Great sound design. It spawned an idea - imagine a quality video game with an embedded virtual synth (VCV Rack?) sound engine with autogenerative patches producing constantly evolving atmospheric sounds.
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I had a similar idea just the other week. Most video games are programmed to play the right music for whatever the player is doing, but it only has a finite number of songs and phrases to choose from.
If done the right way, a patch embedded into a game could essentially compose or at least vary the music so no two players ever hear exactly the same thing.
To take it one step further, what if the patch is part of the gameplay and the player is actively seeking new modules to add to the overall soundscape i.e “congratulations, you have discovered Reverrrrrrb!!” Triumphant jingle
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My entry for the VCP Challenge #76-use one voice-in this case a Vult Opulus-going through reverb, 2 delays + a stereo Chorus. The predominant sound from Opulus is a tuba sound. This is then whipped all over the place by the fxs.
Opulus one voice-vcp 76.vcv (6.9 KB)
Audio:
Stream Hunting horn o’doom by Adrian Bottomley | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
my first entry is this time 3 variations of a patch,
I used made three slightly different patches with different modules for the voice,
the first one is the new Cytomic CF100 VCF, the second is Instruo Troika and the last is Horas Detour. Only the Cytomic module is a premium,
I would call these patches tiny 
the vid (each patch for about 5 minutes):
the patches:
rsmus7_VCP-76.zip (60.8 KB)
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PatchStorage got problems me thinks. So patch is attached to this post. SynthTech Morphing Terrarium chained to a variety of processing modules to build a drone. The aim was to build a soundscape meeting certain criteria: ranging from organic ambient sounds to harsh digital noise, evolving generatively without sequencing, incorporate modules that can be turned on or off to drastically change the sound.
Not being able to use mixers has resulted in heavy clipping so I had to dampen the drones sonic bandwidth quite a bit (sounds a bit flat and muffled now) but you get the gist.
23-07-10 Synthesis single sound source challenge.vcv (27.6 KB)
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Bellringing isn’t my thing, but I’ve been meaning to build this sequence as an exercise. There are many traditional patterns (or Peals) in British bellringing, and with 8 bells most would take many hours to play through. I decided to leave that for another time (and possibly another sequencer) and concentrate on the Changes.
This is a single voice from Plaits, modulated to produce the scale of F major in 8 notes. I used Bassmaster to make the lower bells sound louder, and of course reverb to give the impression of distance and echoing from the bell tower. I added a bit of swing to make the timing a bit off, because bellringing is not a precision activity, apparently.
The Church Bell sound using Plaits is from someone else (can’t find the post) and there is a post from @john_rose here ISO: Router that can swap a random pair of in→outs? - #20 by Epaulard about automating the changing sequences, and more.
Church Bells Peal Call Changes.vcv (21.0 KB)
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the instructions did include “no mixer modules”…
with one voice it should be easy to exclude mixmaster.
I started out with something more elaborate here - hence the complex setup of Gardener and Seeds of Change (to drive a v/Oct sequence & possible modulations) along with Modulators which are only sometimes applied to the FM VCO 3. This turned out to be unnecessary for the rest of the patch but I left it there since it is certainly something you should copy when you like to do generative music. (a: SoC instance runs seed of Gardener, Gardener runs another SoC instance, 8Face has presets of Gardener divisions. It is a powerful setup for pseudo random sequencing and modulation [since modulations will also repeat along with the notes… it is a Turing Machine on Steroids and can solely sequence, modulate and drive vast patches | b: counters/clock dividers drive a switch to add or remove modulation CVs from a module, probability adds a bit of jazz).
What is actually happening in this patch is rather simple in comparison: I saved a couple of presets for the FM VCO 3 in Transit and run through them sequentially - modulators add further movement to the presets every now and then. While I love Transit and don’t use it often enough I learned a few unfortunate things about it doing this patch:
- modulations to surge modules (their attenuation function) needs to be set prior to linking them with transit or else no modulation can be applied via CV
- transit pairings can not be copied or recovered, if your module freezes you lose all the presets, you cannot save the presets as a selection, you cannot apply “mirror” to a transit driven module to copy the presets to another module instance, even unmapping a knob means its presets will be lost… it can be recoupled to transit but will not reassign to its preset.
- TRANSIT will probably not get any more updates and lacks all fundamental features that were implemented in VCV 2 effectively rendering its main selling point (pre-setting) useless.
- none of those problems apply to 8FACE and thus it’d probably be more effective to just create all presets with 8FACE, copypaste a second instance afterwards and use a crossfader to fade between modules.
Due to the aforementioned problems… I accidently uncoupled my instance of the FM VCO 3 (after saving it as a collection and before saving the patch) and now I don’t have a working patch file. Video just runs through all presets… while I pass the time adding visual effects. The chain features compression, simple mastering/limiting and EQing.
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following this thread! Hoping I can take a patch or two from here and port it to the Zoxnoxious analog synth. Current hardware has 3 VCOs and a VCF so it’s suitably limited to one voice. That and the hardware is full-on prototype with each board having quirks of their own. With that disclaimer if someone has a patch that fits this I might just take it up, port it over, and post it on the thread here:
A not so noisy one this time. The krell is strong in this one…
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i made my latest submission for the naviar haiku challenge in a way that it can also be used as a submission for the vcp challenge, so here’s another one.
i originally made this is my current fixed rack, but i have slimmed it down for the vcp:
nh497-vcp76.vcv (6.2 KB)
my video has the fixed rack version tho:
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Did this awhile back and may need to thin it out a be compliant with the rules of this challenge. This uses a single arpeggiator driving three VCOs, along with a VCF. The VCF has two inputs, so I may have violated the mixer rule there, along with the 3 VCOs… Well, a Minimoog has 3 VCOs and I don’t think anyone would call it polyphonic…but I do recognize that’s not how the rules are setup.
Quantizers spread the 3 VCOs out, then Clocked jumps the sequence around an octave every few bars. The resonance goes a bit off the rails half way through, it ought to be tamed down but it does show the screaming range of the filter. The scope shot is eye candy showing the straight output from one of the 3340 VCOs and the 3372 analog signal processor output. Overall it’s got the composition skills of a 13 year old doing 1990s techno in their bedroom, which is right about where I plateaued with my musical talent. 
I’m including a rough port of the patch to native Fundamental modules. The original uses actual hardware (actual analog VCOs, VCFs) that interface with custom modules. filter_big_rack_native.vcv (4.0 KB)
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Don’t you love the way Bach suggests polyphony while using only one voice in e.g. his cello suites? Yeah, that’s what I thought. By the way: I used this trick earlier in VCP 64.
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This is my first entry to VCP, I use Rings as my voice with some Airwindows modules (I also used Alright device´s T-Wrex in one of the stereo input and Prince of Perception in the other).The patch
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Hi ablaut, beautiful work as ever. I love the tones you get off the resonator, and the use of space is just so soothing.
Would you mind explaining what you mean by your “current fixed rack”? Presumably you put it together with the idea of creating several different patches and soundscapes, but being new to this I’ve only started every patch from scratch so far. How long do you keep the fixed rack? And how do you choose the right modules?
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thanks for your appreciation!
a “fixed rack” is something some people like to do from time to time, to emulate a physical eurorack, where you also (usually) don’t have endless possibilities of adding more modules. it’s a fixed collection of modules, that you can cable up in various ways. omri has a playlist on it here.
this one i put together two weeks ago, to explore during this summer. i already made several patches with it: the ones for naviar haiku 495, 496, and 497. and i plan on working with the same fixed rack for the rest of the summer. see what is possible with this, and explore some of these modules deeper.
i chose these modules based on experience. what do i need to make a complete patch? and which modules are my favorites, but also fit together?
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Not the guy you answered, but your inspiring work has me attempting to make another fixed rack. I have the worst habit of putting too much in a fixed rack, kitchen sink approach. I need to streamline my workflow and put my fast workflow modules together and start having fun. Love how you entangle a couple of sequencers/clock dividers like Grids and Marbles to get things moving, marry the predictable with the probabilistic.
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probabilistic is totally my vibe
It’s a really cool concept, I’ll definitely try it one day. I do find that my patches so far end up with so many modules and it must be a nice challenge to have some limitations!
Thanks for the explanation