Wow Dave, I love what you did with it. It sounds really cool. I am truly honoured. You’ve taken a simple loop, and turned it into something very interesting. I also really enjoyed listening to “passing a gray day away”. You are very talented.
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Thanks Auret. But your starting material was only simple from the stand point that each part was looped statically - repeating itself exactly indefinitely, without variation. But within that simplicity is a whole world of finely crafted intricacy, which I think is what drew me in in the first place. The interplay of the parts with different sequence lengths is delightful - lots of subtle variation within the repetition.
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Tomorrow (August 17, 2022) will be my first extended live performance with my friends from ilyAIMY in their weekly Wednesday night “Live From The Lair” broadcast!
The show starts at 7pm U.S. Eastern Daylight Savings time (23:00 UTC)
Rob (guitar, songwriting, vocals) and Kristen (electric cello) started the broadcast to stay sane and maintain contact with their fans during the pandemic. When possible, they include some of the other 4 members of the band, and tomorrow that will include Sharif on keyboard. And sometimes they invite special guests - and this week I am thrilled to be invited.
We will be alternating songs for about two hours, and I will be using lots of VCV Rack to go along with my flutes. I hope to be able to broadcast live patch images, but not sure if we can make that work or not.
It should be a great night of music - I hope some of you can tune in.
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Bravo! You guys are sounding great together. I tuned in while riding the train this gray windy morning in Melbourne just before you started your Gray Code tune. Appropriate timing. Awesome jams together. That bass PVC flute along with the cello, woof. Great camera work cutting to the different cameras and VCV screen share. Anyone reading this right now, they’re still going.
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Oh man, great jam. I noticed something familiar towards the end there 
. Thanks Dave 
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Just so I have a more complete record of my VCV music in one place …
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Here is Whale Heart, another piece built around my Subharmonicon emulator. This was recorded from my Virtual Open Mic performance on September 19, 2022.
The name stems from the clock rate of 15 BPM, which happens to be the theoretical resting heart rate of a blue whale.
This patch uses a new version 5.2 of the emulator. The main change is the use of the docB Just Scaler for just intonation, which allows you to set the tonic of the just intonation.
Patch and detailed notes are available
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Wow! That’s just incredible. It’s definitely one of my favourites so far.
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Getting serious Voice of Eye vibes here! Gorgeous piece Dave 
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Wonderful! Thanks! I’ve played it a lot in loop mode as background to Zen out during work. It is also great to fall asleep to - I loop it for 4 plays when my wife and I go to bed. I’ve always been able to fall asleep to music, but if it does not shut off, then inevitably it wakes me up later in the night.
Very cool - thanks! I had never heard their music, but I like it! It also plays beautifully with some flute improvisation. I searched out some more examples, and enjoyed them all.
I’m unsurprisingly pleased to see the Fuse module I created (with your super helpful design insights) in the bottom right corner. 
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Here is the result of my first experiment with the fixed rack for this year’s Day of the Dead contest. It only uses two uOpulus and a self oscillating Lateralus as noise sources, and a fairly limited amount of modulation. But I really like the atmosphere.
I’ve never used any of the Geodesics collection except for Fate in last year’s contest. And I haven’t used the Vult uOpulus or Flux either. So this is a massive learning curve for me. There is so much more to explore!
I may never get a patch I feel is worthy to submit to the competition, but this is fun and educational either way.
I’m not making the patch available for now. If anyone wants it, I can upload it after the contest is over.
Sounds great Dave, is the fixed rack available or do we assemble it ourselves this year?
Follow the Day of the Dead contest link in my post, which takes you to Omri’s YouTube announcement. That video description has a link to the rules, which in turn has a link to the fixed rack.
Thanks, didn’t want to sound like a spoilt kid!
A Universe of Endless Possibilities
This conceptually simple piece is composed entirely from the first 8 partials of the harmonic series, rooted in D. The inspiration for the patch came from this post:
My patch has four voices. The first three simply fade in/out from one partial to the next, never playing more than two partials at a time. Each droning voice moves back and forth through the three octave series at different rates:
- Triangle wave, rooted in D2, at the fastest master tempo
- Square wave at 1/4 speed, with pulse width modulation, also rooted in D2
- Complex voice at 1/12 speed, with three components
- Triangle wave rooted in D2
- Saw wave rooted in D1
- Saw wave D1 drone
The fourth bell voice (sine) rings out at random times, randomly selecting pitches from the 8 note series rooted in D4.
Here is a 1/2 hour drone-scape showing the patch in action:
The name of the piece stems from a comment made during this live virtual open mic performance where I improvise with flutes and voice alongside the patch.
And here is the patch:
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Nice. I love it.
Can I ask you quick, off topic question? How did you get the lights to fade out without adjusting it in the view menu?
You can use a construct like the following offscreen in your patch to turn the lights on/off via a keyboard press.
As shown, pressing either Alt key will toggle the lights on and off as long as VCV Rack has the focus. The lights will fade in over 1 second, and fade out over 10 seconds.
My setup was more complex, using multiple Count Modula Countdown timers, plus a Submarine NOT gate module, plus Stoermelder uMap, etc. to automate my entire recording sequence, all offscreen. The only visual evidence is the cable patched to the Recorder Gate input.
It takes a bit of setup and finagling each time the patch is loaded, but a single press of the Alt key would:
- Start recording & fade both audio and record volumes in over 4 seconds
- At 30 seconds fade the lights out over 10 seconds
- At 29:50 fade both volumes off over 10 seconds
- At 30:02 stop recording and fade the lights back in over 1 second
I did not include that setup in the patch on Patch Storage
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Wow, that’s really cool. Thank you so much.
Single VCO, level of all harmonic levels individually controllable. zero CPU.
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