Totally new and bloody beginner... how can I get into the matter?

Good to see this suggestion for the second time.

VCV Rack Ideas = Artem Leonov & Omri Cohen?

1 Like

nope, Artem Leonov only here) and Omri is Omri

1 Like

Well a clock is just a square wave with a very small pulse width. It is the speed at which the different waves move from 0 to 10 or from 0 to ±5v that determines the synchronisation. The speed is got from how many times it hits 0 in a second (cycles per second / Hz).

1 Like

Yes, although the DSP coding is too much for me (too many advanced mathematics to understand! … Although it is not necessary to say that I would like to enter that world … Who knows! :innocent:)

By the way, after my post this afternoon about some free books that I found on the net, and the response from @chrtlnghmstr talking about his post/thread “The Library”, which inevitably made me take a look at it, since I was not aware of it … I only had enough with one of his/her links in his first post (Synapse’s), to follow that link, and from there follow another link (finding more books), and another, and another, etc., etc.,… until I found this book a few minutes ago, which seems to me to be totally related to what you say…

I have not read it yet, but for the title and the index, it seems quite interesting and perhaps even related in some way to that love equation (dsp)-coding/patching of which you talked about.

Chance? … I don’t think so, things happen and that’s it! :crazy_face:

Thanks for your comment … Cheers! :hugs:

2 Likes

:sweat_smile:

Long life to Artem and Omri! … And thanks a lot for your priceless work towards the community :heart_eyes:

1 Like

This is for you: Beginners guide to VCV Rack

1 Like

I have not seen those extensive Tutorial references, nice-one!

@Omri_Cohen pinned post?

1 Like

:+1:

I don’t know how I missed that, but it’s pinned now :slight_smile:

3 Likes

@Josep Thanks to you for your notes on this thread! I had a quick look at the book you pointed, surely an interesting, quite high-level reading, in this case not for the math :face_with_hand_over_mouth: but for the theoretical and inter-disciplinary approach :thinking: Anyway a genre of reading that I often liked to deep into, sadly now I rarely find the necessary time to read books from start to finish, so lately I end up rummaging in it a bit disorderly.
For the equation “coding vs. patching”, I have to say that you’re not alone, also in my case high dsp math is not in my special skills, what I like to compare is the mind abstraction process (with different levels of formalism) and the creative and logic attitude in both activities. That’s probably part of the fun that the above mentioned book talks about.

Sorry for responding so late. I read more stuff and watched more videos. Didn’t watch the videos that were mentioned here though. Gonna watch the “New to modular? Watch this first”.

For the beginning I would prefer to get somewhat sequenced stuff, like on Tangerine Dream records. Then I would like to make it sound fatter. Trying reverb, delay, triplets, tuplets, swing. That kind of stuff.

Basically it confuses me from the start point: Why does a sequencer go into a VCO? Why is it not the other way around?

Didn’t know about the VCA and attenuator naming-mistake. Thanks for that.

In the meantime I’m also learning more stuff about my DAW and music theory, since these 3 aspects complement each other. Would be nice to add VCV Rack to Cubase. And I read a couple of times that stuff like that is possible for quite some time now.

I also have a keyboard teacher who helps me out, when I’m stuck in certain segments when it comes to patches.

Because in the usual scenario the sequencer controls the oscillator. (Typically the pitch so you can get melodic sequences out of it.)

Of course in modular, you could also control a sequencer from an oscillator, but that would probably give quite unexpected results… :sweat_smile: (And in that case the sequencer itself would probably control yet another oscillator to actually produce the sound. That might not strictly be needed, though, because some sequencers are able to run fast enough to produce audible sounds too…)

2 Likes

wikipedia is a huge source of knowledge I used it to learn specially about the different Synthesis approach, circuits and much more

2 Likes

You need to differentiate between control signals (relatively slowly changing, normally too slow to hear as audio) and audio signals (rapidly changing and audible). A sequencer generates control voltages, which can be used to set the frequency of an oscillator which will output audio signals, or maybe the cut off point of a filter processing audio signals. A gate sequencer generates ons & offs, which can be used to trigger percussive sounds, envelopes feeding VCAs or even VCAs directly if you like. A modular synth does not differentiate between these types of signal, you can route anything to anything (not that you should, and certainly not when beginning, but you can and this can be useful once you know what you’re doing).

There is a blurry line between the two though. Consider a simple oscillator, treating its output as audio you will be able to hear it down to whatever frequency your speakers are capable of reproducing, below that frequency it becomes more of a control signal (LFO) which could be used to modulate another audio signal (produce vibrato by modulating the frequency or tremolo by modulating the amplitude for example). A square wave LFO could be used in place of a clock module to run a sequencer from, in either case (using a square LFO or a clock module) you effectively have an oscillator driving a sequencer.

2 Likes

@Leterel

To put that in perspective here’s what an LFO will look like on a real-time spectrum analyser at low and high speed(frequency):

1 Like

Hi, because probably you are still thinking that a synth works like a piano or everything else in nature. The truth is that a piano is always silent, until the moment you press the key. In that moment a hammer hits a string and the sound comes out. It’s like hitting a ball, you hit the ball, you here the sound.

If you turn on a synth with a keyboard, you press a key, you here a sound. But the truth is that a synth is always playing, and the vibration produced by its VCO has always a pitch, even if you are not hearing it. As you press a key, it changes the vibration rate (accordingly to the key pressed), which we hear as “pitch”, and then happens the strange thing: a kind of “gate” opens, and only in that moment we can finally hear the sound.

Moving on, try to imagine a sequencer as a machine used to deliver different output values, step after step. The VCO that is receiving signals from the sequencer changes frequency, step after step. The V/Oct input on a VCO is there for that purpose. If we were playing a keyboard, we would have put the “output value” of the keyboard into the V/Oct input of the VCO. The lowest key on it would have delivered a low frequency, the highest key would have delivered a high frequency.

Let’s start with this, I hope I have explained it in a simple way.

cheers

A

6 Likes

this is a really important point that I don’t see made enough.

1 Like

Yeah. I know that WikiMedia has also a lot of great royalty free books and music and stuff like that.

I knew that I didn’t come up with this stuff. I got it from somewhere “indoctrinated”. My goal should therefore, as a beginner, be to reach that blurry line between experience and just noob-ishness.

Did you record that extra for me? Or is this a frequent question? Or are you simply collecting VCV Rack videos? XD