I usually know what I am doing or trying to do, at least at a basic technical level. I am still occasionally baffled by polyphonic wiring, and by some of the more esoteric synthesis techniques. But I am far enough along to get the basics.
But I prefer to patch by ear, and intuitively. What would it sound like if I were to put a cable there–better or worse? What setting for this knob sounds best to me right now?
I am 90% focused on sound and 10% focused on technical matters. My attention to technique is driven by a sound I hear in my mind and am trying to render. Otherwise I just improvise.
My favorite game is to download other people’s patches and make them my own. Sometimes I can get my own sound out of the other guy’s patch with just a little wiggling. Other times, there is almost nothing left of the original patch when I am done.
My other favorite game is feedback. Let my modulation sources FM each other, just a tiny bit. Let my voices FM each other just a tiny bit. I like to use only one or two sources of modulation in a single patch, and to send them everywhere in the patch. Leave no CV hole unmodulated. The entire patch becomes less predictable and more like a living organism.
My patches are not that big–usually no bigger than one of Omri’s standard three-or-four-voice demos. But I can download one of his demos and easily spend three or four or more nights listening to it and modifying it and jamming with it.
The dialing-in process is far more important and enjoyable for me than the underlying construction. That’s why I often start with other people’s patches–the boring hooking-up-a-voice-and-plugging-it-into-a-mixer-and-reverb part is already done for me, and I can focus on the fun part: dialing in my sound.
The theoretical structure for my patches is the raga system. Everything is modal, based on a single scale. I always know what raga I am patching. If there are harmonies, they are usually incidental and always diatonic to the raga. I don’t create chord progressions (anymore–that was a previous life).
What I have not yet mastered is what Indian classical musicians call “development”. In ICM, all measures of intensity follow the same saw wave shape. There is one big saw wave, saying we start slow and build to a frenzy at the end. There may be some smaller episodic saw waves of intensity along the journey.
My patches might improvise endlessly, but most often the texture and range and intensity do not “develop”. The patch doesn’t go anywhere. The patch works fine as a sound environment, but it does not take you on a journey. One solution is the basic strategy we all use: bring voices in and out to create an arrangement.
But I think there is another way to patch development in, without sequencing. Instead, use a very slow phasor wave that describes the intensity profile of the arrangement, perhaps combined with comparators or slope detectors to trigger certain elements. Let this arrangement phasor modulate multiple aspects of the patch to create development at the patch level.
I understand technically how to do this in my mind, but have yet to accomplish it in practice. One conceptual challenge is that my melodic soloist voices are very dialed-in to a sweet spot. Sending in external CV from the arrangement phasor will throw the voice out of his sweet spot at certain points in the arrangement.
that is modular.