If you are ready for another creative exercise in VCV Rack patching, we are starting another one for November 2024 and you are invited!
Mission
We are a supportive community and we gather in the spirit of mutual education. This is NOT a competition. Our purpose is to challenge ourselves, not each other, to learn and practice electronic music as an art form.
Theme
For this month’s BewitchingBeat challenge, the theme is, you guessed it, the creation of a bewitching beat.
At the heart of the challenge, there are two equally important ambitions:
- sound design of synthesized drum- or percussion-like sounds AND
- development of an enticing rhythm with sensible variations and fills, that on one hand sparks the listeners’ interest, and on the other hand makes them want to move or tap their feet to the beat or just get up and dance!
The emphasis of your beat should be on rhythm, movement, and groove, as opposed to a conglomeration of random noise hits.
Constraints
- As we have done in recent challenges, the patch must fit inside the boundary markers of the template patch. Download the template patch file “BewitchingBeat_template.vcv” below and use it as the basis for your submission. You must not delete or move any of the boundary elements.
- All sounds must be synthesized. You cannot use any samples, recordings, microphones, MIDI input, or other externally derived sources of audio or control signals. You need to use modules based on oscillators and noise, and cannot use modules that are based on samples. You may optionally perform your patch using mouse and/or keyboard, especially if you provide a video showing what you are doing.
- All modules used must be free and available in the current VCV Rack Library.
- Try to focus on the overall rhythm and groove of your track, so listeners tap their feet, bop their heads or just get up and dance!
- Beat arrangement should ideally be an interplay (question and answer) of different frequency ranges, i.e. a ‘trialog’ of low, medium and high frequencies in order for a well-rounded, aesthetic, balanced sonic experience.
- You are encouraged to round off your beat with tonal sounds, such as a bass line and/or a pad sound, or any sound you see fit to tie sounds together to a piece that is reasonably pleasant and engaging to listen to.
- To allow everyone’s work to be seen and appreciated, please submit no more than 5 entries for this month’s challenge.
Template patch
bewitching_beat_november_2024_template.vcv (2.2 KB)
Patches
As always, the purpose of this challenge is education. We learn by doing, and we also learn by seeing and interacting with each other’s work. Please upload each patch to PatchStorage.com.
Post the link here (preferred) or upload your patch file directly to this thread or to some other file hosting service.
All patches must be posted in the month of November 2024 (UTC).
Videos
A YouTube video makes it easier for everyone reading this thread to experience your work. You can use the VCV Record module to record a video, then upload that video to YouTube. Then post a link to the video in your submission. Put the link on a line by itself like this to embed a nice video player:
If you don’t want to record video, you can also post an audio-only link to SoundCloud, Google Drive, etc.
Any posted video/audio recordings should be somewhere between 1 and 3 minutes in duration.
Linking
Please include the text “BewitchingBeat Challenge”, along with a link to this forum thread, in the title or description of any published patches, videos, or audio recordings. This helps promote the challenge for other people who might also be interested in participating.
. Most of what I did can be accomplished with a single, polyphonic, Nodi or Contextus.
The Envelope Array module looks intriguing, too.
