How do I actually practise this?

I agree! But if I understand it correctly, the problem here is not with music, but more with technical stuff and construction of a patch. Like an architecture of a generative patches.

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For beginners to generative, for instant gratification I always recommend Impromptu ProbKey, get a couple of those running at different speeds / lengths driving different voices and you’re off. For some percussion add Valley uGraph & Vult Trummors.

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Depends on how you define generative. I’d say: In a generative patch: a section of the patch generates notes and rhythm rather than notes and rhythm coming from a more defined source such as MIDI input or a predetermined sequence. The modules, techniques and approaches for how to do that generation varies enormously, so there’s no general architecture for that.

I can remember having a lot of fun back in college patching up an ARP 2600 so that it played itself.

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Yeah, well… I would define it this way too. And there are lots of ways to achieve that, for sure! But the architecture is basically the same. That’s semantics, I agree, hahaha. To me it’s not the actual modules and paths or routes, but the “functional blocks”. And that’s what I think it comes down to. Like here’s the algorithm, now each block could be built in different ways. Well, that all comes from my limited understanding of generative patches, haha. I mean, I made a couple of them, but my experience is very much… insufficient to give any particular directions to this person, just a general one.

Lucky! I bet it made a good background music source for studying, haha

…I bet it made a good background music source for studying…

Not really that good for study - results were usually nasty, growling, and chaotic - and loved it :slight_smile:

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Way back in the mid-70s I had a roommate who managed to borrow a Mini-Moog, a Moog Sonic Six and an ARP 2600 (from a university experimental music lab) for a long weekend. None of the rest of us had ever even seen a synth up til then, nor did we have much in the way of musical knowledge. Using the ARP he gave us a quick tutorial on the general functions of the VCO, LFO, VCA, VCF, Sample & Hold, control voltages versus audio signals, etc. It only took about an hour for us all to get the gist of it. What a fun weekend that was. What we didn’t know for sure how to do we at least had a notion of what to try.

It might be useful to subscribe to only a few plugins, and to select ones that have good documentation. Check out my thread-in-progress: John's "Gold Star for Documentation" Awards - #20 by john_rose and seek out the plugins I actually award a gold star to. That is not to say that there aren’t many others with excellent documentation, but I just haven’t gotten around to them yet.

Two standouts are Bogaudio and Count Modula, which offer a lot of simple but indispensable modules that are clearly described in their manuals, and are fairly easy to figure out just from looking at the front panels.

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Omri Cohen videos, take it slowly, one patch at a time. Be patient with yourself, it will come.

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I use XTRTN’s Hallucigenia for that, if I need a quick & dirty melody generator with gradual randomization.

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long long ago, early in my journey with vcv rack i made a tutorial:

it’s obviously outdated in specifics, but the general principles remain

(and yes, i really should make an updated version)

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thanks everyone

Things I’ve done to get better at Rack stuff:

Yuh, watching videos

Kept a notebook of patch ideas

Made flashcards of different modules to memorize what they do

Shared patches with friends, kept diaries of what work we’d done

Made videos explaining things I created

Endless, endless hours of tinkering with hundreds of patches, sometimes with a result in mind, sometimes just playing around

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OH and don’t forget

Shared patches publicly on patchstorage and here, and tried to explain them

Asked questions on this forum whenever something baffled me, and got good help (when my question made sense)

The simplest generative patch has a clock, a noise source, a sample & hold and an oscillator. The clock triggers the sample & hold, which picks an instantaneous pitch from the noise. That pitch determines the frequency of the oscillator.

That makes unsatisfying music, so you refine from there. :grin:

To make music that means something one needs a way to inject your conscious intention into the process. Vary the rhythm, constrain the notes to a scale. Generative music is a matter of building a machine that generates musical events independently.

Getting it to make actual music takes practice, but it isn’t like learning violin. You develop mental more than physical dexterity.

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Watching tutorials doesn’t take you anywhere.

IMO a good way is to analyse existing patches. There are thousands on VCV Rack | Patchstorage and many of them have videos attached so you can prelisten to check if you like the sound.

Download a patch and try to modify it. Try bypassing modules to see what a single module does to the sound. Try changing patch connections and listen what happens. Try to add modules you are familiar with and see what happens.

In the modular world, most things happen by accident. So turn knobs just for fun and be aware of the results.

Practising in terms of playing piano (like playing scales, chords, phrases etc.) doesn’t translate well to modular. It is more an explorative way like a child tries to create new things with Lego-bricks.

For me, the most weird part are all that fancy sequencer-modules, and sequencers are the heart of all modular patches and generative music in general.

So, happy experimenting :sunglasses:

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If you’d like, I’d be happy to spend some time teaching you the basics. We could meet up on zoom for a few sessions, and we could work on a few patches together. Once you learn the basics, it should be fairly easy to branch out on your own. :+1:

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I would be interested, what would the fee be?

Free. :slight_smile:

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this makes sense as with a video you are just copying and not interpreting it, not understanding it

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Hello there, welcome to the wonderful world of VCV Rack, Here’s a simple patch created by Carpist :slightly_smiling_face: He goes through the basics and lets u build the patch using the VCV basics. Enjoy

VCV Rack Basics Tutorial part 1 | Patchstorage

^ This! I’ve learnt largely from just arsing about to be honest. If you’re intimidated by all the modules, uninstall them and just start with Fundamental and maybe one other collection (I’d probably say Bogaudio or Mutable Instruments first). You don’t need exotic or complicated sequencers for generative patches, I still use sample and hold into a quantiser quite often. If you want a repeating sequence, try resetting an LFO on a clock subdivision, or an envelope feeding the quantiser. You can make melodies and arpeggios with the most basic modules. It will probably sound crap at first, but that’s fine - just keep experimenting!

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