Mo's sphere of random patches / music

Music & Patches
1

Hi there,

after using VCV now for a while and finally joining this wonderful community a few weeks back, I thought it is time to start my own patch-collection in this thread. I am using VCV mainly as a tool to get my brain resetted after a stressful day, sometimes the results are musical, more often not :stuck_out_tongue:

I will start with a little patch I made today after watching Look Mum No Computers “Electro Magnetic Sonic Sequencer Thingy - Crystal Palace”

I tried to build something equally funky. So here we go:

LMNC - Crystal Palace.vcv (72.4 KB)

LMNC
LMNC2848×1045 948 KB

Please watch LMNCs video first, most of my description will be much more clearer then…

Sync LFOs is to be pressed once, it will reset both LFOs, so that they are rotating correctly. The VCAs are for converting the Saw-Wave of the LFOs to a more exponentially shaped CV-Curve, which will finally modulate the volume of the individual channels on the mixmaster. If you want to have more or less bleedover between the individual channels you can change the switch on the VCAs. SPEED is for … the Speed… PAN MOD changes the speed of the pan-modulation (done by BOG Walk). The Inputs are divided into even and odd and they are normalized downwards, so if you connect one sampler-loop to the top input of even and one to the top of odds, the “switching” will be constantly between both sources. You can adjust or mute individual “steps” with the mixing controls and finally add some overdrive and reverb. There is also a clock output, if you want to sync the rest of the patch or an input device to the speed of the LFOs.

Have fun!

  • mo
2 Likes
2

Is there supposed to be audio with this or do you have to provide sound sources? Silly question though! Can you add drums to the sequence because the AS kick is not having any audio input on the odd or even inputs. Maybe I am doing something wrong?

3

Yes, you need to add audio inputs of some kind. The 16 inputs are marked EVEN and ODDS. This thing operates as a kind of cross-phasing sequencer that takes up to 16 different inputs. The video mentioned really does help to clarify the operation.

4

Thanks, I just dived in as I always do and then thought about that later! I will have a look at the LNCM video as well. It seems to have immense possibilities. Just that I have not figured them out yet!

5

I am still experimenting with it too :wink: The trick is to connect some constant signals to the inputs, like sampled atmospheric sounds, noise, constant pads, grainy stuff or single OSCs - three to five different sources connected to multiple inputs. Beats, Loops, Sequences are not really working, only if you are able to sync them to the speed of the LFO. It is more of an experimental thing, my results so far are not very musical yet :stuck_out_tongue:

  • mo
6

So now that makes more sense! So random stuff works better not a bad thing though. Mo have you seen this module, it is based on Radiophonic Workshops 'Crystal Palace device as we!! CrystalPalace/README.md at master ¡ djpeterso23662/CrystalPalace ¡ GitHub

7

Jazz Kapelle feat. Squinky Labs SFZ Player

No patch this time because heavy use of samples, VST FX (analog Obsession), Nightly-Builds of Plugins…

No midifiles were harmed during recording of this movie

8 Likes
8

What’s that sample that sound like some kind of string being hammered? It’s cool.

9

Oh, I totally forgot.

Piano: Piano in 162

Drums: Gregjazz Jazz Funk Kit

Contrabass: D. Smolken's multi-sampled double bass (aka contrabass)

The odd sounds are all from the contrabass samples.

10

oh, wow. Gotta try some of Smolken’s. I see the name all the time in the SFZ discord. As you can see from the link, that’s who is helping me with a spec issue: it sure would be cool to document volume in one place · Issue #56 · sfzformat/sfzformat.github.io · GitHub

In a bit I’m going to start up a dedicated thread here for people to share their experiences with SFZ Instruments. But it’s a little early now - I think most users are not as far along as your are with the SFZ search.

11

That one’s in my manual as my favorite piano.

12

I started researching SFZ with the release of your module and all of my downloads so far came as a recommendation from this site, which was mentioned in your manual of the SFZ-Player. So far I am really happy with the quality of the available free sample libraries and those three were actually the first I downloaded. Thanks for that inspiration!

13

oh, great to hear! It’s sort of funny - I had never heard of SFZ until I saw on one of those “module ideas” threads where Andrew said “someone should make an SFZ player” (I’m paraphrasing). So I looked it up and it looked very cool. But it seemed others were working on it for VCV. But then I saw at least one person give up so I figured “why not”?

1 Like
14

I absolutely love this. You’ve got the true feel of jazz here, notwithstanding the sampled instruments, the composition sounds very real.

2 Likes
15

FM Synth in the style of the Elektron Digitone™ Synth Engine

Control Section
Control Section2841×1076 1.22 MB

I love FM, but I do not understand it…

I was researching Hardware-FM-Synths, because I would like to start my outboard equipment journey and I found the small elektron model:cycles, which I thought was quite a powerful “toy” - then I decided to have a look at the elektron digitone. I watched all tutorials and walk-throughs from loopop, cuckoo, red means recording, etc… After that I read the manual, because you do that before a purchase, right?

And while reading I thought, maybe I should build the engine in VCV to understand it.

So I did that - to the extent, that all eight algorithms, the envelopes, the modulation, the filter and even the polyphony, LFOs, Arpeggiator and the effects are nearly identical - the sound is obiously different, but the engine is working great so far.

I built the engine core first, but you don’t have to touch it, everything is controlled via the control section (image above). 2 LFOs, which are synced to a master clock, 4 FM-OPs with 24 preset ratios each arranged in 8 Algorithms with 2 FM-Envelopes with a very unique assignment. Feedback, Wave-Folding (Harmonics), Filter and Amp, everythings with true 8 voice polyphony. The stereo summming is in front of the effect section with chorus, delay and reverb.

Synth Section
Synth Section2848×959 1.02 MB

The Input Section has the ability to switch between external Midi with a switchable arpeggiator (modelled like the original one, the note seq can shift individual steps and gates) or a sequencer (I chose the DivSeq here, I find it very musical, but you can exchange it for whatever). The arpeggiator and the sequencer are rotating around in the 8 polyphony channels, so each note can fade out. The clock is for triggering the arpeggiator, the sequencer and the delay- and LFO-times.

Input Section
Input Section1164×1076 405 KB

Finally there is a master section, with a master fader and a preset selector. The first four presets are set, with the first patch being the “Init”-Patch. Most of the controls of the control section are mapped in the preset selector.

Output Section
Output Section402×1076 126 KB

All modules are free.

The patch:

FM Synth.vcv (423.2 KB)

If you want to set the algorithm images in the control section (which I absolutely recommend!) download the following images (made by myself, background → pixabay.com, illustration → photoshop) and put them in a permanent location. Then set the 8face on the left of the image panel to R/W-Mode. Load image 1 into the panel, press the first button on the 8 face, load image 2, press the second button and so on.

1
1600×900 156 KB

2
2600×900 155 KB

3
3600×900 159 KB

4
4600×900 159 KB

5
5600×900 156 KB

6
6600×900 157 KB

7
7600×900 155 KB

8
8600×900 163 KB

I hope everything works for you, and you’re having fun creating awesome noise!

If there are any questions, please feel free to ask. (And reading the Digitone Manual will help a lot!)

  • mo
4 Likes
16

Love it. It works fine, sounds great and the presets are a good set of examples. Your algorithms are much nicer than the ones in the manual.

1 Like
17

Not really satisfied yet. I would so love to use @Squinky Kitchen Sink, because it uses a third of the power of the FM-OP and it has built in wave-folding, but I don’t get the locked integer ratios. There is no possibility to sweep the ratio without modulating both ratio and the fine-tuning. And it is not immediately clear to dial in a ratio of 1.75 without a calculator.

Then there is my wonky LFO-Stack, which I clearly have to reduce to just one module. Is there a BPM-LFO with reset, built in sample&hold and fixed outputs? The @almostEric BPM-LFO 2 goes through the CPU-roof, when changing the shape, I do not want to produce audio-dropouts when changing the LFO-shape while changing presets. The BPM-LFO would be perfect with the addition of a saw-wave and either sample&hold or a clock output which has the internal clock after applying div and mult.

I think I have to do a few feature requests on git-hub :stuck_out_tongue:

18

I don’t understand the request for Kitchen sink. Are you just saying that you would like to be able to turn the snapping on the ratio knob off? Or is it the missing CV for ratio that is the issue?

19

Sorry, was just hacking my thoughts down last night… Essentially the removal of the locking would be great in addition to extending the ratio-scale to 0-16 (instead of 1-16). I get that there is a musical approach to locking the ratios, but the 0.25-ratios are interesting as well (0.75, 1.75, 2.25 for example). A CV-Input is not necessary, I would still program the musical ratios via stoermelders transit, that way I could easily modulate between two set ratios (presets) with the built-in slew from transit as a variable sweep.

20

I’ll look at the CPU usage, but BPM 2 already has a SAW wave - choose triangle, then set the skew all the way in one direction