Hello all,
I guess it’s time to start one of these threads, as I’ve been looking around and figuring stuff out for some time and am filanny feeling just a little bit confident. I’ve always loved the weird and the wonderful, and lately have been contributing to the Disquiet Junto Project.
To start things off, I thought I’d share a little thing I made showing how I do what I do. Enjoy!!
Welcome to VCV rack. I like how confident you are on the VCV computer, modular synth and the Arturia synth. Good for you and all other ‘disabled’ users or different abilities is a better way to look at that word. For music creation methods, you are a shining example of diversity.
Pretty cool you can patch like that, Jessica. That’s gotta require a lot of patience.
Any thoughts on things that module developers can do to make using their modules easier for you? Or anything we should consider not doing? Accessibility is something I attempt to spend time thinking on and working on, but it’s often hard to perceive the issues you don’t have.
Mahlen
These are few of the guidelines for User Interface accessibility:
Perceivable: Information must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive (e.g., text alternatives for images, sufficient color contrast).
Operable: User interface components must be operable (e.g., keyboard navigation, no keyboard traps).
Understandable: Information and operation of the user interface must be understandable (e.g., predictable navigation, input assistance).
Robust: Content must be robust enough to be interpreted by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.
Color Contrast: Text and images of text must have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 (or 3:1 for large text).
Keyboard Accessibility: All functionality must be operable via keyboard (no mouse required).
Focus Indicators: Visible indicators showing which element has focus when navigating via keyboard.
Alt Text: Descriptive text for all non-text content (images, icons).
This is US Guidance regarding web sites accessibility, which can be applied in this context as well:
Rack itself is missing fundamentals that are table stakes for accessibility, full keyboard access being one of the major ones. It’s just not designed with accessibility in mind. Individual modules are that much harder to make accessible without Rack providing the fundamentals.
Hey all, sorry I haven’t been on here in a while and have been missing your replies.
Good color contrast is a big one, which many modules have. Maybe the ability to change colors which many modules already feature with different skins. I can use screen magnification and can see some, so this is how I’m able to use Rack. This user has it right:
I do make heavy use of Reaper with OSARA, a screen reader extension and really enjoy plugins such as Surge XT that are built with screen reader accessibility, mainly keyboard navigation, in mind.
Now on to my reason for finding my thread again: I finally feel confident enough to post one of my newer patches. Here goes:
This patch was inspired by studying early electronic music pioneers such as Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram. Before true, integrated synthesizers were a thing, these composers recorded found sounds onto reel-to-reel tape machines, sped them up, slowed them down, reversed them, cut together pieces of tape and created vast tape delay and echo effects. Some describe super long delay times being created by creating super long tape loops that ran clear down a hallway from one machine to another!! Nowadays, we can use any outboard, plugin or delay module and set the time for between 7 and 10 seconds to get a similar effect. The idea is to play some notes, or feed any other sound into the delay, then listen as the echos interact with new sounds that you are adding. It’s similar to what people now do with looper pedals, except more is left to chance, and older sounds slowly fall off as the delay feedback pitters out. I had a BLAST playing with this patch and turned it into a nearly half-hour stream for Earth Modular Society. I edited this down to a shorter version for my own channel because people likely wouldn’t listen to the end. The patch has four voices. A wavetable oscillator has velocity modulating the wavetable position so that a different waveform can be had with a stronger touch. The Bifaco Noise Plethora and Surge XT twist oscillator in speech mode are each gated by a key in the last octave. All three of these are run through delays with times just over seven seconds. Finally, an LFO pings the Sapphire Elastika resonator. Together they make for an interesting soundscape to listen to. After the mixer, it all runs through a Valley Plateau reverb.
It does sound rather wonderful. Is the patch available to play around with? VCV Patchstorage is a good place to share them.
Much appreciated.