“Bikeshed” music made with arodur + vcvrack + guitar
More can be found at:
Please consider mastodon there are much sharing by vcvrack people on the soical network:
2 Likes
Welcome to the forum @homestudiodad! I for one like this track a lot! Lush melancholy wandering guitar lines over a nice melodic bass and tight almost filtered-sounding drums sitting on the inside. Enjoyed the backgrounds in the video as well!
Out of curiosity, what was the Rack patch doing (if anything) past the drums? I’m always interested to see people exploring Rack as an effects setup for external audio; it’s really crazily powerful in that application and can replace any number of VSTs.
The user interface on Vcvrack just wont have it with any “plan”. There are some dynamic kicks going on and they are not one midi note high velocity and another low, it is a concoction of stretching leads between inputs and outputs and noticing when something to keep occurs.
It all becomes uncertain in the end, but there is something interesting there. The halting beat with supporting sounds becomes a space to enter with other instruments and then other surprises emerges. I fit in a bass part which could not be written in any other way and the lead guitar melody on top was the only one available, it is not a kind of tune I have ever made before. Vcvrack kicks you out off all comfort zones and man is it great fun. Hats of to the, boss may he long reign!
To sum up Vcvrack is the lead instrument not the guitar
1 Like
Glad you liked it
1 Like
@gc3 I was a bit stressed yesterday, figuring out the forum stuff n’all. My answer to your question was the “artsy” side of things but I think a technical description was what you had in mind.
I have experimented with using vcvrack as outboard gear and made some exotic delays that one cannot have by other means but my hardware is challenged by having vcvrack be an effect processor for the Ardour DAW. When I get my hands on better hardware it will be used on mixdown as outboard effects.
My usual process with vcvrack is, boredom + itch, I start poking in the library and set out to do something technical but get distracted by something sonic happening. I try to add layers that “chimes” with what I got and then if called for output every sound source on its own channel using the vcvrack 16 channel audio module.
I capture the outputs with jack and turn every output into an audio file in ardour. I use reverb delays choruses etc in vcvrack and it all gets captured by ardour, I also make a habit of recording the clocks just in case I want to drive vcvrack again from ardour but mainly so that I can tempo map ardour to what vcvrack has done. Sometimes the clocks gets mixed in where they add something.
I make good use of the mute plugin that comes with ardour and practise “subtract” composing. On the “Bikeshed” tune there are melodic elements that comes in from vcvrack and the bass and the guitar are the only parts added in ardour. Those melodic parts is what instruct the bass and guitar melody.
I only know a small subset of all the available modules in the vcvrack library and have habits round what I know. I just learned that there are sample modules that can record “control voltage” and this is very interesting as I am experimenting with a template where I can use the sliders on my controller to mix “live” in vcvrac as I am recording the youtube video.
I record to OBS as I can set the frame rate low with matroska and still have 32 bit uncompressed audio. The inbuilt video recorder in vcvrack produces video files sizes that my internet connection can not cope with.
I see you are thinking about creating a tour of the vcvrack code and as someone who try to learn how to code it could not fail to be helpful. If I can learn how lua and c++ interact I could script away much “donkey work” in ardour and I think there is a vcvrack module where you can program with lua. There is no shortage of things to do…
2 Likes
So lets see if I have figured this one thread thing out. Here is a “live mixed” piece mastered directly to OBS. I mapped the “flying faders” to my controller and mixed it “old school” doing a few passes and settling on one the favorite take. I’m getting a bit sick of moving automaton points in ardour so this is an attempt at breaking free of “precision decision prison” and connect with my punk roots. @gc3
1 Like
So I have made some progress in “setting up” and I figured https://patchstorage.com/hungerpang/ how to share a patch. Downloading other peoples patches is a quick way of learning new stuff and the VCVRack repo system is genius . Hats of to the developer.
The above video is the audio of the below patch being exported to Ardour and mangled, VCVRack and Ardour is my favorite combo. I set up a side project on youtube GritCoreDad to be different to the more melodic Homestudodad project. There are some people trolling “youtubers” with copyright claims and I’ve uploaded the audio to onerpm.com to guard against it the idea that guard against it by already having “conent ID” but the site is hard to navigate. Anyhoo…music:
Wildest Snare #experimentalmusic made with vcvrack
This one is a good example of what vcvrack does to you, the system leads you to destinations you had no idea were there.
Nice ! really like the bass & drum groove !
love to see my faders in use 
Hello love your patches, is this one available on Patchstorage? Reminds of early DAF experiments. Much appreciated.