JW Modules: GridSeq, 8Seq and NoteSeq. GridSeq and 8Seq have right-click menu functions to change the gate, NoteSeq has polyphony. They’re awesome and they’re simple. Jeremy easily has the best random functions in all of VCV. Touring Machines are nice and all… but they’re basically just Shift Registers.
Computerscare horse-a-doodle doo - just use its EOC to trigger a Sample and Hold and modulate pattern and density. Very useful to make generative percussion sequences with shifting weights, ever-changing patterns and CPU-friendly…: 16 sequences from one small module - just route its poly output through a Branches/Chances/Baseliner to add some more controlled randomness.
UTILITIES.
This is my Pet-Bird. It’s a bunch of utilities., a VCO and 8Face (with presets for the VCO and some utilities). This fella is a prime example on what utilities can do if you just patch them up in the right way. The bird will sometimes shut up for a while, then suddenly fly into a rage, it has streaks of eloquence as well… but most of the times its just chirping around. Signal delays, switches, clock dividers, attenuators, comparators, logic and modulating them with LFOs (bogaudios LLFO has a random waveform AND a smoothing option in the rc-menu… its quite perfect). You should learn as much about utilities as you can. Counters, Slope Detectors, ANDORNORXORNOTETC, Attack Decay envelopes as modulatable trigger generators,
NYSTHI’s Bivio, noobhours Baseliner or bsl1r (small version), many of the new docb modules and Sha#Bangs Neutrinode.
But the greatest beasts of generative Sequencing come from Frozen Wasteland. Gardener, Seeds of Change and ProbablyNote … when paired with stoermelders 8Face… are an insane combo of inexhaustible music generation that, when set up with time, care and a clear image/idea of what it means to “compose randomness”… will leave you with a setup that will play itself: forever. I know… because it took me so long to set up the first few times that while tweaking minor technicalities or looking for solutions for whatever was still bugging me… I would sit there 8-10 hours straight, keeping the whole thing running. Here is a very minimalistic setup using one SoC as a random generator to randomise a second SoC, one Gardener with 8 Presets to control the SoC and various expanders… then quantisation with probablynote… a bit of pitch shifting, a whole bunch of Bivios for probability routings and switchings and all my Kontakt Libraries… had I used one more row for utilities… it would’ve been much more interesting. But it was supposed to be an example to show off the Gardener/SoC combo.
this is actually a better example. An SoC ‘Piano Solo’
You will want to look for anything that generates movement over time but keeps within context. Vult has a few interesting modules: Caudal (algorithmic chaos generator), Anima, Feigen, Lapsus… stoermelder is your best friend: cv-map, 8face, transit grayscales algorythm is simple but extremely effective. count modulas clocked random gates is a genius module… docb made a 16 channel, 2hp mini version of it. Axioma have some really weird CV and trigger generators… Bifuricator, Tesseract and Ikeda Mockba Modulars S&H Eight is a quintessential Sample & Hold with global clock, 8 S&Hs, probability, clock division and range per channel. - say its 50% probable that every 64 clock ticks… a random voltage is generated… which goes to 8Face and changes the preset of a module.
That is one of the most important parts in generative music: setting up chains of events that eventually happen and change/start/end a movement. this is how a narrative is formed and the isolated pieces of a set are traversed like a landscape. ASModules has: Launch Gate, Kill Gate, Steps, Flow, Triggers, Signal Delay, CV 2 T NYSTHIs RAEL, Bridges, Sous Utils
Geodesics Fate adds/subtracts adjustable, triggerable, probable notes/voltage from a sequence you feed it - or mixes two sequences instead of you plug in another. a 6 step sequence can be turned into a repetetive, but changing and moving theme.
theres too much…
last but not least: another important part of generative setups is the placement of sound in the stereo field.
there are some helpful tools to manage that in my module collection: https://community.vcvrack.com/t/ja-modules-collection-open-for-beta-testing
(use polyphony to move all channels at once and poly tools to create cascading voltages… etc.)
a choice you won’t regret when it comes to generative set-ups is: VCV Sound Stage. An interesting companion for that and many more scenarios is Magus Instrumentalis Ars Memorium (a 16 knob preset saver with interpolating morphing map… with random function, sensitivity, adjustable grade of morphing between presets). Here’s a rather strange example… the only sound source are 4 parts of 1 sampled recording of a fly. Everything you hear is the fly… even the drums. - placement and movement of sound is a big thing… and helpful solutions are practically non-existent (at least there are poly to stereo spreader).
Ars Memorium moves the sounds, Sound Stage emulates a room:
- Delays (NYSTHI, Alright Devices), Granular Effects (Grayscale, Frequency Domain, Mutable Instruments, Voxglitch), Resonators (Frozen Wasteland, Mutable), modulated Filters (Vult) and anything else that has the capability to transform sounds drastically can be stored in switches, switches can be triggered by counters or events and something like submarines pulse generator can hold a gate open for up to 100seconds… i.e. bogaudio switch is good for that purpose.
its those daily necessities that barely ever have a manual, of course no youtube feature and are rarely ever recommended that have made modular already generative when a synth was still taking up 7 square meters. Attenuators and Holds can make a ‘random generative sound source’ out of any audio… you’d be surprised what an insteresting drum sequence a field recording of a busy street can make if you have an envelope follower and an attenuator (or an amp, depends) - a comparator would also do. fancy modules are awesome - and most of them started out as an utility/basic sound generator patch neatly packed in a box and with soldered on controls and patchable holes. 70% of all gear contains near identical parts, just patched up in a different way. If you ever need something done and there’s no module that explicitly does it… scouring through manuals, tutorials and forum posts in hopes to find one… often takes longer than just patching it up yourself (in my experience).
Wow. Too long no internet interactions… its the Gil-Scoitt Heron version of “I’m new here”… and then writing too much. Kudos, have fun!