Deep Ambient Drone: Patches

Music & Patches
41

In this VCV-Rack Techno patch, I use Erica’s Pico Drums with which it is possible to play 2 different instruments simultaneously. The module has 2 clock inputs for this. With the right toggle you can mute the second instrument and with the left toggle you select which of the two instruments you want to edit. The rotary switch has 3 functions: 1. select the instrument, 2. change the pitch and 3. change the volume. The current selection is visualised as a binary code with the help of 6 LEDs. I used the clocked module from Impromptu for the basic beat. you have to press the reset button if you open the patch first time for synchronisation. The clock is divided by flip-flop modules from Bogaudio. I used the Bernoulli Gate (Count Modula) to add an additional random beat so that the beat is not always so monotonous. The TRG module from kocmoc is also quite handy if you want to create some odd beats.

3 Likes
42

The heart of my ambient patch is the Ochd LFO, which I use for CV movement and to trigger some modules. I’m also using Sha#Bang’s Polyrhythm Clock module for the first time, which allows you to create random beats. For “The Machine” Noise I tried the FoldCzar from Mosquito Labs. Instead of a Bernoulli Gate, I decided to use Sha#Bang’s Rand Gates module. Today I took the smaller mixer from Mind Meld, and I also wanted to stop after channel 2, so that the patch can also be used with somewhat weaker PCs. But then I felt like adding more and more elements. Please delete all modules after channel 2, if your PC should cause problems. I have seen that Omriis sometimes recording sounds with the Complex Simpler and play them back in a loop to save processor power. The modules that generate the sound can then be deactivated or deleted.

Oh I noticed just now, that I forgot to mute my MIC during Videorecording. The audio recording shold be a little cleaner, sorry for that mistake^^'. The audio recordings are always uploaded at Mixcloud, the link can be found in the header of my YouTube profile page.

…Note to myself: The noise on channel 5 sometimes sounds like a campfire. This could be useful at some point.

3 Likes
43

For the sound effects I used my microphone and Supercell. The amplification is set to maximum in Supercell, so that you can hear the whispering sound a little better with my cheap microphone ^^. I will include the recording of my voice in the download. If you want to make your own sounds with your microphone, please be careful with the current settings in Supercell. It is best to adjust the In and Out controls so that the LED indicator on the left side of the module does not light up red. By the way I noticed that the on/off Buttons of the Strip module don’t react if you press the buttons the first time after starting the patch. I don’t know why, but you have to press both buttons until they do what they should do. Maybe it’s a bug or a feature. Be careful not to press the randomize button :smiley:

I also noticed that my finished audio recording looks like a sine wave and is cut off at the vertices. It is not centred, but moves from the neagative to the positive and vice versa. I don’t think it should look like that. Hmm, maybe it’s the movement in the Pulse CV from the PolySevenSeas. Or I should have used a real mixer instead of adding the sounds in EVA^^'. Maybe someone recognises exactly what the problem is.

Finally please excuse me for not fading out the pluck sound much earlier. I didn’t pay that much attention to the sound when I was building. You can hear the same plucks for about 13 minutes. It must have been a nightmare to listen to

About (00:00) Drone (00:55) SFX (09:00) Plucks (15:25) Voice Noises (25:00) Cello or Saxophone^^ (30:15) Keys (35:10) Finish (40:35)

2 Likes
44

In this fixed rack I used my voice to make drone sounds. I have also made some other examples without video where I start with a long A, E, I, O, U and then just keep improvising. I will add the links to the other examples in the description below. It’s kind of fun to make different sounds into the microphone and then use them to make music. I got the idea from Marti Fischer. I’m also attaching his video below. He is not using vcv-rack, but the principle can be applied to vcv-rack as you see. I got the idea of building a fixed vcv rack from one of Omri Cohens videos. I will also link his video in the description below.

Other Links are included in YouTube Description

1 Like
45

Don’t know if this would be of interest to you, but it’s quite easy to record a bunch of wave files, then map them across a “keyboard” in an sfz file and play that with SFZ Player.

46

thank you, i will have a look :slight_smile:

47

The manual has links to the really good info that’s available elsewhere. I wrote this section of the manual just as example of how easy it is to make a simple SFZ: SquinkyVCV/sfz-player-make.md at main · squinkylabs/SquinkyVCV · GitHub

48

This video shows the construction of the Lounge Patch that I used for the performance. I noticed that Stoermelder has a new variant of the 8Face module. Basically, you can now directly select the module you want to control with 8Face and modules that belong together can even be marked with a colour. I like to use 8Face to create random sequences with 8-16 notes. Alternatively, you could use the PROB-KEY module from Impromptu, which I also tried out in this patch. With this module you can set probabilities for the notes and even for the octaves. I have to admit that Lounge is rather an inappropriate name for this patch. After the first 2 mixer channels, it unfortunately went in a completely different direction. But I still had a lot of fun, that’s the most important thing^^.

My performance attempt with this patch can be found here:

Construction:

Download:

00:00:00 About 00:00:45 SFX Ice Cube Machine 00:05:50 SFX Ceiling Fan 00:10:00 SFX Creepy Noise I 00:13:25 SFX Creepy Noise II 00:18:05 Brushing 00:23:00 Moving Hihat 00:25:15 Tap 00:28:30 Kick 00:30:00 Freaky Arpegio 00:38:35 Melodic Arpegio 00:44:50 Bamboo Beat 00:48:50 Bass Sequence 00:56:00 Higher Sequence 00:59:22 Lead 01:14:50 Distorted Beat

4 Likes
49

In my experiments this time I tried the Low Mid High EQ module from Bark. Most of the time I use the built-in feature of the Mind Meld mixer, alternatively I like to use the Vults Tangents module with the CV inputs for modulation. But the module from Bark is not bad either if you want to mask out certain frequencies. If your PC gets this patch to work without the processor fan going off and you wand to play around without a midi keyboard, just turn off the Triggerswitch buttons at the bottom. This enables the stored random sequence for the voice on the last mixer channel.

2 Likes
50

Holy moly … I would happily play this to anyone I know. Mesmerising.

1 Like
51

I don’t think I can do it the same way a second time. I pressed the keys more or less randomly on the midi keyboard. At least I tried not to hit any funny notes. If I had to play in front of an audience, I would probably only hit funny notes, hehe ^^’.

2 Likes
52

In today’s video I use my little Akai MPK mini Midi keyboard to play the voices on the last 3 mixer channels. The notes I press are displayed in the Twelve-Key module. I also linked some mute buttons and volume controls from the mixer to my midi keyboard via the MIDI map module, so I can use my hands to control them instead of the mouse pointer. To modulate the bass sound, I also linked the wave shape control from the Kickall module to a wheel on my midi keyboard. I left the light on in the patch so it’s easier to see what’s happening in the patch during my performance. If you want to try the patch yourself and don’t have a midi keyboard, you could just delete the Midi-CV and Midi Map modules and connect the Teleport module to the output of the last Twelve Key module. The octaves must also be adjusted down at the first Twelve Key module, otherwise the voices make too high tones.

5 Likes
53

Cool track, man! I really like the beat that starts about 5 min in!

1 Like
54

Thank you. The recording is unfortunately a bit quiet and the low sounds dominate too much. This is a general problem with me ^^’.

55

Very cool! This would be good in a sci-fi movie.

1 Like
56

In this patch I try to put the focus for the Day of the Dead event on the Nitrous and Wolv modules. In my experiments, I accidentally discovered a screaming horror baby sound with these modules and made it into something that sounds like a cat ^^. I want to share this noise with you in this patch. It’s not perfect, because at the end you can still hear a slight knocking, but this little bug you can hide with wind and rain. The video has unfortunately become a bit long, so I make some jump links at the bottom of the description, so you don’t have to search where I start building which effects. As I understood, you should only use VULT, VCV and Geodesics modules in this event, so I deleted the labelable blanks at the end of the video again. Maybe blanks are allowed too, I wasn’t sure :slight_smile:

About: 00:00 Short introduction

SFX Crackling (00:30) This sound, together with the rain sound, is supposed to sound as if some raindrops are falling on the ground nearby. It is in stereo unlike the rain noise. I used the right side of Trummor for the noise and for modulation. The delay modules make the crackle sound always a little different on both ears.

SFX Wind & Rain (04:45) For the rain I mixed 2 soft sounding noise sounds and a slightly harder red noise in the Wolv module. From this I take in Stable the semitone as the basic noise and the middle and high tones I mix with 3Hp for more variety in the sound. Via Nitrous the rain noise sounds deeper and more like wind, which I fade in from time to time in the last mixer channel with 3HP. Maybe I should have taken a slow LFO for the wind modulation, because the wind sometimes breaks off abruptly with 3HP.

Spooky Melody (10:50) The melody is a simple arpegio that is randomly triggered with Fate. Here I used SS-2 to switch the notes and SS-1 is used to randomly hear the melody on the right or left ear. Since I like switches, I built a clock with them together with an LFO. By the way, the melody is created by modulating the cutoff controller of Tangents

Bongos (17:58) Here I use Nitrous to make a bongo noise out of the clock voltage. The sound itself is used with SS-1 to switch between the left and right ear.

SFX Weird (20:04) I couldn’t think of a name for this sound, it was just supposed to sound strange to add some variety to the monotonous bongo tapping. For the sound I use Tangents. This is swirled with the delay module and randomly triggered with Fate and Slap.

SFX Cat (22:53) I discovered the cat sound more or less by accident when I fed Wolv and Nitrous back and turned the knobs wildly. I noticed that Nitrous can be used in a similar way to Tangents. As soon as the Res knob is all the way out and Cutoff is further to the right, the module starts whistling. The whistling can then be modulated using ADSR and Stable to make it sound like a cat. Due to the slight modulation of cv1, this noise always sounds slightly different.

Wooden Beat (29:20) Finally, I used Nitrous again to make a little wooden beat with the clock signal. When the voltage on the clock signal is attenuated using OCT, the brightness of the sound changes.

1 Like
57

In this video I’m showing the build process of the Alien Invasion patch. The core of this patch are the Sha# Bang modules Neutrinode and Orbitones. As usual I used only free Modules in this patch. I think I never used the modules Collider and Talea before. Talea seems to be interesting for making arpegios and Collider for making effects. This video is pretty long and sounds more or less the same for about 1 hour. Maybe there is someone enjoying watching me connecting cables into modules, if not I suggest to watch the performance video instead, it is a little shorter :smiley:

About (00:00) Trigger & Movement (00:48) SFX Glass Jingling (05:06) Bass Drone (10:10) Glass Drone (12:50) SFX Creaking (15:46) SFX Wobling (19:20) Alien Invasion (23:04) CLK / Beat / Arp (30:30) Happy Arp (34:24) Bass Arp (41:34) Bass (54:12) Kick (59:50) Open Hat (01:01:24) Closed Hat (01:03:34) Clap (01:05:22)

This is the performance video of the Alien Invasion patch we built before. I also added the midi modules so that I don’t have to control the mixer knobs with the mouse pointer. To modulate the bass arpeggio I connected a rotary knob to the POS button of the wave module. To modulate the bass sound, two more midi controls are connected to Saturation and Distort of Debriatus.

7 Likes
58

Very very cool!

1 Like
59

Thank you :slight_smile:

60

In this patch I tried out the modules Traveler (Tonecarver) and Water Table (Free Surface). With Traveler, interesting random melodies can be generated, and with Water Table, beautiful stereo effects. I will probably use Water Table more often because I really like the effects. But then I would have to be a bit more economical with other modules. Unfortunately, this module seems to need a lot of computing power. In an earlier version of this patch, I had used Water Tabele for the ocean waves, but I changed it in the hope that slower PCSs would have fewer problems with the patch. This time, however, I probably really overdid it with the heavy modules.

3 Likes