Thereās a bit of a prevalence of the āgenerative dark ambient generative drone slowly turning knobs on clouds for 2 hours while looking at houseplantsā scene around here, but lots of us are just content to do our own weird thing and not trying to please the local crowd.
One of the things that appealed to me in VCV is the ability to craft super expressive monosynths with the freedom no mod matrix could ever hope to offer, and was disappointed there doesnāt seem to be any interesting keyboardist showing off how they use VCV, consider being the first
Personally, I treat VCV Rack almost entirely as a live instrument, to the point I almost never revisit old patches or use a template session, but simply keep on modifying the same rack forever (a perfectly safe practice, the saves are lightweight files that doenāt accumulate cruft over months). Anything I record is played live in a single improvised take. But what Iām doing is more on the generative end: Iām a mediocre keyboardist, and I do not feeel that my VCV performances are playing as much as they are conducting the rack.
1.: I have a Nektar Panorama P4 master keyboard, I use it to sequence songs but not to play complex melodies live. I added to it recently a Novation Launch Control XL. While it is sold as a mixer for Ableton Live, it is really just a generic MIDI controller with 24 knobs and 8 faders, ready to use off-label. But my most interesting piece of gear is probably the XP-Pen graphics tablet: a cheap but high quality alternative to Wacomās. Hereās a performance from last year showing how I use the graphics tablet: a frustration I with that setup what that scrolling the rack was hard, so I created a module to scroll the rack via CV (a WIP version of it is shown in that previous video).
2.: Vactrols and low-pass gates gotta be one of the funkiest signature modular sounds. Vult, Nysthi and Skrylar got nice ones. Palette and Terrorform bundle theirs, and let you use their envelope to modulate stuff. We got a ton of great FM voices, if youāre not afraid of FM (itās legit scary), thereās a reason FM Funk is an internet microgenre
Okay I lold a few times through your post. Seems like weāre coming in from the same angleā¦ Iāve got a few vactrols around, hoping to come around building a few LPGās soon.
I too am not a great keyboardist (and thatās generous). So maybe to expand a little: I am using synthesis to break up the various elements of playing an instruments into parts. With the strumming patch I can strum without having to think about the notes; these are sequenced separately from ableton and quantized. This letās me focus on finding nice rhythms.
So; Iāve got a really cool electro-funk bass from an analog voice. Iāve got some strings and I can scratch to it. Will try out playing with LPGās and ARP style synthesis.
Any tips on others types of (electro)funk style i struments to add into the mix (also, drums!)
Yes, you do see a lot of āgenerativeā patches up here, and thatās probably what āmostā people are doing with it. But there are a sizable number doing āconventional musicā on VCV. There are a ton of really good filters, oscillators, and effects modules. Itās a little bewildering finding the āgoodā ones when you first start. For every 100 āgoodā VCOs there may be 200 ābadā ones. A good way for a lazy person to find the good ones is to look at an listen to a lot of posted videos. Even if the musical genre is not for you, you will tend to see that some modules are very popular and get used a lot. these modules are usually āgoodā. There are plenty of other good to great modules that donāt show up all the time, but starting with the popular ones wonāt hurt. Personal plug - I have a lot of filters and VCOs that work very well for āconventionalā use.
Well, probably not but itās possible. There are a lot out there though! But, yeah, it sounds like an exaggeration on my part. Probably more accurate is āthere are a quite a few good VCOs, but unfortunately there are at least as many bad onesā?
My background is in arranging and orchestration, so as Iām learning my way around the thousands of modules and techniques my aim is probably to use Rack in conjunction with an external sequencer, or probably even to design and record sounds to be assembled later using a multitrack editor. I have nothing but respect for the folks doing 100% generative music - obviously itās not simple or easy - but to me itās not really how I compose, I donāt think. That could change, though
Iād say the biggest thing is to think carefully about the architecture of the synths played by the artists who performed the music youāre trying to approach. Iād say the two biggies to consider are the Minimoog and Ob-X. Also think about compression and your effects chain. Also, consider what you do with your MIDI-CV output. You really want decent bend and modwheel effects. This is even a good thing to have around as a Stoermelder strip; youāll keep picking this one up again and again as you make other leads and basses. Hereās an example of a bass I did following a Dr. Mix youtube video where he approached the synth bass from Imaginationās āMusic and Lights.ā I think that leans a bit more disco, but the sound is great for funk lines I think. (http://ix.io/2xMv)
Lately, Iāve played around with running through the Mr.Donald Leslie emulation VST, and that make another nifty slightly thinner bass.
This bass patch can be simplified without the phaser for a more punchy in-your-face bass. (http://ix.io/2xMx) A shot at Hancockās Chameleon bass: (http://ix.io/2xMy) The key thing is that these are based on simple fixed architecture synths. Iād say the only thing that might get tricky is that you might want to dirty up the sound between stages with a bit of noise and distortion. Iāve not played with that a whole lot myself.
Those pastebins are vcv patch files. Fiddle as you see fit. Iām still working on my scriptable control surface mapping, so no real hardware knobbery for me quite yet.
Hereās a strip with my standard bend/mod configuration: http://ix.io/2xME
And yes, i have indeed created a strip for my basic funk bass utilities: mod wheel, pitch bend, aftertouch, glide, octave switch, velocity, I use it in every patch!
Same for me.
I can watch those livestreams and vids for hours in pure wonder over the creativity and effectiveness of that way of working. Itās just not my approach, and itās mostly tied to styles that i do not enjoy making
So, nothing negative about generative, just looking for interesting angles for non-generative approaches.
Thanks for the hints. I donāt have an octave transpose built into mine yet, but itās a great idea so the range is generally right without messing with the controllerās octave buttons. Iāve done nothing with aftertouch as my Edirol/Roland controllers make it so you nearly have to stand on the keys to trigger it. Thereās evidently some surgery that can fix that, but Iāve not cracked those cases yet.
Other things you probably want to explore are the various filters. Vultās stuff, Zzzorb, and Lindenbergs are your friends here. BTW: while I try to stay with Vultās free modules so I can share, Ferox, and Freak are not to be missed. I donāt have enough experience with Vortex or Vorg to make an endorsement.
By the way, if youāre using my first two bass patches, strongly consider replacing the VCAs with Vultās new Punch. Itās in the Vult Modules Free too, and it gives a lot more character to the bass. The mode switch is sort of like a clean/distort channel switch with guitar. I think youāll like this a lot.
Up to now I have mostly been using VCV Rack to play with generative functions, but recently bought the Entrian sequencers bundle and that changed my view of the rack completely to suddenly have access to a straightforward and very DAW-like sequencing (and editing!) UI changes the feel of Rack completely.
I imagine when the Rack plugin comes out thereāll be a similar sea change.
One thing I have explored more in Voltage Modular because of its plugin nature, but could still be done in Rack now, is to use various generative tools to trigger occasional arpeggiated note cascades or sound drifting from live input MIDI to enhance what youāre playing. That would fit in fine with live playing as you can get variation, but somewhat tamed by being quantised to fit a scale and time signature.
Another I do is to manually record grooves in my DAW. Iāll play 16ths, while playing along to a groove I like. Using Loopmidi Iāll send them to VCV and I use the gates as clock source. (The velocity too) Iāll record a bunch to alternate between.
This is really nice to incorporate some modular style techniques: I do quite like the Steevio polyrhythm techniques for percussion layers. With my manual groove as clock it feels really organic.
but itās possible. There are a lot out there though! But, yeah, it sounds like an exaggeration on my part. Probably more accurate is āthere are a quite a few good VCOs, but unfortunately there are at least as many bad onesā?
