Chaircrusher Music Thread

[chaircrusher]

I was exercising one idea with this: Use MindMeld ShapeMaster Pro to generate both volume envelopes and clocks for instances of VCV Seq-3.

All the Shapemaster envelopes are free running, meaning you could replace it with Shapemaster Free.

I like the effect. While nothing is synced, the sequences (and the volume envelopes) repeat predictably. So it has that fragrance of intentionality. At certain points I change the envelope lengths, which upsets the deterministic timing relationship between different voices.

I ended up with … 37?.. modules in each voice, so this would have been pretty painful in Rack1, though I could do the copying with Stoermelder strip.

Stoermelder 8Face is the meta-sequencer. It controls the SEQ-3s, VCV Quantizers, and Shapemaster Pro. A slow clock from Impromptu Clocked steps through the Stoermelder 8Face presets. The live performance is me letting the 8Face run through all the presets until it circles back to the first, which gives it some closure by recapitulating the beginning.

I put the Wires on the master output bus and dialed in a nicely cruddy sound, which Wires is great at. Then I dial the wet dry mix to something like 10% wet where the overt crappiness of the sound is subliminal. It’s there but you don’t really hear it until you bypass it, and then you realize that funky stuff happening down around the noise floor makes it sound more three dimensional, like it was actual sounds recorded in a room.

You could do something similar with a signal chain with things like Squinky Labs Chopper, some filtered white noise and Hetrick Crackle. But Wires is there for you if you buy it, and I highly recommend it.

I uploaded the patch but this is yet another one that probably 3 people on the planet can just load and go. It needs

1. ShapeMaster Pro,
2. whatever paid package Vult Freak filter is in
3. Stoermelder 8Face, which isn’t yet available in the library yet.
4. SynthKit Add (also not in library yet)
5. AudioThing/Hainbach Wires and Things - Motor
6. UAD-2 Fairchild 670 Compressor

2022-01-04-3.vcv (50.3 KB)

[chaircrusher]

2022-01-24.vcv (18.2 KB)

I was exploring one idea: Using JW Gridseq drive a polyphonic voice with a VCV Chords module. But the CV output of the Chords module goes through an AS Signal Delay and is added to the input of the Chords module. I average the delayed CV out of the quantizer with the output of the Gridseq. It’s a feedback delay, but affecting pitch CV instead of audio.

The feedback pitch is scaled and then averaged with the Gridseq output and sent through the Chord and VCV Quantizer.

I also take the output of the VCV Chords and put each voice CV & Gate through a signal delay, so it turs the chord into an arpeggio.

All the sequencing is driven by the one GridSeq. You can take a simple sequence and use pitch and time offsets to make it play a duet or trio with itself.

[chaircrusher]

An evolution of the patch directly above. I added drums and more effects because MOAR IS ALWAYS MOAR.

Don’t know how easy it is to pick up but there’s Hainbach/AudioThing Wires and GongAmp. Wires is on duty roughing up a delay feedback loop, and the Gong is there to just add a dreamy low fi reverberation that you only notice if it’s not there.

[StillBreathingFire (Mike Luv)]

Good stuff, Sir.

[DaveVenom (Dave Benham)]

@chaircrusher

because MOAR IS ALWAYS MOAR.

'cept when it’s KNOT

When the minimal drum beat first came in, I thought “Oh No o o o”. But then after a brief pause, the full percussion really kicked in, and then it was “Oh Yeah!”

[chaircrusher]

This one is sequenced in Ableton Live but it’s definitely influenced by the techniques I’ve worked out in Rack.

8 different channels of MIDI funnel into one channel of Kontakt. There are 3 rows of clips of various lengths between 3 meaures and 11 measures, each with one or two sustained notes. So I can play the arrangement triggering groups of clips. The notes drift past each other, occasionally lining up.

The vocal sample is an Italian radio DJ captured from Shortwave radio and processed through a bunch of effects.

The Piano is fattened up by runing it through Hainbach/AutoThing Wires and adding just a touch of warble & noise. Way in the backgorund you can hear a Live preset “Choir from Venus” or something like that, where I’ve filtered and added effects to until it’s just a vague dream.

For good measure I dropped in a noise bed of Juno 60 chorus noise.

[chaircrusher]

Now the story can be told. New Vult Anima sequencer that’s kinda like a Turing machine but has different percursor hardware.

Anima is really musical in ways I think it has no right to be. - this is a workout for it with my usual obsessions: dub delays, making a chord pad by sampling notes from the main sequencer. Sequenced the drums with MuxSlicer.

beatless

with beats

2022-02-01.vcv (11.9 KB)

[ady34]

So the Vult Anima awaiting release? Hence the Vult secret society cult reference. Now the veils have been lifted from my eyes!

[chaircrusher]

This one I actually sequenced in Ableton Live, using a simple Squinky Labs Kitchen Sink FM voice.

There’s precisely one trick to this arrangement. I have a bunch of channels in the Live Session view, and I have them filled with various clips I’ve made that are odd lengths, so that when you play them together they shift in time against each other.

I think when you get tired of 1-operator FM you’re tired of life.

[chaircrusher]

Sometimes a loop just hits. The primary trick here is using @jeremy wentworths patterns - an insane many channelled clock divider as an audio modifier. I add together 4 channels of spastic clock dividers and treat it as an audio signal. It’s a really noisy ugly sound but if you filter it it takes on a life of its own.

2022-03-09.vcv (20.9 KB)

VCV Rack Techno Take 32767

[chaircrusher]

Taking a sound and then piling on effects until it turns into something crazy is a core practice for patching VCVRack. The chord pad sound on this gets tremolo’ed and chorused and delayed until it turns into a writhing, lurching animal.

I like economy of means. There’s one sequencer generating both the bass/melody line & the chords. Then, to work with minimal drums, I use the drums & some Squinky VCOs into a ring modulators, run through a delay to make it into a second wonky percussion sound. Use the same kind of processing on the clap as well.

2022-04-05.vcv (34.3 KB)

[chaircrusher]

Second mix

A little adventure with Scala ‘all 128’ Colundi sequence file. To be ‘official’ I’d tune it to a particular note, so that the moons of Saturn vibrate properly with it but I just like experimenting with it as a non-repeating scale. There are a lot of strangely euphonic intervals, along with ones that sound distinctly flat.

2022-04-12.vcv (9.4 KB)

This is the SCL file that I got from [Colundi on the TubbuTec microTune] Rename it to Colundi-full-everyOne.scl and @synthi Nysthi Scala can load it.

(https://tubbutec.de/blog/colundi-on-the-µtune) Colundi-full-everyOne.scl.txt (2.5 KB)

[DaveVenom (Dave Benham)]

I quite like the first mix. The bright tones coupled with the faster tempo come across as structured with melodic lines. “strangely euphonic intervals” is a perfect phrase.

The slower, darker mix is just slow enough that I lose any sense of phrasing.

[chaircrusher]

@DaveVenom

The slower, darker mix is just slow enough that I lose any sense of phrasing.

Interesting reaction. The two versions are at exactly the same tempo. In the second I made the patterns sparser, and turned up the clock dividers on some NoteSeqFu voices, slowing the stepping of individual voices.

I think to my ears the first was a little busy, and the second has more space, and the phrasing is what I was listening for. Which is the opposite of your impression. And I respect your opinion. Maybe a third version is needed that is somewhere between the two.

The second one is saved separately so I can go back to the first.

[DaveVenom (Dave Benham)]

Wow - the mind can do some crazy things.

The 2 minute time difference seemed consistent with my perception, and I ran with my first impression.

So when you say the patterns are sparser, and the rate of some voice step changes is slower, then the two are not playing exactly the same phrases? at least rhythmically, and possibly note wise? That could be what I perceived as a tempo change.

I just now read the phrase “strangely euphonic” more carefully - I had misread that word as euphoric! I had to look up the definition of euphonic. Totally different meaning, but for me, both words are fitting.

[chaircrusher]

I completely overwrote all the note patterns for the second sequence. I don’t know how much time you’ve spent with NoteSeqFu, but each of the 4 independent ‘play head’ sections can have a different clock divisor. And you can turn each section off (or on) to modify or augment a sequence.

But as far as note information the two versions are disjoint with respect to note patterns and rhythms.

[chaircrusher]

Sequenced in Live. 3 instances of the same 2 operator FM. There’s a bass sound, a sort of guitar, and a harmonica sound all from the same patch.

You can get great sounds out of simple FM voices. If you haven’t given it a try you should.

[chaircrusher]

I didn’t know this sound would be so huge; it’s just stereo VCV VCOs, where the saw and square waves are mixed in with the sine down an octave. Part of the impact of the sounds is that it’s two synth voices but it’s jacked up to mastered release levels almost so it’s huge particularly when the bass sound is soloed.

[Squinky]

Interesting that the legendary “even” waveform is a saw mixed with a sine an octave lower.

[chaircrusher]

Legendary Even Oscillator