This is the same patch as the FMDrone one above, playing a different chord, with some added tweaks.
There’s a new feature of @jeremy Wentworth’s GridSeq: a secondary output for Gate & CV value, that’s labeled yx. What that does is this: at every clock tick, Gridseq will output a CV based on the current row and column in the grid. If there’s no gate turned on at a particular XY position, no gate gets set.
The yx outputs take the current row and column and reverses them, so for example, if the main output comes from (3,2), the yx output comes from (2,3).
This is the kind of thing I really like: When you can get more than one output out of a sequencerr by some simple transformation. Because it’s a simple transformation (2 ‘cursors’ moving through the GridSeq grid rotated by 90 degrees) it is a musically useful transformation.
I did notice something that is the inevitable result of this XY->YX transform: any thing on the up-to-down diagonal will always trigger at the same time. So you either have to avoid that downard diagonal in your sequences, or do something like what I did: Use an AS Signal Delay to offset the yx output in time.
The rest of the sound here involves using @synthi’s Low Pass Gates on the output of XFX Waves for a little filter pop, and use Math Nerd to take the scale into an oddly euphonious intonation, and abuse VCV Sound State by turning everything up to 11.
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-PolyGridseq.mp3
5 Likes
Just noticed there are 142 posts in this thread. Some are comments by other people but there has to be a ton of mp3s posted here.
So here’s another one.
2020-09-25.vcv (248.7 KB)
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Translucent.mp3
1 Like
This is what happens when you use a turing machine to sequence what was a drone patch. This is an earlier version of this patch. It has since morphed, and the performance was actually recorded with a version of the patch I didn’t save.
1 Like
I was talking with my friend CRT about how Autechre’s compositional/production techniques work, and it gave me an idea to try out.
They set up their two laptops running giant Max patches such that there is bi-directional modulation going on all the time, in several dimensions. Each of their computers has two outputs: audio and an array of control voltages.
The audio gets mixed more or less conventionally, but each computer/performer/max patch can modify it’s behavior with inputs from the other. Consequently Rob is steering his own output but also modifying what Sean’s doing, and vice versa. Plus they’re listening to the summed output, and reacting as musicians to shape the music.
I tried to do something similar in Rack. It’s two voices driven by JW Gridseqs, and in several ways each voice modifies the other:
- Each oscillator is FM-ed by the output of the other voice, i.e. post-VCA.
- Each envelope modulates the decay time of the other
- Each voice is run through a Befaco Rampage, which modulates the filter frequency the other voice.
- The envelope of one voice modulates the delay send of the other.
- The slew-limited output of one voice modulates the reverb send of the other.
- The two send effects modulate each other via envelope followers. The reverb’s envelope modulates the delay->reverb’s feedback level, and the delay->reverb’s envelope modulates the Size of the reverb.
- Each GridSeq’s trigger output is sent to a voltage divider, and every seventh note trigger on one sequencer resets the other sequencer.
2020-10-11-2.vcv (229.3 KB)
http://cornwarning.com /chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-GirlChild.mp3
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-GirlChild.mp3
4 Likes
Beautiful piece. Nice open space. And I like this technique. Didn’t know that about AE. (friday new cd! woohoo!) I am always curious what this thread brings. Interesting music.
Rhythmically this gets a bit wonky, but I like those interlocking melodic lines
2020-11-03.vcv (358.0 KB)
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-CandyStress.mp3
1 Like
The NoteSeqFu warp button is well trippy. It shifts every note in pitch and-or time one step, and with the quantizer turned on so it is related in a vague way to what was there before.
Most of the sequencing was in finding patterns I liked and then swapping between them. Because of the quantizers you can shift the notes up or down. And the odd lengths of the loop for each voice line make the rhythm shift and twist as well.
And yet even though the sequence is seriously messed with live it just seems to hang together.
It’s a bit distorted in one of the delay lines and I’ll probably re-record it.
2020-11-05.vcv (567.9 KB)
1 Like
Two more versions of the Insular track. The second is just the first slowed down to half tempo/octave down. I think it earns its 19 minutes.
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Insular2.mp3
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-SlowInsular2.mp3
1 Like
And another version of Insular. It’s one patch that really has no limits in what it can do with that sound. This one adds more FM modulation to broaden the timbre range.
And when I mastered it I used The Audiothing Wire plugin to add a little analog-esque cruft. I want to turn down the clicking; it sounds like it’s playing on dusty vinyl. Now there’s a reason people like that sound but I don’t think the piece needs it. It just asks for some dirtying up. The wire recorder wow on the pitch has a subtle chorusing effect.
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Insular4.mp3
I can’t decide!!! 
Great stuff!
I threw the kitchen sink at this one. There are two instances of AAS Lounge Lizard electric piano in addition to a Basal voice and a Macro Oscillator 2 all playing the same basic notes through transpose s and delays.
The main delay plugin is AS Delay Plus through the Audiothing Hainbach Wires plugin for that perfect cruddiness.
Sometimes things just happen. This one is yet another variation on my standard method of fooling with multiple JW GridSeqs and @jeremy’s Pattern clock divider thingers. One voice gets fed into the mixer, but also into SuperCell. The transpose (i.e. YX) outputs of the 4 GridSeqs is sent to a Audible Macro Oscillator2 run into a filter.
Simple melodic material that goes through a couple of different transformations, and all of a sudden it’s complicated.
2020-11-18-2.vcv (412.5 KB)
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Abnegate.mp3
2 Likes
This a similar experiment to the last piece, only I added drums and piano (from Kontakt The Giant). There’s a solo piano fade out that lasts almost as long as the main part of the track.
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Debouch.mp3
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Debouch.mp3
2020-11-23-2.vcv (678.9 KB)
1 Like
I really do love the sound of piano. I even like the sound of sampled piano, as is used here. It’s a Kontakt grand piano patch, and then delays through a ton of processing.
When one feeds a foreground sound to a delay you shift it in time which also shifts it harmonically. The delayed part becomes counterpoint for the foreground sound. The way the delayed piano is filtered and treated it’s a midrangey echo, that reminds me of that secondary ‘thought voice’ in Ken Nordine’s “Word Jazz”
http://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Interiors.mp3
1 Like
Did a thing with @jeremy’s JW GridSeqFu, driving a couple of voices that are layered together.
The voices are Basal and Macro Oscillator 2. The delay sound is 2 Instant Delays into a DelayPlus. The instant delays have an instance of Hainbach Wires in the feedback to grunge it up. Sound Stage provides the ambience.
If you wonder why there’s 3 audio links, sometimes the forum won’t play files from other domains.
The second link should click through directly to an HTML5 audio player, or you can right-click & download.
https://cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Mutt.mp3
2020-12-02.vcv (399.8 KB)
4 Likes
The reason this one won’t play is that the URL is HTTP rather than HTTPS. If you make your links HTTPS, they ought to work.
2 Likes
Thanks, you’re right. The maddening thing was that it works sometimes from the community forum with just http. Phase of the moon type deal. 
One factor would be how you’re viewing the forum - if you’re viewing it using HTTP then HTTP audio will work.
1 Like
Haha I don’t think I ever directly entered the URL - just went to the vcvrack site and clicked on the community link. I visit so often in the chrome address bar it will autocomplete the community URL as soon as I type ‘com’ into the address/search box.