Make Noise's first standalone sequencer arrived in 2020 as a spiritual successor to classic West Coast control interfaces like the Serge TKB and Buchla 216, reimagined for the modular age with capacitive touch sensitivity and fully analog, patchable architecture.
The 0-CTRL is built around eight pressure-sensitive touch pads that serve dual duty as both a playable keyboard and step sequencer interface. Each step lets you control three independent CV parameters—Pitch, Strength, and Time—with dedicated knobs, plus individual gate outputs per step for triggering events or modulating any aspect of your sound. The real magic happens in how these three rows interact: pitch sequences your melodic content, strength controls dynamics and envelope depth, and time lets you dial in per-step timing variations, creating sequences with organic swing and human feel without needing a menu system. Beyond sequencing, the bottom row of knobs is normalled to the internal clock rate, so you can vary the duration of each step on the fly, and there's a dynamic envelope output that pairs beautifully with the 0-Coast's Dynamics input. The touch interface itself is remarkably expressive—you can play it like a keyboard with pressure sensitivity, interrupt a running sequence to jump to any step by hand, or keep your fingers off the pads entirely and let the clock run while using the pressure outputs for CV modulation. Additional touch plates control direction, interrupt mode, and reset behavior, all patchable for deep sequencing control.
The 0-CTRL measures 5.5 by 9 inches and weighs just 1.7 pounds, making it genuinely portable despite its feature set. It syncs via Eurorack-standard clock inputs and outputs, pairs naturally with the 0-Coast but works with any CV-controlled synth, and runs fully analog with no digital menus or modes—what you patch is what you get. The community has embraced it as a surprisingly deep performance tool that rewards experimentation, with users appreciating both its immediacy as a keyboard and its flexibility as a multi-track sequencer for complex modular patches.
