Hey guys!
I’ve been messing around with vcv rack on/off but i’m finally hooked, i designed a patch that has a twelvekey sending cv to a quantizer so i can simulate some sort of triggered chord progression out of harmonaig.
I have a couple of questions on how to develop this patch a little bit more, make it more usuable for my purpose.
Basically there’s two main questions:
I want to have sequences that follow the chord progression, but not exactly arpeggios out of the chords, say i randomized a sequencer and got a nice sequence, how can i go about making it follow my chord progression?
The other question is regarding top melodies, i want to have a voice, that also follows the chord progression, but not necessarily playing the same notes as the chord itself. Sebastien leger’s setup is a good example: instagram.com/p/B-VXYBvgLNk/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
I already have the pressure points down using the twelvekey to shift the melody, i could leave it there but i really want harmonic content to be generated too, so in theory i’d love if this patch gave me: a top melody, a chord progression & a sequence that’s not just the chord progression arpeggiated
He is using that doepfer ribbon to send CV to his sinfonion also each cv triggers a gate that makes it perfectly on beat, i’d love to emulate something like this for those top melodies. I was thinking something like an XY pad that sent CV to the quantizer, but i just don’t know where to start for that one.
here is the patch that i built:
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As a learning device, you may be interested in playing with my PS Purr Software Meander module. Meander can create harmonic progressions and generate melody and bass to go with it. Melody can be chordal or scaler. Melodic arpeggiator can be chordal or scaler. There are 80 harmonic progression presets that are based on the most popular in Western music. You can create custom progressions.
You can also send octal radix volt/interval to the Melody DEGREE and GATE input to play for example a 3rd interval at 3.0v, a 5th at 5.0 and so forth. This is a more advanced topic however. You can also play the melody on a MIDI keyboard where the white notes represent the 1st-7th intervals in whatever mode and root scale Meander is set to. In that case, the keyboard V/oct output goes to the Meander Melody DEGREE input and the keyboard gate output goes to the Melody GATE input.
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incredible you show up here!
i literally downloaded it 30 minutes ago, i’m not home right now but it’s already on my to-do list as soon as i land.
i was reading all about it on github and it literally described what i want to do, i’ll play around with it and come back to you!
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And of course you can use Impromptu TWELVE KEY or the VCV MIDI->CV module with computer keyboard control rather than a MIDI keyboard.
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If you need or want some help getting started with Meander, here is a modification of the patch you referenced above but with Meander being the master for producing the chord progression in C Phrygian as well as the melody and arp that goes alone with the chords.
Phyrigian-Generator-No-DAW-with Meander-1.vcv (20.1 KB)
The startup default is for the Meander harmony part being disabled. If you want Meander to auto sequence the harmonic progression, click on the Harmony enable button. If you play via keyboard, the harmony auto-generation will be turned off again until you re-enable it.
thanks a lot!
I’m checking it out right now, is there a way to make meander go into other modes like phrygian dominant/harmonic minor?
Meander can do any of the traditional church modes Lydian, Ionian (major) , Mixolydian, Dorian, Aeolian (natural minor), Phrygian and Locrian in any of the 7 roots (C-B).
There are quite a few tricks that can be done. Meander outputs it’s current scale in 12 channel diatonic/heptatonic or pentatonic polyphonic format. The Grande Quant quantizer can accept these scales. You could run the Meander output through such a quantizer, or any other quantizer for that matter to do whatever you want. The results may or may not be what you are looking for, particularly if you try to requantize chords. Requantizing melody and bass work very well.
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Be sure to checkout the Aaron Static modules such as ScaleCV, DiatonicCV and ChordCV. I use these with Meander quite often.
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