I’d use that as a live performance intro. Love it.
Dreamy and spacey. Love it
Entry #3 - Better Life
T’rkk opened its eyes, the now familiar calcium and silicon walls brought it comfort, an escape from its regular, dreary life.
It knew it was dreaming and that made it happy, looking at those strange creatures in their whimsical world that sprung from T’rkk’s imagination. There was one! A thin male clad in black, shiny garments, like the skin of the priests in the real world; spikes protruded from the creature’s head, like the glorious horns of those above T’rkk’s station; perhaps the being aspired to be a leader… no! Those in power never showed any emotion and this critter appeared distraught: at times it appeared to be looking for something, others just stopping to kick the comforting walls while salty liquid poured from the entity’s eyes only to end up bringing those pink, yet clawless, finger-like appendages to its head.
T’rkk wished to help; but in its heart it knew its beautiful, black, claws and rough skin would frighten the fragile being.
T’rkk growled, unable to help, but felt the pull of darkness again… only to hover above a small female, encased in a puffy box, its eyes closed while the chest moved rhythmically. The being clutched a strange, furry inanimate figure, yet appeared to be placid. T’rkk had watched enough of these creatures to know that strange mouth motion was called a smile, it tried it, once, but its fangs cut its lips and the hot ichor poured, as it should, out of the wound.
T’rkk was pulled violently out of its dreams, the waker-device howled like a maniac. It opened its eyes, clawed the waker-device to make it go silent and sighed… the flesh room was there, as it had left it, its cold skin walls as bleak as ever. The red sky was already lit. T’rkk made a mental list of its duties, as a lead calculation-device wrangler, and hated the thought of it: the endless repetition, the colleagues dull, as useless warrior knives. It remembered once making a joke that was met with dead, opaque red eyes… those of the dead that have lost the fire.
T’rkk wished to be one of those fleshy, fragile creatures: they seemed to enjoy life, even in adversity; but it knew those silly dreams should remain in the sleep-realm: the masters had a vision of their own, a will of conquest of a world, as of yet, unknown to it.
The video:
The patch:
better_life.vcv (5.0 KB)
No wildcards (or polyphony!) this time
Oh wow, another module collection I have to dive into. I love the sound and atmosphere of this piece!
Train Ride Daydream: Sitting in a train, and falling into a daydream while watching the scenery outside move along the window.
The patch uses VCV and the dbRackModules plugin from docB. The bonus module is the Chords module that is from docB as well, but it is part of dbRackSequencer, which is a different plugin.
Wonderful piece, great patch, well done! Would love to hear the 15 minute version of this.
Thank you! Yes, I wanted to hear it longer as well, somehow the piece begs for a little bit longer play, but I didn’t want to break the time limits of the challenge too much. Well, the patch is available for a long daydream…
It’s not exactly generative… or it WAS, I patched randoms into the chord generator and then saved them as I liked them, and the result was this.
CVfunk-Arrange_test1.vcv (5.8 KB) edit: made the patch a bit more reliable with Syncro clocking rather than Hex clocking.
Classical sounding! Me likey! It deserves a video: it’s a treat for both the ears and the eyes.
Cannot load Arrange and StepWave. Are these new upcoming modules, not yet in the library?
OH sorry. Maybe I should have put a warning. You can get them from my github - the link is pasted over in the Development channel.
No worries I’ll wait until they hit the library. I already like the modules by looking at the screenshot…
There have been so many wonderful entries so far this month! Participation has been strong and we have heard so many creative takes on the idea of a dream world. I have gathered all 30 videos posted here into a YouTube playlist:
We still have 3 more days to submit your work. If you feel the call within yourself, please do it! I will keep updating the playlist above accordingly.
There were 30 videos, and at the risk of ruining a nice round number like that, here is the thirty-first. In my defense, 31 is prime, and in binary it is written 11111, so it is not too shabby an integer. However, it will be even better for someone to post video number 32, because that is two to the fifth power, a most prestigious quantity!
The bell sounds are all created using Elastika. I pulse its left and right input channels using my new Sapphire Pop module, which is capable of polyphonic output. Two channels provide independent random gates to ring the Elastika bells. I like using a fixed scale quantizer with random input, while also randomly changing the octave it is playing in. Once in a while there is a thrilling deep bass note.
Here is the patch:
My contribution to this exciting challenge!
My +1 for this submission is @Patheros’s Path Set plugin. I had toyed with the Ice Tray module before, but this was an opportunity to discover the others (ended up using AstroVibe, Nudge and OneShot)
The original patch started out fully generative but things got a bit more orchestrated the more time I spent with it. Some layers have kept that random spirit, only now accompanied by set mantra-like cycles.
Patch is available here :
Oh dear, now I’m really late in September with my third patch:
Nightmare Escape
The patch uses VCV modules, the Venom plugin, and Valley Plateau as the wildcard module.
From the Venom plugin, particularly the NORSIQ (Non-Octave Repeating Scale Intervallic Quantizer) is used to setup several microtonal scales of 19edo, a temperament or tuning system in which the octave is divided into 19 equal parts instead of the usual 12. The piece goes through a sequence of 12 different scales - sub-selections of notes from the 19 notes of 19edo - from high length, complexity, and potential for dissonances, starting with a 13-note scale, to simpler and more consonant scales, ending with just the octave as the final 1-note scale.
The scales are mostly taken from the Xenharmonic Wiki page 19edo - Xenharmonic Wiki, and have funny names like Semaphore, Magic, Blackville, Antipental Blues, etc. I have almost no clue what they are talking about, and I’m yet again baffled how huge and complex this world of Xenharmonics is.
Many parameters in the whole patch, like FM modulation depth, filter cut-offs, resonance amount, slew limit, wave form shape, gate probablities, etc. are modulated with the decreasing scale length, in a way that the piece moves from a loud, aggressive, and dissonant sense of chaos slowly towards more and more quiet and peaceful harmonies - a successful escape from a nightmare.
I’m sorry that the recording is 8 minutes long. I didn’t calculate the expected time properly while buiding the patch, and fading out earlier now doesn’t make sense as the whole piece follows a plan that is not fulfilled before the last of the 12 scales is finished.
Wonderful concept and execution!
I love the beautiful yet otherworldly use of the 19edo tuning. Very well done!
Thank you! It wouldn’t have been possible without your NORSIQ! This is such a powerful and flexible module that makes exploring other tunings and scales easily possible and so much fun. Thank YOU for that!
Very nice - but how in heck do you get by with over 325% max cpu and close to 90% average with no clicks or audio anomalies??