Now with more rain and wind for @zero
resonantDrum.vcv (52.5 KB)
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Using Signal Delays to turn one sequence into a sort of demented 4 voice round.
2020-01-17.vcv (101.7 KB)
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This one is… hoo boy. I like how you can turn BogAudio FM OP into a weird kind of monster acid synth.
This is definitely “that boy ain’t right” electro. Also Audible Modal Synthesizer on serious harsh wacky sounds.
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The particular weirdness I was trying out was polyphonic 2-operator FM. I use VCV Polyphonic Split to separate the 4 synth voice on an FM Op, then merge them shuffled. So it’s 4 voice polyphonic and each voice is FM Modulating one of the other 3 voices.
The second trick is that I use Aria Salvatrice Darius to generate a varying CV output, using one clock, and then for each of the 4 voices I use a different clock sequence to sample the pitch output of Darius.
In other words I have one CV out from Darius, that I tap with 4 different gate clocks to get different pitches and 4 different gates to the envelope for each of 4 voices
201-01-25.vcv (131.8 KB)
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The VCVRack patch is set up for me to perform it – one array of buttons for mutes next to a second array of buttons to step through sequencer presets with 8Face. So it was a track of sorts already when I brought it into Ableton Live and added some percussion and keyboard pads – in this case Audiodamage Continua. Then towards the end I bring in Roland Jupiter 6 on the arpeggiated chords.
The two main synth lines are the output of a JW GridSeq, but the second CV gate is the original CV/Gate from Gridseq, delayed something like 4 1/8 beats, then transposed.
So it’s an economy of means thing – the two parts are the same but just offset in time and pitch.
Recommend the Audiodamage Continua. The interface is really good and it sounds nice over a wide range of parameter settings.
Chaircrusher-Serpent.vcv (321.5 KB)
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I really should have taken a look into this thread way earlier, lots of interesting stuff here. Thank you for putting it up! Cheers!
LOL It’s sad that @synthi has made so many samplers and I keep just abusing Confusing Simpler.
I found some a capella singing on archive.org and use Confusing simpler to mess it up. Then some @modlfo’s Vult Freak filters to mess it up further.
This is a proof of concept. At some point it may become something more.
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Yesterday when I was putting this idea together, I googled ‘what day is today’ and found out that for some reason it was National Iowa Day. So that’s where the title comes from but also, since people have giving Iowa a hard time over the Democratic caucus disaster, that maybe this song is a sort of apology/explanation from my corner of Iowa.
The track is done in Ableton Live, stealing a trick from Brian Eno who probably got it from Steve Reich or Alvin Lucier: There’s one instrument, the Kontakt Sampled Uni Corda piano. I have a matrix of clips, each with an uneven length – like 3 measures 2 beats and a 16th note. Each is clip has a few notes.
So when you (for example) play a loop that’s 3 1/2 measures long (i.e 14 quarter notes) and one that’s 5 3/4 measures long (23 quarter notes) they take quite a while for the resulting pattern to repeat. So it’s the midi equivalent of Brian eno making a piece by playing several tape loops of different lengths.
VCV Rack came into it as an effects send. There’s some delays with a lot of filtering and effects that make it kind of a cloud that the dry piano is dragging along behind it.
If you’re an Ableton Live user, here’s an interesting thing. I had one MIDI track with Kontakt on it. Then I had 8 tracks to hold clips that were routed to the Kontakt track input. If you record-arm the Kontakt track, and then record an arrrangement by playinging the various clips The Kontakt MIDI track will have all the incoming MIDI merged into one clip where you can further edit and manipulate it.
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Great sounding piece!
VCV Rack on the bass sound, Kontakt on the Strings.
The bass sound is just @modlfo’s Vult Basal through the Surge Chorus.
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2020-02-29.vcv (357.2 KB)
This one is doing something I do a lot (with minor twists) – Set up one polyphonic synth, drive it with several sequencers, play different patterns.
The main difference here is I also used Audiodamage Continua for the pad voice.
Also used Audiodamage Rough Rider 3 to compress the mix.
I mapped the ‘preset change’ buttons to my keyboard and the mixer channel levels to knobs, and then I just started jamming.
My mind has actually been severely warped by @jeremy Wentworth’s Patterns Module, which adds a layer of rhythmic stretching that isn’t available anywhere else. And actually Jeremy, I bet no one has ever put together a clock logic system for modular before. It’s actually something that the Eurorack guys would love to get a physical version of.
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It’s fun to set up a controller so you can run mixer mutes and effect sends etc.
The main sounds are the AS Drums I just got, it was mostly trying those out, using in part the Count Modula Euclidian sequencers. Some Pulse Matrix action in there so there’s at least one or two steady bits to anchor your ear to.
The bass is Mosquito Labs PhaseCzar. I’m sitting 3 feet from a Casio CZ-1 and let me tell you the PhaseCzar is something else entirely.
The high sound is my beloved BogAudio FM-Op, being modulated by the PhaseCzar.
The bass and lead are using my trademark messed up sequencer setup: @jeremy Wentworth’s Patterns clock divider, and Gridseqs, which lets you make a square 16 step sequence warp and stretch. Capture snapshots with 8Face, and Bob’s your uncle.
2020-0303.vcv (203.9 KB)
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This one involves that time-honored tradition of modular sound design. You pile shit on until it starts surprising you and gets hard to control.
2020-03-14-2.vcv (75.3 KB)
There are two synth voices, one plays polyphonically being driven by clips in Ableton Live. The same poly midi data is run through a VCV Split, then several signal delays, and then gets merged back in to a second synth voice. So if you play a chord, it comes out an arpeggio because each CV-gate signal is run throuth a different delay.
The dither sound that you can occasionally hear when the drums drop out is a recording I made with a Tascam DR-05. I started it recording one evening and forgot about it and found the next day I had 3 hours of insects and distant interstate traffic recorded.
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So I tried a new Euclidean sequencer on some drum sounds and then got up to some of my usual dubbed up screwing around. The MrLumps SEQEuclid is actually driving the melodic sounds. 2020-03-24.vcv (120.3 KB)
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Realy nice story of 2020-0303 one and sound feel like milimeter music. hard to believe it’s jam session. Good work !
This is some kind of Virus Lockdown type Electro.
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This one is mostly Audiodamage Continua and the Live Wavetable instrument in Ableton Live. But there’s a melodic counterpoint part that’s Rack, along with a bunch of percussion parts, triggered a combination of sequenced and random parts.
This is an example of how I handle integration with Ableton LIve. I use VCV Bridge instrument which captures multichannel audio from Rack. I send a steady stream of MIDI 16th notes into Rack and use the Gate Out of a MIDI->CV module to clock the sequencers inside Rack. The timing is tight, and you can do things like apply Ableton Live groove templates to the clip driving the 16th note clock.
Mastered in Sound Forge, using my usual processing chain of UAD-2 plugins: Manley Massive Passive -> Fairchild 670 -> Oxide Tape Saturate -> Precision Limiter -> Melda LoudnessAnalyzer. The idea is to pass it through a lot of virtual transformers and tape to give it some good analogue warmth.
I use the LoudnessAnalyzer to trim the limiter output. I shoot to stay close to but not over -10LUFS, which is a good comprimise setting for electronic music. It corresponds roughly to -12dBRMS which was my old level benchmark.
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Did you know today is National Join Hands Day? Neither did I.
The star of the show is Macro Oscillator 2 being driven by Gridseq. I use signal delays on the gridseq outputs and merge them into a polyphonic CV/Gate, so there’s 4 voices of contrapunctal polyphony going on, but based on the output of one monophonic sequencer.
There is one effect send and I use a series of very short delays to smear the input to a pair of Unfiltered Audio Instant Delays.
The drums are my usual suspects, the Knock for kick, Hora HiHat, and Autodafe Clap.
I think that as much as I appreciate sound design, I’m more fascinated now by ways of getting complicated melodic material by combining sequencers in interesting ways. There’s a whole universe in the ways simple sequencers can feed whole chains of transformations and recombinations.
202-03-09.vcv (108.3 KB) http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-JoinHands.mp3
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That’s got to have been planned six months ago, right?
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