you also might want to consider kicking a few bucks to these developers and buying some paid modules. They certainly are cheaper than most VSTs or any real hardware module. just sayin’ 
True enough, all the points are valid! I have bought some of the Vult modules-Incubus and the mysteries I think, also bought Slimechildaudio’s Substation. So I’m not a total tight wad!
EDIT: new mix https://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Belie-mix2.mp3
This is 3 Kontakt sample instruments - Viola, Cello, Piano. Then some bass bass, and drums.
I generally put up my Rack patch but I enough things in this: VCV Pulse Matrix, VCV Host, Kontakt, Eventide Black Hole reverb.
It’s just one drum pattern but it seemed to not get too tired what with the other chaos swirling around.
2021-02-06.vcv (1.3 MB)
2 Likes
Great Work!
I don’t know if everyone knows that they can click the 3 dots in the audio player and it will let you download the file. It’s an MP3 file that will probably be changed or recorded over, but if you collect such things, knock yourself out.
PS Please don’t take my music and release it under another name. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of copy-protecting them, by making music no one else wants to steal, but just so you know.
This is a tryout of the new @computerscare “Horse-A-Doodle-Doo” random sequencer. Info about how to get it here.
It’s actually a very strange beast. As I understand it, there are a series of preset patterns that you can’t change. But since changing parameters (length, density, pattern) radically alter the note sequence coming out of it, there’s no real limitations on what kind of mostly-adds-up craziness it can generate. If you leave the knobs alone what it plays will (eventually) repeat. Just tweaking the sequence length with a knob is endless fun.
2021-02-10.vcv (177.6 KB)
https://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Caveat.mp3
2 Likes
This one is another exploration of what you can do with simple FM. Sometimes FM depth around 2 to 6% has this spooky sound to it. The samples I recorded over this amazing site that runs a SDR radio system that lets you listen to and record shortwave broadcasts from all over the world.
The twittery stuff is some ring modulated XFX-Wave blips run through lashes of echoes. I don’t really think of this as a complicated patch. It’s 4 FM-Op oscillators sequenced by 2 instances of Nysthi 5 Step sequencer. The 4 FM-Op are FM-ing in a ‘ring’ by the signal from that oscillator after it’s passed through the VCA, meaning an FM-Op is modulating another oscillator only when it’s playing a note. So you get these occasional overlap where the sound is thoroughly modulated, and all these flute to sax to trombone transitions on each note. I provide the patch for informational purposes but it uses a bunch of paid modules, and I’m not including the samples I used. The core idea is all free modules, and you can wire it up yourself. Will do you good.
2021-02-09.vcv (452.9 KB)
1 Like
It’s that old techno grandpa advice: Get enough channels of stuff going that you can make a track just changing patterns and riding mutes.
2021-02-18.vcv (380.9 KB)
https://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Muffin.mp3
2 Likes
How are you accurately quantizing in your colundi pieces? if I’m not mistaken and you use the Octave shift on the scala quantizer, it’s not actually colundi anymore cause it’s just transposing it down rather than accessing the specific frequencies that are lower. most of the sequencers and cv sources I’ve tried are way too high or too low and its hard to attenuate accurately and keep it “colundi”
It’s anyone’s guess what a correct Colundi is. in the end I can’t make myself care. You have to really work to conform to volumes sequence and its a moving target besides. I’m more into prime ratios tuned scales. If you’re going to be mystical about scales, go Pythagorean.
This one is another exploration of FM passing between different voices, this time with the @Squinky Kitchen Sink Oscillator. Each voice (implemented as a pair of Kitchen Sinks) is driven by @jeremy wentworth’s GridSeqFu.
I have to say that it was worth trying out Kitchen Sink, because when you FM it, it has a much wider range of timbres before it goes really sour or noisy. It can do a sound that varies from a flute to a saxophone blown very quietly. Or bell sounds.
And as a matter of musical philosophy, having two voices FM each other establishes an interrelatedness in the timbre domain. If two notes make a harmony, that harmony is reflected by the timbral change of the them FM-ing each other. The added FM overtones add notes to the chords.
And I don’t know exactly what happens when you FM a Kitchen Sink with a polyphonic signal. Does the voice on the input affect the corresponding voice in the Oscillator?
Oh forgot to mention - NoteSeqFu generates polyphonic note output up to 16 voices. This patch has two instances for a total of 32 voices.
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Tile.mp3
2021-02-22-2.5.vcv (563.4 KB)
Thanks for the mention of Kitchen Sink. Yes the “wider range” is most likely because the FM in Kitchen Sink is 4X oversampled, so you can apply a lot of FM before bad things happen. I’ve been told FM-OP is not oversampled, except the internal FM (feedback) path is actually 8X oversampled. So patches with a lot of internal (feedback) FM can actually sound noticeably worse with Kitchen Sink.
As far as Poly, there may be a bug, but what it’s supposed to do is channel ‘n’ of VCO1 will FM modulate channel ‘n’ of VCO2. So far poly inputs it should just be a poly version of the mono path. But for sure there could be bugs in there.
I remember that now. I use FM-Op a lot for this kind of thing but end up right-click entering FM depth amounds like 0.05 because it goes insane so quickly.
I like how the patches I made with FM-OP sound, but I really appreciate the wider sweet spot that Kitchen Sink has. And I’ve not even tried the wave shaper either.
I feel like this oversampling thing can turn into an ‘arms race’ like how they started out with 2 blades on disposable razors and now they’re up to 5. “F*CK IT! I’M GOING TO 16x Oversample EVERYTHING!”
Seriously though I wouldn’t mind a context menu option to jack up the oversampling in Kitchen Sink. I don’t know what the point of diminishing returns is when it comes to oversampling. I do know that having higher oversample rates on a per-oscillator basis is a more efficient way of e.g. using higher sampling rate for all of Rack.
For sure it can be a pointless arms race in the world of commercial software. In VCV there’s not much of an arms race - there are way too many modules that alias like crazy.
In most applications I find 4X is plenty. Some of my modules do allow you to choose (Like Shaper and Saws), but I don’t like cluttering things up with useless features. So some modules (Kitchen Sink, Stairway, Functional VCO-1) do have oversampling, but don’t have any control over it.
The 8X thing for internal feedback does bother me, because frankly I made Kitchen sink to be strictly better than the wildly popular FM-OP, so it’s almost a point of (lost) pride to miss the mark there. Maybe an option is a good idea. Or maybe there is some trick to make the internal better.
FWIW most of my modules that use 4X oversampling don’t use an excessive amount of CPU - I try very hard to get both good sound and good CPU usage. One notable “failure” is “Stairway”, which is a really cool sounding filter, but it is a complete CPU pig. Maybe someday…
Sometimes I wonder if it’s better to be mysterious about how things are made. Then I think nah…
This is another @Squinky Kitchen Sink FM production.
There’s one @jeremy Wentworth NoteSeqFu into a Frozen Wasteland Probably Note Quantizer. It’s a pretty simple scale somewhere in the vicinity of pentatonic.
The clocking and sequencing are weird. The 6 Kitchen Sinks go into VCAs modulated by three instances of Frozen Wasteland Drunken Rampage. The Rampage is set to to cycle.
Then I combine all the EOC triggers and use that to drive the NoteSeqFu. The pitches don’t shift exactly at the same time the note starts. And there’s something weird in the voicing coming out of NoteSeqFu. Nothing I can’t role with but since all 2 oscillator voices are free running, sometime there won’t be a new pitch into some of the oscillators until it hits a particular polyphony count.
And again the voices FM each other in a ring, with low modulation depth which just puts a weird cloud of harmonics around the fundamental without obscuring the root pitch. I guess it depends on your ears but the inharmonic sideband that FM adds sound kind of jazzy.
2021-02-26.vcv (470.3 KB)
1 Like
oh, that is pretty cool sounding! I wouldn’t say the enharmonic stuff is “jazzy”, but for sure it sounds interesting with the more harmonic stuff. Like it works together even though there’s no obvious reason it should. Which maybe is what you mean by jazzy. yeah, good stuff.
Third version of Dashpot. My real gripe with the earlier mixes was that they had too much piercing high frequencies. I want this stuff that is rich harmonically without sounding like a bad day with my tinnitus.
There will probably be a subsequent mix with things trimmed to where the recording overloads. I think you almost always have to use the -6dB pad when recording the output of Mindmeld Mixmaster.
https://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Dashpot-Mix3.mp3
4th Dashpot. I like adding quiet layers of noises.
One I made, performed, & mastered today.
OK so this one was done to explore a complex feedback model with a simple AS Delay Plus.
Instead of cranking the feedback on the filter itself this patch uses a mixer with the effect sends as 2 inputs and feedback from the filter output into the other two. After the filter there’s an overdrive and chorus module.
Using the Audible Polarizing mixer you can flip around between positive and negative feedback. The Chorus module has the delay time and LFO rate modulated randomly. When you turn up the feedback you get weird modulated chorusing sounds.
Oh and there’s a limiter before the output feeds back to the delay input which will tend to keep the feedback from running away completely. But you get these wierd atonal wobbles going on in the stereo field that really does your head in with headphones.
Drums are from a Frozen Wasteland Quad Algorithmic Rhythm sequencer. I’ve used this a lot before, but the issue always seems to be that the QAR is easy to get in a state that makes the listener’s ear lose track of where the beat is, so I use a logic OR from Submarine to combine the QAR triggers with a more regular kick and clap pattern.
https://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Feedback2.mp3
1 Like