CV. There’s loads of power to manipulate and animate any system, it’s super-fast, and the whole thing is wrapped up in a nicely packaged and easy-to-use 6x5x3-inch module.

Once we’ve built a basic patch, we can use it to fire out eight CV signals for animation, interest and movement. It’s super-fast, which is very inspiring and motivating. You also get live slider automation recording, letting you jam on the sliders before playing the whole thing back – killer!

There’s quantisation and scale selection, a choice of smooth or stepped modulation, it’s controllable by clock, CV or slaved to a Varigate 8+ (the two, by the way, are an amazing pair together). Elsewhere, the unit allows you control over stage length, reset and hold, glide, and multiple play direction options – yep, you can play sequences backwards, forwards, in ‘pendulum’ or randomly. There are also per-channel mutes and a song mode.

All this functionality adds up to an inspiring and quick unit that’s still massively feature-packed. What truly makes Voltage Block different, though, is that the sliders don’t relate to steps in sequences – they actually represent the voltage level for each output. You build sequences by holding down a step button then adjusting the slider to the desired level. You’re only ever a few button presses away from any function, so let’s dive in and take a look at how to use the Voltage Block…