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.
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)
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)
https://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Ramaiolo.mp3
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.
(Colundi on the µTune | tubbutec) Colundi-full-everyOne.scl.txt (2.5 KB)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Interesting that the legendary “even” waveform is a saw mixed with a sine an octave lower.
Just trying out one of my messed up scales based on polynomial iteration. Mathematically, I took the principle of a simple audio filter (where every sample N is a sum of N-X samples times a constant) and applied it to pitches: Every pitch in the generated scale is function of the previous N samples. So if there’s 4 coefficents a through d:
sample(n) = asample(n-1) + bsample(n-2) + csample(n-3) + dsample(n-4)
So each note is a function of the previous 4 which … works? I had to monkey with it a bit to get reasonable results, like no 2 note scales and no 1200 note scales.
The scale generator is here:
This is an 8 note scale that seems pretty euphonious, though each note is tuned away from any of the traditional 12 note scale.
The scale is C C#+ D+ E- F#- G#+ A#+ (where the ‘+’ is sharp and ‘-’ is flat). To my ears though it does something wiid: The normally ‘dissonant’ intervals (minor 2nd, diminished 5th) sound more harmonious than they do in a equal-tempered 12-tone scale.
Falling back on my old favorite sequencing trick: @jeremy wentworth’s GridSeq with an irregular clock based on XOR-ing clock dividers together.
2022-04-21.vcv (131.9 KB)
testscale.scl.txt (151 Bytes)
I wanted to add this scale file if anyone wants to try it with Nysthi Scala quantizer. This one divides the octave into 10 slices.
The fun part is I can use Scala for the Rack oscilattor tuning, then load the same SCL file into Surge XT and they play in tune!
iterated2.scl.txt (221 Bytes)
This was made with the 10 note scale above. The weird thing about it is that it sounds alien, the way that most microtonal music can. At the same time the intervals all seem to bear some meaningful relationship to each other. I like to think this is because each frequency in the scale IS based on previous notes.
I plugged almost random polynomial coefficients into the equation to iteratively generate the notes. So it isn’t like I’m Gustav Frickin Mahler or anything. But the way it can make harmonic sense is interesting. After listening to the finished track a few times, it starts making sense. Spooky!
Good scale. I used it in a patch that uses 4 interplaying sequences, with the root note of the scale tuned to E. Stays very nicely harmonic across the cross mixing and modulation of all the bits and pieces.
I think I remember from an ancient article in Computer Music Journal that the 19 note even tempered scale can hit the lower “in tune” intervals much better than most.
very musical to my ears 
Sigh, the lack of math nerd love makes me sad. 10 edo scales are trivial for it. Nice to see the QAR in use tho 
It isn’t 10edo though the sonority may be similar
