Chaircrusher Music Thread

Model a transformer ring modulator or GTFO :grin:

well, or course the diode ring is driven by a transformer! btw, long ago I was interested in modeling. I was looking for this issue of “Marconi’s Wireless world” from like the 30’s , as it had the only article I knew about that talked about the non-linearity of transformers. Found a guy on the internet who had that issue, and sent me a copy :wink: I never used it ;-(

Sometimes I’d like to get a decent preamp and buy a bunch of nice audio transformers, and build a box to switch between them. It’s important to have the preamp in front of the transformer so you can drive it into saturation.

There are VST Plugins like Variety of Sound and AirWindows that model the transfer functions of audio transformers, but they’re very subtle effects.

reminds me of these. Although looking now I don’t see one that’s transformer based… I remember one… Dirt & Grit Colour Kit Bundle – DIY Recording Equipment

This one is “ONE WEIRD TRICK” with the Blamsoft XFX F35 where you modulate the filter type. That sound is super trippy because the F35 has a bunch of filter types, so when every note switches from low pass to bitcrush to resonators to phasers.

Also adding to the fun, the Frozen Wasteland Math Nerd Quantizer. It’s a 28 note tritave (each ‘octave’ is one and a half a regular octave) based on rational numbers. For the most part it sounds pretty conventionally pretty with exotic octaves. There are thirds and sevenths that are sweeter sounding than normal equal tempered 12 note scale.

Should also mention @Squinky Harmony, which is like VCV chord except it tries to produce interesting harmonic movement in the chord output. Of course since I take that chord and quantize it with the Math Nerd to a 28 tone scale, it starts doing really interesting things.

2023-11-09.vcv (16.0 KB)

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That’s cool. And doesn’t sound much like a church organ.

Might be the 28-tone Tritave quantizer. Though I’d love to hear an AME church organist jam on a microtonal organ.

I initially going to post my “church organ” Harmony patch, but that’s just using a MIDI-CV module so I can play it live. It really does sound like a church organist vamping during the sermon.

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LOL this is just insane. Using this Youtube sampling python program and the Lomas Advanced Sampler I generate complete nonsense. Throw in some PathSet x Omri Cohen Truffles and the Audiothing Frostbite 2 and things get splattery.

2023-11-22.vcv (104 KB)

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I won’t bother with uploading a patch file, as this is using Rack as a VST Host & effects engine. The channels are.

First channel is AudioThing Noises → AudioThing Lines → AudioThing ThingsMotor → SoundToys Tremolator. This provides a foundation of random sounds. They tend to disappear in the sludge when the keyboard is loud.

Second channel is AudioDamage Continua → Alborosie Dub Station. I play this live with a MIDI controller. It’s a pretty remarkable sound, which is at times like a distorted electric piano or guitar. All the effects turn it into a choir of shifting overtones. It’s owes more to the sludge metal of Earth than it does to any electronic artist you’d care to name.

The Continua goes into 3 Nysthi Confusing Simplers, whose Record inputs are driven by a Hetrick Random Gates. So when you play a note, it randomly starts or stops recording on one of the Confusing Simplers. The effect is that they each play a different sampled loop.

I practiced playing it for an hour or so to get some idea of what I was going for, which was a bit of Lamonte Young style droning.

image

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Thank you for sharing that!

So I did this. the bassline is the Squintronix Arpeggiator in action. The Squinktronix Harmony module is playing mournful chords. I also use Probably Note to ‘spread’ the sequence out.

2024-01-07.vcv (117.1 KB)

It uses a bunch of VST’s you probably don’t have but as far as the sequencing setup goes, it should be clear.

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I liked this particular shortwave sample, that had a section of syrupy strings at the end of a song, then an announcer speaking what sounded like Russian.

So I put two Nysthi Confusing Simplers playing the strings, one forwards and one backwards. That was the carrier for the Frozen Wasteland Mr Blue Sky vocoder. The Russian dude talkin was the modulator. Then I mixed the strings back in.

The bassline is the Moog Mariana VST in VCV Host. This is a first take, so not all the instruments come in right on the downbeat, and I do some on the fly editing of patterns in the JW-Modules Gridseq. I may add some more sounds and re-record it, but I kind of like the rawness of this performance.

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You know a patch is good when you spend 2 hours trying to balance & EQ everything to where it’s not just a buzzy midrange hurricane.

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I know exactly what you mean! Nice work :slight_smile:

I don’t know what you are gating here, but I think the use of arpeggiator goes well beyond basic. I like.

This is the first thing I put together in Ableton Live 12 and Rack.

I’m probably not the first to do so, but Rack in this instance is only used to generate midi. In Rack I use a 3 Sqounk 36 step sequencer. I use the JW-Modules 1Pattern to stagger the clocks of each Squonk stage, so 36 steps are spread over a longer number of beats.

It’s driving the new Ableton instrument Meld. That’s being distorted by the Ableton Roar effect. The cello ensemble is an Ableton sampled instrument.

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Well this is doing the same kind of messing around with Squinktronix Harmony, I was doing in this post where I have one instance of Harmony sending the 4 note chord to 4 MORE instances of Harmony.

Then I use signal delays to shift all the triggers so one 4 note chord triggers a sequence of 16 notes. This patch delays the triggers, so there’s a fixed rhythm of triggers that follows.

The Frozen Wasteland Probably Note quantizer is set to the same scale as all the Harmony modules, so its main purpose is to do that cool note spread thing, where it randomly selects a nearby note on the current scale part of the time.

One note generates 16 notes offset in time that are harmonically related. I haven’t tried it triggering it live from MIDI but that would be cool too because my hands are unquantized.

Anyhow

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So this is how you can use Frozen Wasteland Quad Algorithmic Rhythm to do melodic sequencing. Or in my case “melodic.” I merge all 8 triggers out of the QARs and set the pitches by merging 8 Bogaudio Reftone set to different note values.

It sets up shifting hocketing patterns.

And as (almost) always I use the Frozen Wasteland Probably Note to choose a scale and introduce some pitch variations.

2024-04-12.vcv (75.5 KB)

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I posted this in a different place, so linking it here:

I released something I dug up from a box of CDRs. Three tracks from 1998. I don’t remember exactly how they got put together, but I think it might be a leaked beta version of Sonic Foundry Acid. The other thing I was using was Martin Fay’s Vaz Plus, which was a standalone soft synth with a 16 step sequencer and a few effects.