Hard Techno/Acid/Tech House/Schranz
DJ, producer and live performer from Milwaukee, now in Colorado Springs, active since the late 1990s. Modular synths, drum machines and hardware FX, performed live rather than just mixed.
Away from the decks I build my own tools: the SynTHBloK series of synth modules for VCV Rack under the NoiZee ToyZ name, ToyBoX, a free browser acid synth with a step sequencer, and Acid Bedrock, a track builder for hard techno and acid that exports prompts, scripts and MIDI. Ten releases out on Bandcamp, with sets and live recordings archived here.
ToyBoX is an acid synth I built for the web. Write a 16-step line with accent, slide and octave jumps, lock it to a scale, then shape the sound with a resonant filter, envelope, delay, drive, tilt and glue while you watch it on the live scope. Five presets to start from, and you can play it from your keyboard too. It is the browser cousin of my SynTHBloK VCV Rack modules. Press Play and tweak everything while it runs.
▶ Launch ToyBoX
Click the grid to place notes across 16 steps. Add accent for a harder hit, slide to glide into the next note, and flip any step up or down an octave. Pick a root note and a scale and the grid greys out the notes that would sound wrong.
Blend triangle, saw and square with a sub oscillator, stack up to four voices, then sweep the resonant filter while the pattern plays. Envelope, LFO, drive and delay are all live, so you can move any knob mid-loop.
Hit Randomize for a new line, load one of five presets, or play the notes yourself on your computer keyboard or the on-screen keys. Watch the scope and spectrum react as you go.
The classic: squelchy saw, high resonance, accents and slides.
Deep sub-heavy bass with long delay tails and plenty of space.
A driven, rolling low line with octave jumps for hard techno.
Short stacked plucks arpeggiating through a dark scale.
Slow, gliding notes with a wide four-voice stack and a drifting LFO.
Hard techno, acid, tech house and schranz, played live on modular synths, drum machines and hardware FX. Every set is performed, not just mixed.
I design and code my own synth modules for VCV Rack under the NoiZee ToyZ name, from oscillators and filters to effects, mixing and mastering.
I build the tools I want to make music with, like Acid Bedrock, a track builder that exports prompts, scripts and MIDI.
Synth voice
The main voice. Up to four oscillators blending triangle, saw, square and sine, plus a sub oscillator, with FM and PWM CV. Built-in filter with its own envelope, an ADSR with glide and accent, and an LFO with rate, range, fade-in, morph, retrigger and sync. Clock in and out.
Poly engine
A polyphonic engine that runs up to eight voices. Stacked unison with a live display, spread, per-voice drive, a tone control and post-mix chorus. Takes V/OCT, gate, spread and reset, and sends polyphonic envelope, VCA, filter and pitch outputs back out.
Filter
A stable state-variable filter built to be pushed hard. Morph between responses, then add drive, FM, keytracking, controlled chaos jitter and stereo width. Almost every control has a CV input and a colour-coded LED.
Modal resonator
A modal resonator that makes an audio signal ring like a physical object. Pick Metal, Wood, Membrane or Tube, then set body tuning, resonance, exciter strength and damping. Strike it with a trigger or tune it from V/OCT.
Effects
A tempo-aware delay and space processor with time, feedback, mix, tone, depth and rate. Sidechain-style ducking keeps echoes out of the way, and four character modes shape the sound: Clean, Tape, Analog and Modern.
Stereo and glue
Stereo shaping and bus processing in one panel: width, tilt, air, glue compression, punch and clipping, with a live analyzer for correlation, mid and side and tilt. Main and side inputs, L, R and side outputs.
Kick drum
A hard techno kick voice. A pitch-swept sine with tune, sweep depth and pitch decay, plus body decay, click, tone and drive. A separate rumble tail with its own decay is ducked by the kick for that schranz low end. Accent and V/OCT inputs, split kick and rumble outputs, and an envelope output for sidechain ducking.
Mastering strip
A full mastering chain in one panel. Tone section with low cut, low and high shelves, tilt and air. A glue compressor with soft knee, sidechain high-pass, external sidechain and parallel mix. Then saturation, punch, a three-band leveler, mid and side gain, width and mono bass, and a look-ahead limiter with ceiling and release. A spectrum analyzer with momentary, short-term and integrated loudness sits beside a vectorscope with correlation and level and gain-reduction meters. Bypass, mono check and side solo buttons, plus CV for threshold, drive and width.
Mixers: 6, 8 or 12 channels
The Fire Edition mixer comes in three sizes: MIX-8 with eight stereo channels, the smaller MIX-6, and MIX-12 for a full rack. Every strip has level, pan or width, tilt, drive, air, glue and an FX send, with fire-coloured knob rings that move from yellow through orange to deep red as the value or incoming CV rises, and mute and solo buttons that light when on. An OLED levels display shows every channel as L and R bars, plus the master in dBFS with peak hold and a clip lamp. The master section adds width, tilt, glue and clip trim, and row CV inputs move a whole row of knobs at once. Onboard FX has a program selector (room, hall, plate, echo, ping-pong, chorus, flanger) with its own OLED and a return level, or patch the FX send and return jacks to run an outside effect.
MIDI player
A MIDI file player with sixteen track outputs, each with pitch, gate and velocity. Load files by drag and drop, from the load button, or from a watched folder, and click any track row on the display to choose which output a file goes to. Paste a Python script from Acid Bedrock and it converts and loads the MIDI for you. Run, reset and speed CV in, track and loop progress bars, and sync outs for the 16th clock, reset and end.
Player expander
Snap it to the right of the Player Plus and it shows what the Player is playing. A scrolling piano roll draws every track in its own colour with a playhead, and click it to zoom between 2, 4, 8 and 16 bars. Track chips show which of the sixteen tracks are active, and click one to hide or show it in the roll. The channel numbers pulse gently with each note, and a transport readout shows bar, tempo and time with a progress bar.
Dual synth + sequencer
Two mono synths, LEAD and BASS, in one panel. Each has two morphing oscillators with hard sync, FM and a sub, a 24 dB filter with its own envelope, ADSR, drive and glide. An 8-step note grid sequences both in a chosen key and scale, with 8 patterns, clock, reset and run inputs, and audio, pitch and gate outputs per voice. A FORGE FX section runs the duo through shuffle, glitch, robot, pulse and warp delay.
Groovebox
A groovebox built around the Maschine JAM. The MTX-8 sequencer drives eight voices, and the whole mix, plus the IN L and R inputs, runs through the full GRAIN-FORGE FX chain, clocked by the sequencer. MIDI in and out, a voice filter and envelope, a master section with delay and space, and learn, clear, run and reset on the panel.
Drum groovebox
A drum-synth groovebox. Eight voices, each with its own model (kick, snare, clap, tom, hat, metal, FM or noise), are played from the MTX 8x8 sequencer with accents and 8 patterns. Strip banks shape the voices live, choke groups cut hats against each other, and every voice has its own audio and trigger output. The mix runs through a final filter, delay, reverb and the FORGE FX, all controlled from the Maschine JAM.
Loop sampler
An eight-track loop sampler built on the MTX-ECHO looper. Record or replace, play or stop, play once, undo and clear on every track, with tempo-locked lengths from one beat to eight bars and a count-in. Run it from a clock or the tempo knob, in mono or stereo. Eight inputs with gain and monitoring, eight outputs and a stereo mix, scenes, a JAM-style grid with mutes, and an OLED that draws all eight loops with their playheads. Loops are saved with the patch.
Effects matrix
An eight-input effects matrix you play from the MTX 8x8 grid and the Maschine JAM. Eight effect slots pick from 64 effects in seven tabs (drive, filter, mod, glitch, delay, reverb and dynamics), or load one of 12 one-click chains. Accents, 8 routing scenes, linked slots and dub chains, drag-and-drop setup on the OLED, a musical randomiser, a DJ filter and a 60-second tape loop.
Delay and looper
A stereo delay with twelve types, from the MTX ping-pong and clean digital to analog, tape, lo-fi, ducking, reverse, slap, octave shimmer and a multi-head space echo. Tap tempo or clock it, with eleven subdivisions including dual. Freeze, kill dry, trails, reverb and presets, plus a 60-second stereo looper with overdub, play once and undo.
JAM groovebox
The groovebox that started the MTX series. An 8x8 step sequencer on the Maschine JAM drives eight built-in synth voices, each with a morphing oscillator, resonant filter, envelopes, drive and pan. The JAM touch strips shape each voice as it plays, and everything comes out of one stereo pair.
Song arranger
The conductor for the MTX series. It finds MTX-8, FORGE, DUO, DRUM, FX, ECHO and LOOP in the patch by itself, with no cables, and lines them up as rows of an 8x8 song grid; drag a row onto another to reorder. Each of the eight scenes A to H sets every module's pattern and level, and launches on the next bar or beat. The scene selector picks a pad's pattern and randomises one scene or all of them at once. Set a cycle length and the song steps through its scenes every 1 to 16 bars, with a bar counter and a four-count warning before each change. Live mutes, level strips with meters, a master clock (or follow CLK IN) with run, reset, bar and scene outputs, and Maschine JAM control. Run two Composers and each keeps its own modules.
SynTHBloK is a series of VCV Rack modules written in C++ for Rack 2.6, all with the same black panel and orange accents. They are meant to work as one instrument: a voice, a filter, effects, mixers, a mastering strip, a MIDI player with its own piano-roll expander, drums, and the MTX grooveboxes, looper and effects played from the Maschine JAM, with the polyphonic engine and the main synth sharing control signals so they act like one voice.
A track-building tool for hard techno, acid, jungle, dub and symphonic ideas. Pick wub engines, break engines, percussion kits, dub material, acid patterns, symphonic layers and FX chains from the module library, arrange them into a blueprint, then export a prompt for AI music tools, a Python script, or a MIDI file for Ableton, FL Studio and VCV Rack. Works on desktop and phone.
SECURE CHECKOUT Payments processed by Stripe over an encrypted connection. Card details never touch this site and are never stored by me.
Name the track, set tempo and key, tick any of 18 genres, then Create Stacks fills the blueprint for you.
Click or drag modules into 8 stacks. A compatibility meter rates the fit and opens into a full breakdown.
Four FX layers on Auto or a module you pick, plus a fill at every section change from build to outro.
Randomise, save and load, then export a MOZART AI prompt, a Python codex or a MIDI file for your DAW.
40 records Hear it before you load it: a waveform preview, four character meters (sub, harmonics, movement, aggression) and the full synth recipe: oscillator, filter, LFO and key.
Original productions from LiQuiDNicK, available to buy and stream.
Download previously posted sets and live performances from LiQuiDNicK. All tracks performed and recorded live.
Welcome to the home of LiQuiDNicK — DJ, producer and artist hailing from Milwaukee, WI, USA, now residing in Colorado Springs, CO. Primarily a techno and house/techno performer, Nick is always mixing up genres. Known for hard techno, acid techno, tech house and schranz-influenced sets, he continues to evolve his sound while staying rooted in the Midwest underground. Check out the ever-evolving sound that has continued since the late nineties. Beyond the music, he builds his own instruments: a series of VCV Rack synth modules under the NoiZee ToyZ name, a free browser acid synth called ToyBoX, and software like Acid Bedrock.