Creature Cabin Challenge. (October 2024)

Music & Patches
1

Hello there, I’m your Guest gHost for this month’s challenge! Thanks to Don Cross for the wonderful challenges, the support and the chance!

Samhain… Halloween… Día de muertos… doors creaking; witches laughing; demons feasting; zombies walking; vampires seducing… spooky season is upon us!

Ready for the challenge? Good! Let me clear my throat; put my TV narrator voice on, and tell you a bit of local folklore.

It is said that deep in the forest, far from most men, there is an abandoned cabin. The people in the small town near it speak about the owner in scared whispers; they say he was a genius, one of the most brilliant scientists of his generation… until tragedy struck: his beloved wife, a talented photographer, was trapped under the rubble that fateful day the old, decrepit water tower fell… the town, not fast enough to help her escape, resigned as she left this earthly realm a few hours later. Mad with grief, he blamed his former friends, his neighbors for his loss… many moons passed, each one making him lonelier, quieter… stranger… until one day, he no longer spoke at all and just walked into the woods, never to return.

People slowly; but surely forgot about him… then the noises came…

After the sun had fallen, they could hear growls, screams, songs in languages they didn’t understand, and all manner of indescribable sounds. They were too afraid to peek out their windows and see what was causing them; but when the comfort of daylight arrived, some took to calling the unseen creatures Mutants… others were pretty sure they were Monsters; but they all agreed: the entities chilled their spines. Was this the work of the now mad scientist?

And so it lies the task before thee: make a scary patch to spook the pants off our little town!

Your patch can be as noisy, musical, strange, experimental or classical as you like! Let your scary imagination run rampant: there’s a town, some woods, a cabin… a lab that none have seen the inside of, the present… the past… perhaps the future? A whole palette for you to play with.

If you imagine it, and want to scare us with it… submit it!

While otherworldly entities thrive in chaos, we humans must abide by some ground rules:

  • The cabin and the, alleged, underground lab beneath it have limited space: your patch must fit the boundaries of the provided template.

  • Mutants and Monsters must be present in your patch, to be precise, a combination of at least 5: 3 Sanguine Mutants at minimum, and 2 or more Sanguine Monsters, those creatures can come from the Rack Library or the Nightlies: the Mutants and Monsters are what make the Creature part of the “Creature Cabin”

    The Sanguine Mutants can be found in Rack’s Library here: VCV Library - Sanguine Modules

    The Sanguine Monsters can be found in Rack’s Library here: VCV Library - Sanguine Modules

    as stated above, nightlies for those two plugins are also welcome!

  • There are no restrictions on module brands or kinds; but every module used other than the Mutants and Monsters must be free and available in the Rack Library.

  • The Scary Sounding Creature Consortium has placed a ban on samples, recordings, microphones, MIDI input or external sound sources and control signals: your patch must be generative, though you may perform it using a mouse or computer keyboard; the reason why is a zombie brainer: the Consortium intends to teach and show others how masterpieces are created, so that anyone, from Risen John Cage (the composer, not the head popping fighter) and his bony expertise to Teethy: the clumsy, guitar playing dentures living in a jar are able to download and reproduce your results.

  • All that is required for your entries are the patches, please upload them to patchstorage.com and post the links here (this is the preferred method); you can also upload your patches directly to this thread, or put them in some file hosting service and post the links.

  • The Thriller Video Association payed me (sadly not handsomely) to announce that videos are extremely encouraged, both as an educational aid and as an attractive experience: videos make your work easier to experience to a broader audience.

    The VCV Recorder module is included in the template; the module makes it easy to record a video that you can upload to YouTube. Post a link to the video in your entry on a line by itself, as in the example below, and you’ll get a convenient embedded video player:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<somecharacters>

  • Video not your thing, your Rack is camera shy? Audio only links are welcome! Post a link to SoundCloud, Google Drive, Reverbnation, etc.

  • It benefits everyone if you include the “Creature Cabin Challenge” legend, with a link to this forum thread, in the title or description of your videos, patches and recordings. This helps other people who could be interested in participating be aware this fun (and scary) activity exists, and, also, exposes the work of all participants to a wider audience.

  • 5 Is a prime number, a great number, and also the limit of entries per user.

  • Your video or audio can’t run forever, nor can it be too short: the minimum entry length is 1 minute and the maximum is 5 minutes (or 300 seconds, if that is more your cup of tea).

  • This month’s fun runs from October 1st to november 2nd UTC. Why, you ask? That’s when the Mexican Day of the Dead is over.

Remember! This is not a competition, just a fun activity to challenge one’s self and share knowledge, sound, scares and joy with others!

Now… go and make some scary stuff to share! I hope a whole lot of us will not be afraid to participate!

Here’s the template:

creature_cabin_template_fixed.vcv (2.0 KB)

9 Likes
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My first entry…

Bogdan saw the postcard on the counter and, if he could, he would have sighed… he remembered the vacation he and Cristina took to Quiet Hill. What fun they had!

The mist covered, ash laden streets! The friends they made! He looked back fondly at the guy with the giant helmet… he never took it off. Bogdan found that amusing. The parties with the Order! So debauched and insane.

He longed, above all, for those moonlit nights with her, sharing drinks on the shore of Metepec Lake, the promise of love eternal.

Now she was gone.

Bogdan packed his trunk and, resolutely, made for Quiet Hill.

Nothing, nothing could have prepared him for the horrors he saw…

Colorful hotels, tourist traps, rather, filled with smiling humans, no trace of the mist or the ashes. Where had their friends gone? Where had she gone? They were all driven away by the tourists! Quiet Hill had become a popular vacation spot. He did not venture outside his cabin: the bright, cheerful sun would have fried him in an instant; instead he sat on the edge of his coffin, crying tears of blood and longing for the old, lovely, Quiet Hill.

The video:

The patch:

quiet_hill_v2.vcv (8.9 KB)

7 Likes
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Here is my first entry. It took some time for me to explore the two Sanguine module collections a bit, as many modules are very complex and offer tons a features and options. But it was definitely worth the time. Thank you for the opportunity! The modules are really great!

The Evocation

Rumours say that a secret lab might be hidden beneath an abandonded cabin in the forest where once a scientist lived before he disappeared one day in madness. With all your courage, one night you approach the cabin to find out more. Coming close to the cabin, you start to hear noises from the underground, becoming louder and denser - voices, machinery, chemical equipment, electric discharges, and something else you don’t want to imagine…

5 Likes
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First and foremost, thanks for your entry, I can really hear the lab and its unspeakable creatures :slight_smile: , really ingenious use of the Morse code mode, love the patch! :smiley:

Second thank you for the kind comments about the modules :slight_smile:

Third: cool story! :smiley:

Thanks :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Thank you! :slight_smile: There’s one module that alone was worth the time: Anuli = Rings - Polyphonic ! And in addition all the other Mutable Instruments modules I wasn’t familiar with, like Braids, Peaks, Warps. It’s great to know a bit more about them now.

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This patch gives me a 3D cinematic experience. It feels immersive and suspenseful!

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This is an older patch, but worth a listen as it is really fitting to the concept. This patch utilizes the vult vorg scream patch. Dark ambient in D minor for Day of the Dead event. Four separate voices are slowly sequentially faded in and out via four LFO’s and VCA’s. By resetting the next LFO from the square wave output at 25% duty cycle they are evenly spaced out. The drone is Geodesics Energy through Vult Wolv. Two voices are Vult Basal, Slap and Nitrous, one playing notes from Vult Feign, the other playing notes from Geodesics Ions. The last voice is a scream from Vult Vorg primarily, and Caudal providing modulation. Clocking is all LFO based and slowly builds and looses momentum. Large room created by Valley Plateau.

1 Like
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Thank you for your your entry!

I find it mysterious, musical and tinged with melancholy, in other words, I love it! Both the sound and the detailed explanation. :slight_smile:

That said, there are three important details that I must, respectfully, point out: I guess the piece must be from a time before the scientist came to town: you forgot to include any “creature” modules… perhaps they were still hiding in the depths of the lab? (From the invitation scroll: “Mutants and Monsters must be present in your patch, to be precise, a combination of at least 5: 3 Sanguine Mutants at minimum, and 2 or more Sanguine Monsters” ); also, you forgot to include a link to or attach the patch file itself and… it uses non-free modules (at least Vult’s Freak has no free version, AFAIK), so, please keep the invitation scroll in mind :wink: .

1 Like
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You are right, I didn’t follow the rules. I could argue how many monsters are in there, but I can’t defend it uses freak and I didn’t add it t my patch storage page. I thought it might be inspirational to others participating. Sorry… :frowning:

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Weird. I don’t know if my PC is cooked (it is a bit old), but I started a patch with 2 Nodi and 2 Fluctus modules and my CPU usage indicator shows weird numbers… There’s nothing more there except blanks and a mixer, but it goes from 40% to 3000% sometimes. It’s hard to catch big numbers, but here’s the biggest that I managed to printscreen.

image

So… I guess i’ll skip this challenge

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Despite being an “out-of-challenge” submission, your piece is really beautiful!

I thought you might have missed that “Sanguine” is a module collection because Bloodbat embedded the collection names nicely into the flow of the story. That’s what happened to me when I first read the challenge description: I didn’t realize that “Sanguine Mutants” and “Sanguine Monsters” are module collections and thought, ok, the challenge is about creating bloody-monster-like horror sounds, or something like that. :rofl: At a second glance, I remembered Bloodbat and his entries from the last challenge, and then it became clear.

@Bloodbat Maybe, you could turn “Sanguine Mutants” and “Sanguine Monsters” in your description into links pointing to the VCV library: Sanguine Mutants and Sanguine Monsters. Just in case, I’m not the only noob who misunderstands it and doesn’t know your module collections.

There’s another thing that’s a bit confusing: The module collections have exactly the same name in the VCV library, just with different version numbers:

SanguineModules
SanguineModules711×100 12.2 KB

Initially, I was only subscribing to the higher version because I thought the other one is the same in an older version. But actually, they contain entirely different modules: The higher version is “Sanguine Mutants” and the lower version is “Sanguine Monsters”.

1 Like
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No worries, I still love the piece :slight_smile: and it is, indeed, inspirational :slight_smile:

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You are right, editing the instructions now :slight_smile:

Thanks! :slight_smile:

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That is extremely weird. I sent you a Message :slight_smile:

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haha! yeah, totally spaced that they were modules… I’m something else I tell you! :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Hi! my entry for the challenge. I spent some time with the modules and had fun exploring various possibilities. There were even scarier moments, but in the end, I saved this version, which evoked something ritualistic and mysterious to me. I asked ChatGPT to write an intro for the video.

The Secret Ritual of the Witches: The Dance of Fire :fire::woman_mage:

“In the depths of the ancient forest, hidden from the eyes of the world, stands an abandoned cabin that conceals more than mere ruins. Each full moon night, the wind carries strange whispers, and if you get close enough, you can glimpse shadows moving among the trees. A circle of witches cloaked in dark robes gathers around a crackling fire; their dance is slow and hypnotic, and the ritual they celebrate awakens forgotten arcane forces. The flames illuminate ancient symbols and murmur of forbidden powers, as the boundary between the world of the living and that of spirits becomes blurred. Only those who dare to approach may discover the secrets the fire holds.”

:innocent:

6 Likes
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Okay, I’ll bite.

Here’s my patch:

image
image1920×903 315 KB

Sorry I don’t do video or recording… so it’s only for the most curious. :slight_smile: (unless someone wants to record it for me).

1 Like
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Love the cinematic feel! Worthy, indeed, of a witchy, dizzying ritual! :smiley:

Sidenotes: I’ll think of “Witch” from now on when using the Wave Table Chords ;)… the creatures look lovely covered in cobwebs :slight_smile:

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I can picture the Mad Scientist twirling knobs, surrounded by plasma balls, Jacob’s ladders and flasks :slight_smile:

1 Like
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I am pretty sure I have the right number of mutants and monsters, haha! I had no idea how easy these were to setup and use. I didn’t have a lot of time to add more elements, I mean it’s kind of simple, but it is close to what I wanted. Apparently the mad scientist created some robots in the lab. Ghost robots… muhahaha! haha Note, the patch uses the free version of Caudal.

7 Likes