get your sequencers ready! bring out your percussion modules and drum samples! this time we are going to the caribbean!
the challenge is to choose one of the traditional caribbean styles: reggae, calypso, merengue, compas, salsa, or any other. study the rhythms they use, and use that to make a patch with in vcv rack.
as usual, upload your patch to patchstorage.com and/or in reply to this thread, and upload a video if possible. videos on youtube will eventually be added to a playlist. and please give feedback to other participants!
deadline: monday end of the day, wherever you are, may 18th (though late entries are always welcome)
a new challenge with a different module will be announced every other tuesday.
Neat! I once had a student from the dominican republic. The challenge teaches me more than music lessons at school ever did (okay I might have not felt the urge to pay attention as much as I do here )
The video was useful but then I looked at the wikipedia page for “clave” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clave_(rhythm). I know I’m really ignorant about music but I found this quite useful.
I’ve read that, too. It also leads you to rumba, bossa nova and a lot of other interesting rythmic musical styles.
If someone needs a ressource of interesting sounds for their project:
Library of Congress offers sound samples and gives Mix examples. They do it on the base of hip hop (would be a different kind of vcp) but I found that quite inspiring to get into rhythm.
Sooo, uh, is it okay if what I’ve come up with sounds more “jazzy” than Jamaican? Because that’s what happened. I started out with some sort of mashed up merengue beat from the above video and then just added stuff that sort of sounded, at least, like something.
Heard that as well but lack the knowledge to put it into words.
I went for synching clkd only to one of my sequencers and a module that is designed to run a little offbeat.
I used a different module for divisions. That worked fine.
figured I’d give it a run using Caillou from Synthetic as the base beats and oscillator source, along with some extra beats thrown in with DrumKit and DrumKit Pro.
the drum loop provided in Caillou is a fairly standard “afrobeat” loop, and the backup drums are mostly toms supplemented with a swing beat to help give it more “island flair”. the main oscillator loop began its life as a country guitar strum loop.
tomorrow I’ll upload the video on youtube and the patch here, I still don’t have a proper internet connection, so I’ll have to wait for tomorrow to listen to your masterpieces as well!
fun times with the gorgeous Vector Synth from Hora n an oldie but goldie from Skrylar, assisted by the man himself @Omri_Cohen with a tutorial from april '19
It’s pretty far from that, actually, but I’m happy with the way that the “blue” note always gets resolved in the fake piano, among other things.
I like the trowasoft trigSeq64 but it always seems to have that bit more of a delay than anything else I use, more than the 1 sample that’s standard. I’d use something else but it’s 64 step and you can just control so much stuff with one thing. It’s just about worth the hassle.
I remember having a lot of other things that I wanted to say but I’ve forgotten what those things were so I’ll leave this here. Hope you enjoy it.
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