VCV + Surge XT. Wildcard is LowFatMilk Embedded.
I took the title from the visualiser name : “a butterfly dreaming it was a demon”
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dream world number 2.vcv (30.6 KB)
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My first entry, with AudibleInstruments and VCV
patch here:
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Welcome to the challenge, @bipomuz ! This patch definitely sounds like many of the dreams I have had in my life. It is suspenseful and cinematic too!
A sparse patch using VCV+Vult only. I was going to add pads and drones in the background but this sounds good to me as it is.
The patch is called Hungarian Major, after the scale in the Quantiser. This scale has a lot of mystery and quirkiness about it - I added two chained delays for a Valhalla-like reverb and the results are spooky and slightly surreal.
Hungarian Major.vcv (2.3 KB)
For some reason whatever I try, I’m getting no sound on audio or video recordings so please open the VCV file to hear this. I’ll post on Patchstorage when I have this figured out.
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The Audio out ports are to bring external audio into VCV from your interface. They are not a pass through of the input audio.
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Made me think of Silent Hill. 
She held her eyes tightly shut, dizziness, nausea… a feeling that time itself was bending; she finally dared open them and reached for her forehead, trying to quell the headache.
She saw hands, they followed her commands; but were strange, unfamiliar appendages, big, hairy appendages.
Intense, colored lights and a multitude of strangers, dressed in even stranger clothes, were all around her, moving, staring, touching each other, some were even laughing.
A beat, always a beat. Like her heart. Loud, intense.
She heard a woman, a voice that drew closer. “¡Oye! ¡Oye!”
She jumped as someone touched her shoulder and pulled on it.
A shapely woman, with glassy eyes, dressed in a strange black, shiny outift was staring at her, as if she knew her.
Words she recognized, spoken with an unfamiliar accent “¡Knives! ¡Knives!”.
Then sounds, sounds she didn’t know.
“¿Que te robaron la mezcladora? No me jo…” She interrupted her “Wh… What?” but her voice was low and harsh, not hers at all.
Something shook, slowly and gently at first, then quickly and violently.
The ground split, she tried to move, but she couldn’t… and she fell, pulled to the abyss.
Annie opened her eyes, breathing heavily.
Teddy was there, lying on the pillow beside her. She was herself: her hands were small and hairless, her room, with her unicorn night light, was familiar and no one was there, she breathed a frightened “ah” and was relieved to know her own voice was back.
She could call for her mom, tell her she had a nightmare and get tucked in… but she was a brave girl! She hugged Teddy tightly and looked out the window.
She kind of liked being scared. Halloween was coming! She and Teddy wanted to dress as vampires!
The video:
She held her eyes tightly shut, dizziness, nausea… a feeling that time itself was bending; she finally dared open them and reached for her forehead, trying to quell the headache.
She saw hands, they followed her commands; but were strange, unfamiliar appendages, big, hairy appendages.
Intense, colored lights and a multitude of strangers, dressed in even stranger clothes, were all around her, moving, staring, touching each other, some were even laughing.
A beat, always a beat. Like her heart. Loud, intense.
She heard a woman, a voice that drew closer. “¡Oye! ¡Oye!”
She jumped as someone touched her shoulder and pulled on it.
A shapely woman, with glassy eyes, dressed in a strange black, shiny outift was staring at her, as if she knew her.
Words she recognized, spoken with an unfamiliar accent “¡Knives! ¡Knives!”.
Then sounds, sounds she didn’t know.
“¿Que te robaron la mezcladora? No me jo…” She interrupted her “Wh… What?” but her voice was low and harsh, not hers at all.
Something shook, slowly and gently at first, then quickly and violently.
The ground split, she tried to move, but she couldn’t… and she fell, pulled to the abyss.
Annie opened her eyes, breathing heavily.
Teddy was there, lying on the pillow beside her. She was herself: her hands were small and hairless, her room, with her unicorn night light, was familiar and no one was there, she breathed a frightened “ah” and was relieved to know her own voice was back.
She could call for her mom, tell her she had a nightmare and get tucked in… but she was a brave girl! She hugged Teddy tightly and looked out the window.
She kind of liked being scared. Halloween was coming! She and Teddy wanted to dress as vampires!
The video
The patch
strangers_plus_one_v3.vcv (7.6 KB)
The extra module is Venom’s Multi Merge.
6 Likes
The shapes in the Quad LFO (for example, the two shapes in the top left corner) look different for me, when I open your patch or in general when I use the Quad LFO, and I cannot find a setting to get those shapes at all. Is there a way to customize them? That would be interesting to know.
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Hmm… I downloaded the patch on another machine and the LFO shapes are exactly like in the video, and the patch sounds and behaves exactly like in the video. The patch was made on Rack 2.5.2 with Surge XT version 2.2.4.0 which is the latest version in the library. Do you have an update of Surge waiting in Rack perhaps? Or maybe a very old beta that needs to be deleted on the disk first?
The way to select a shape in the Surge Quad LFO is simply to click on the shape in its box and then select the shape and uni/bi-polar.
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Interesting. That’s the upper left LFO, right? Well, the rates are the same and I actually think the waveforms are the same, only the pictures are a bit different, like when you use the deform knob. Why I can’t explain. Does the patch sound like the video?
Clicking on each waveform in the upper left LFO the settings are as follows. Is it the same on yours?
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Yes it’s the same but only the shapes look different.
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Yeah, interesting why only the pictures are slightly different. Only @baconpaul would know why the pictures would initiate slightly differently, on say a macOS vs. Windows machine. But as long as the actual waveforms are the same, we’re all good
2 Likes
The displays for random waveforms use a fixed seed. In the XT Rack the code is
gen = std::default_random_engine();
gen.seed(525600 + 8675309);
distro = std::uniform_real_distribution<float>(-1.f, 1.f);
urng = [this]() -> float { return distro(gen); };
std::default_random_engine is a lib-c dependent default and so responds differently to seeds based on the libc, platform, etc…
this means on a single platform in a single instance the indicative displays will be stable (namely they won’t re-seed and jitter when you change rate or deform or some such) but they are only indicative so won’t necessarily be stable across libc.
The runtime one uses a different seed per voice and so will indeed be random. (and so they won’t be the same, but they wont’ be the same in a properly distributed fashion).
5 Likes
Thank you for the details! Yes, I have version 2.2.4.0 as well, but running on Windows. For me, the shapes look exactly like the ones in @Yeager 's screenshot. But I guess, @baconpaul explained it all already. I was trying things like double clicking, dragging on the shapes and searching in the context menu if there was an option to deform the shape manually
Thanks all for explanations, and sorry for distracting from the main topic in this thread. Let’s return to this. Great patches and music here!
2 Likes
I made an entry to the challenge. I chose Surge XT to accompany VCV Rack free modules and the wildcard Plateau reverb. I set the reverb to about 11. I was in a dreamlike state of consciousness when I patched it, so, take that into account. haha!
14 Likes
Hi! I can’t figure out how to panning the stereo signal using only fundamental modules. I need this to modulate the pan of the stereo signal coming out of the reverb. Is there any way?
Fade is an option; but you need separate L and R signals.