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A Polyphonic Experiment

During one Jamuary patch, I had the pleasure of using the Alexandernaut Fugue Machine Midi sequencer extraordinaire. I enjoyed it so much that I sought a MIDI > CV converter so that I could bring that particular brand of magic into my synth. Sequencing is easily the most challenging part of eurorack for me. I’m quickly learning that, at least in the immediate term, “battleship” sequencers and me don’t work well together. The options are oftentimes overwhelming and programming them can be a constant exercise in frustration. When you’re trying to play a polyphonic patch, these frustrations compound as the patch gets more and more complex. Of the large sequencers I’ve used René v2 is easily my favorite. I find it to be the most intuitive sequencer I’ve used. The sequencer in the Doboz T12 is also easy to catch on, and the Verbos Voltage Multistage is ultra-simple. But I’ve done nothing but get my teeth kicked in by some of my larger sequencers. Frap Tools USTA, Oxi One, and 4ms Catalyst Sequencer in particular. Perhaps it’s the lack of effort with learning them, or that I simply quit on them too quickly, but nothing kills a moment like manual digging in the midst of a patch. Fugue Machine, even if it’s walled in its own very small box, is but one of many tools that make sequencing much less of a chore, and can help spark the creative drive to explore more advanced sequencing. Fortunately, there are good ways of leveraging MIDI tools in Eurorack.

I searched for a couple of weeks for my ideal MIDI > CV converter. My main consideration was for sequencing polyphonic patches, so it needed to have at least four channels of pitch CV, gates, and velocity. There are several options. One of the more compelling options is the Der Mann Mitt Der Maschine DROID. It’s a CV generating and processing powerhouse that can do almost anything that can be done with CV, including MIDI > CV conversion. I even have a DROID, and it has a killer feature set. If you can program it. It turns out that I can program DROID. It’s not terribly hard, even if I still do it by hand rather than using the GUI tool to create patches. But DROID would take more space, and would only be useful in this capacity, needing all eight CV outputs for pitch and velocity CV. So I kept searching, and finally settled on the relatively new Befaco MIDI Thing V2. I already have and use the Befaco CV Thing CV > MIDI converter and find it good at its job, even if the screen is not fit for middle-aged eyes. It’s only 6hp, and can sit right next to the CV Thing.

One of the MIDI Thing’s features is that it has 12 outputs. Exactly enough for four voices worth of outputs, and what’s more is that the exact configuration for my initial intentions with MIDI > CV conversion is already saved as a preset, or Pre-Def in Befaco-speak, for quick and easy input and output configuration. I simply set the MIDI Thing to “Predef 2: Multi Timbric” in the Global Menu and it automatically set the incoming MIDI channels to 1-4 and preconfigured the outputs. Pretty slick. Since I was already in for a lot of patching, I opted to forego using the velocity outputs. That wasn’t a step I was terribly interested in today. I wanted pitch CV and gates to trigger envelopes, and by golly that’s what I got after spending less than one minute in the MIDI Thing configuration screen.1

Once I had my MIDI routed in the AUM MIDI Matrix, and properly set MIDI ”Predef-ed” in the MIDI Thing, I fired up Fugue Machine. Since I was testing the functionality of the MIDI Thing and how that would work with a modular system, I wasn’t overly worried with an elaborate, or even original, sequence, and just used one of the included presets. Although I had played with the sequence length and transposition while running through the patch before recording it (which was all supremely cool), I simply forgot when I improvised the recording. I was more preoccupied with timing each channel, the levels of each oscillator, and crossfading the ending. As a result, this recording is a repetitive sequence. It doesn’t repeat exactly because of the modulation, but there’s no variation in anything other than oscillator timbre.

For oscillators I chose the always excellent Synthesis Technology E370, with a User-Loaded Wavetable titled NOV that was left from a previous owner. Thanks, dude. It’s pretty outstanding. Tuning each oscillator to unison (in Morph X/Y mode), I ran each of the pitch outputs from the MIDI Thing to the v/oct inputs. I followed that up by using the eight outputs of the Nonlinearcircuits Frisson to modulate both the X and Y parameters of each wavetable for all four oscillators. This constant timbre changing caused by the modulation also causes dramatic volume changes as waves morph in and out of more and less prominent waveforms in the table. I initially wanted something glitchy, and turned Glitch on HIGH with Interpolation Off for each of the four channels, and while it was cool, it didn’t fit at all in with the overall tenor of the sequence itself. The tonality is too “positive”, being in the key of A Lydian, and the sequence too upbeat. I suspect it would work fantastically on slower, more drone-ish material.

After I routed the pitch CV and modulation, I ran the gates to two Frap Tools Falistris for some enveloping. In addition to being enveloped at the Control inputs, three of the four gate outputs were also multed to the Hit input on one of two Rabid Elephant Natural Gates to provide some beautiful pinging of these ever-changing tones coming from the E370. All four channels were processed through Natural Gate, but only three were pinged. The bass note was only enveloped. In this process I made a grievous oversight. While Falistri is a perfectly good tool for this job, particularly the pluckier notes, more defined shaping with a ADSR would have really served the slower voices well. It so happens that I have perhaps the most advanced ADSR generator in Eurorack, but I didn’t even think to use it, and when I did, I was way too deep in the patch to re-patch and reconfigure the envelopes, so I let it go.

To be honest, I was expecting hurdles to cross, but I was surprised when it all just worked. CV did what it’s supposed to do. Gates did what they were supposed to do. Everything was perfectly in tune and on time.

Once the notes were created in their respective Natural Gate, all four outputs went to the ST Modular Sum Mix & Pan. While three of the four channels were panned to mono, the fastest moving and highest pitched voice was being slowly panned in the stereo field. The stereo output was then routed to the Addac814 6×6 Stereo Matrix Mixer, and sent to the Venus Instruments Veno-Echo. To ensure a solid clock for the delay, I used the now-defunct (or at least unavailable in the United States according to the App Store – which would seem weird) CoVariant Clock AUv3 plugin, which converted the MIDI clock in AUM to CV and sent it out an ES-9 output as an analog clock. I’ve never really sought to use a MIDI clock as the master clock outside of the iPad. I’ve certainly never used it as the master clock in a Eurorack patch. But this clock was flawless, likely to due CV being generated directly at the source, minimizing switches and pass-thru cabling or USB MIDI jitter. Hopefully CoVariant remains a working plugin in iOS for a while to come as there are currently no other direct MIDI > CV clock converters on the iPad. Veno-Echo was set at x2 on both sides with similar feedback just shy of noon. I also added a smidge of drive in order to enhance the sample reduction I put in the feedback loop. Veno-Echo, with its cross-feedback and width parameter, really can create an enormous stereo field

And so can the Dradd(s). It’s no secret I’m absolutely smitten by dual Dradd(s). Despite this infatuation, my first instinct was to patch in Beads, but Beads just didn’t really have what I was looking for today. At least I couldn’t find it. But the Dradd(s) did. In fact, I had to decide between two modes which both had something very cool to offer. I ultimately chose the Tape mode because the octave up was too much to resist. I slowly started to fade out the oscillators once the Dradd(s) were at full volume, and allowed its magic to guide the rest of the recording, fading out in a glorious wash of the Rain algorithm on the Walrus Audio Slöer.

Modules Used:
Befaco MIDI Thing V2
Synthesis Technology E370
Frap Tools Falistri
Frap Tools Sapel
Rabid Elephant Natural Gate
Nonlinearcircuits Frisson
ST Modular Sum Mix & Pan
ST Modular SVCA
Addac Systems Addac814 6×6 Stereo Matrix Mixer
Venus Instruments Veno-Echo
Pladask Elektrisk Dradd(s)
Knob Farm Ferry

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

Plugins Used:
Alexandernaut Fugue Machine
CoVariant by Alan Clifton

  1. It should be noted that the MIDI Thing also produced velocity CV, I just didn’t use it. ↩︎
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Made Noise – Sketch 6

When I turned on my Make Noise synth tonight, I had anticipated some more experimentation with filter wobble. I had both QMMG and QPAS right in front of me, and so far in my brief experimentation, these two filters had been the best at it. And I did do some of that. It was the first thing I did for about 30 minutes. But, as it so often does, the patch sent me in a different direction. It’s still a delicate patch, but not in that kind of way.

This patch won’t get the full patch breakdown, but I’ll lay out the basic framework.

René X Channel > Spectraphon B (stereo outputs) > QPAS (Smile Pass 😁) > X-Pan
Spectraphon B (Sub) > QMMG Ch 2 (LPG) > QMMG Ch 1 (VCA) > X-Pan
The recording starts out with only the QPAS outputs, before bringing in the LPD’d version. Both are crossfaded once the LPG’d version is brought in. The resonance, particularly on QPAS, got a smidge out of hand, but nothing ear screaming or offensive.

René Y channel > Spectraphon A (stereo outputs) > QMMG Ch 3 & 4 (LPF) > X-Pan (Aux)
This is the slower, lower voice that was brought in last. Spectraphon’s A side Focus and Slide were modulated by Wogglebug. Once bright in, this voice was only level controlled by the cutoff of the filter in QMMG. I slowly brought up the envelope amount in Maths to open it further and further.

X-Pan (stereo outputs) > Mimeophon > Output

Maths is doing a lot of work, modulating the filter cutoff of both Both QPAS and QMMG, Radiate on QPAS, controlling the envelope level to the QMMG in LPG mode, as well as the crossfading of the continuous playing sequence and the pinged one. I need to find a better way to activate the crossfader. Since I was using a copy of a Maths Unity output in both of X-Pan’s Crossfade CV inputs, I couldn’t just attenuate it to 0v then introduce the crossfading by turning a knob. So I inserted the cables when I was ready to introduce the voice. You can hear that little fumble as that voice is brought in.

I used a reverb send from my mixer to the Maneco Labs Otterley Reverb for some reverb (duh) as well as a touch of granular treatment.

Modules Used:
Tempi
René Mk2
Spectraphon
QPAS
QMMG
X-Pan
Maths
Function
Wogglebug
Mimeophon
Maneco Labs Otterley Reverb

Improvised and recorded in one take on iPad in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9.

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A Resonance Wobble Experiment

One of the beautiful things about eurorack is the many happy accidents that we all run into on occasion. Those times when some combination of conditions present at just the right moment seems to produce something magical. You don’t necessarily know what got you there, but nonetheless, here it is and it’s glorious. Though we may not always know exactly what leads to these enigmatic moments of splendor, there are things we can consider when seeking to be able to use those sounds as part of your artistic arsenal. It’s one thing to hap into something beautiful, however you might describe that term, but it’s another thing altogether to reproduce whatever it is you heard to make that magic an intentional part of your sound. To play it, rather than have it fall in your lap.

A couple of days after Jamuary concluded I made a patch on the Make Noise synth that made me stand up and stare. There was a whisper. An oscillator speaking softly into a filter’s ear, quivering as it tried to muster enough courage to get sound out. It wasn’t unlike bowing a string as lightly as possible, or trying to play a wind instrument as quietly as one can. There was a vulnerability in the voice, seemingly lacking the confidence to speak, or like trying to speak when you’re crying and your lips quiver. There was a wobble that was absolutely intoxicating, and I was set on trying to reproduce that wobble.

When I first set out to try and recreate this sound, I first isolated the conditions of the patch I wanted to emulate. Of course oscillators can’t speak softly. They only know one output level, generally speaking. I documented every patch connection and knob setting from this sub-patch. I verified modulation sources and any peculiarities. I thought about this patch a lot, writing extensively in my Notability patch book, and narrowed it down to three factors. At least theoretically.

  1. As low a level going into the filter as possible. On my original patch, I used QPAS as my first filter, and controlled levels with the input VCA knob. I initially did this out of necessity because the other voice in the patch was very quiet by its nature, and when any real level was given to the oscillator going through QPAS it was too loud. I discovered later that night that the lower the level, the better the conditions for interesting wobbles. If your filter does not have input level control, you can use an attenuator or VCA before going to the filter input.
  2. A filter with some fairly aggressive resonance. It need not scream like a Polivoks, but the resonance needs to be pronounced before it goes into self oscillation. If the resonance is non-linear, it’s even better. I’ve also surmised, perhaps errantly, that a vactrol-based filter would be better suited to this job because of the inherent drag and voltage drift of vactrols. The filter creating pronounced wobble in my Make Noise patch was QMMG, a vactrol-based filter, processing a signal that had already gone through QPAS. I could be wrong, but my experiments trying to reproduce the wobble seem to bear out this conclusion. I don’t have a vactrol-based filter in my main synth, but none of the filters I used in my experiments had the same sort of wobble as that produced by the QMMG.
  3. A slow moving modulation signal that moves the cutoff frequency through the fundamental frequency of the note. I’ve found the slower the better, but there are diminishing returns to that proposition. When you add resonance to a filter, you’re creating a small hump in the EQ curve at the cutoff frequency by feeding it back into the filter’s input. When that cutoff frequency intersects and passes through the fundamental frequency of whatever signal you’re passing through it, you get a small wobble. The resonance itself and the modulator’s frequency and shape can alter that wobble some, and can change its character, as do any curves you might put on your modulating signal.

Of course all of this was theoretical, and much of it still is, even if I’ve received some form of verification via Google AI, and tangible signs that I’m on the right track through my subsequent experimentation.1

When I set out to make a patch yesterday, my goal was to first experiment with recreating filter wobble through my main synth where I have a plethora of filters of all sorts. My first thought was to experiment wholly within the Frap Tools Cunsa. I can create sine waves with the first filter and still have three filters with which to experiment, all with normalized patching to make things simple. I was pretty quickly able to create some wobble using my three guideposts listed above, but it was very consistent, and exciting as it was to know I was on the right path, I felt that perhaps the Cunsa was simply too polite a filter to get the best results. Abandoning Cunsa, I next went to the Joranalogue Generate 3 feeding Filter 8, but I never felt like I could get anything close to what I wanted. The cutoff was always too high, and I couldn’t tame the harmonics in a way I wanted. So I switched to a single sine wave from Filter 8 feeding the Bizarre Jezabel Seju Stereo, which was okay, but not special, so I went to the Pkhia, which didn’t work very well. I moved on to the Pkhi Mk3, and had a promising start, but it didn’t progress much. Finally I went to the Blossom, a multi-output filter inspired by the legendary Mannequins Three Sisters, and I heard…something interesting. The wobble was there, and had a bit more character than the simple hump like the rest of the filters. I had found the subject for the rest of the day’s experiments. I spent well over two hours exploring different filters, and of those I tried, a simple sine wave into Blossom was definitely the most compelling. I have other filters that I think are good candidates, namely the Verbos Amp & Tone and Instruo I-ō47, but neither of those cases were in the synth when I turned it on. I’m definitely interested in trying those filters, as both have just the right kind of resonance, I think, to be compelling options.

After I’d finalized a base sound I wanted to use for the rest of the patch, a single sine wave into a resonant low pass filter, I worked up a sequence in C Lydian on the very excellent Doboz T12, and went to work. Like the voice used in my Make Noise patch, this voice would also be completely un-gated, sauntering along, only being level modulated in the filter by the slowly moving function of a cycling Contour 1. The cutoff point is set lower than the lowest fundamental frequency so that there would be times when no notes of the sequence come through. Because Blossom doesn’t have level input control, I ran the output of Filter 8 through an attenuator to initially make the sound as quiet as possible while still being (mostly) audible.

I decided to use a staggered clock. One that is gated by a clock divider, so as to never have continuous repetition. I multed a single x1 clock output from the Sitka Gravity to the Nonlinearcircuits Divide & Conquer in order to create my gate. Because the Gravity is in its infancy, there are several basic things it can’t do. As of now, Gravity’s clock (and sequencer) only outputs triggers, and not gates, so I couldn’t use the duty cycle of a gate output (like those on Pamela’s Pro (and New, and OG) Workout) to gate the x1 trigger that would ultimately go to the clock input on the sequencer. I wanted the clock to start and stop every five beats, and Divide & Conquer was able to provide a gate that enabled that staggered clock for my sequence to follow. The sequence itself is simple. It’s a couple of scale lines going up, with a very low probability (11%) of getting a quantized random pitch within seven semitones (a fifth) of any given step of the sequence. But because the cutoff frequency of the filter goes below the lowest fundamental pitch, the sequence flows in and out and isn’t steady. Notes hold in beautiful ways, and the sequence doesn’t repeat despite being only 16 steps long.

Once through the now occasionally wobbling filter, the audio went straight to the Bizarre Jezabel Mimosa. Mimosa is what I consider to be the most beautiful distortion I’ve heard in any format, short of very high dollar guitar amps. Of course the word beautiful is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but what I mean is that it can heavily distort something, while still allowing the source to shine. It adds life, even when the dials are pinned. No matter what, you can always let some of the original dry signal through which helps keep shape in the audio regardless of the amount of distortion is applied. From gentle piano notes and sine waves (such as those in today’s patch) to ripping saw clouds Mimosa just does the right things whether using it for some gentle saturation or full on sonic destruction.

In this patch Mimosa started gently, with both the output volume and distortion amount both turned low. As the piece progressed, gain was adjusted upwards at multiple points. The first place was the original audio signal on the way into the Blossom. This allowed its resonance to growl a bit more rather than wobble. Higher input levels into the filter also mean higher output levels from the filter, and Mimosa is very sensitive to input level. Even at the same knob settings, input level is a crucial determinant of the final sound. Lower levels at the input might just have a bit of coloration or slight crunch, whereas loud sounds will rip or soar. It’s part of Mimosa’s magic. After I adjusted the initial input as loud as I dared, I started to slowly raise the output volume and distortion amount on Mimosa, as well as the amount of wet signal. From gently whispering and quivering to finally finding one’s voice to sing, all from nothing but subtle gain changes along the way. From Mimosa, the audio went to a new addition in the synth; the Addac Systems Addac814 6×6 Stereo Matrix Mixer to be distrusted to several effects.

It should be reiterated here that every sound is this patch arises from one single sine wave fed by one simple sequence, with but a single parameter being modulated by a lone triangle function (the filter cutoff). Of course that isn’t the only sound in total. That lone sine wave is repeated all over the place with overlapping delays, looped with four simultaneous digital tape heads and a delay of its own, and reverberated. The first delay, a Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2, mostly added some lovely texture. A bit of a wash of decays in the wake of the melody, its gritty tail disintegrating into nothingness, which added depth and color. Repeats were set to moderately long, with a slow(er) delay time. With the PT2399 delay chips, the longer the delay time, the noisier it will be. The second delay was an Olivia Artz Modular Time Machine, with 4 active taps. It’s clear digital voice echoing the distorted sines near perfectly. Both delays are set to different times which really served to fill out space and maximize this one simple voice with the most basic of sound waves.

As beautiful as this very simple sequence was, I wanted to see if I couldn’t perform some complimentary embellishments, and decided to once again delve into the Cutlasses Instruments Gloop. I’ve only used Gloop a couple of times, but it’s already captured my attention. Some modules take some time to gel with. Despite some sloppy transitioning in my first couple of uses, I immediately took to Gloop. Its interface is (mostly) intuitive, and it’s a capable looper with some very cool tricks. It’s pretty easy to create compelling loops with Gloop. That said, it does have some drawbacks, at least in its current iteration. Though it’s packed with some clever effects that can be eminently useful with a looper, delay, reverb, and a host of tape-related effects like tape degradation, wobble, noise, and saturation, these effects can only be used on one channel or the other, and not both. Though Gloop has two outputs, it’s not really stereo, but dual mono. Each of the four heads can be panned in a stereo fashion and be used in one or both outputs as if it were a stereo signal, but for reasons I don’t understand the effects can only be used in one output at a time. This imbalance can definitely be a problem when trying to create a consistent stereo field. I was hoping to use the degradation effect, wherein the audio degrades as it would on a tape machine with each successive loop, fading out to nothing after a time. In loopers this is generally simulated by constantly low passing the signal at progressively lower cutoff frequencies in order to gradually roll off the highs. It’s a crucial component of Frippertronics, for instance. Allowing a loop to fade to nothing is also a beautiful way to end a track, and unfortunately I can’t do that with Gloop while using both output channels. In lieu of using Gloop to add tape hiss, I was able to add noise to both channels in the mixer via the very excellent DAW Cassette by Klevgrand, but that was an improvised half-measure. I think I can patch a workaround, but it definitely won’t function in quite the same way. A slow moving negative function into a wide open filter cutoff should get me at least part of the way there. Timing would be an issue. How long should this envelope be? What happens if I get to the end of the function, and I haven’t pressed stop on the recorder? Will the cutoff reset to fully open? That would be bad. But those are problems for another day.

I recorded a length of the sequence to Gloop, then while the sequence continued to play configured the four play heads and slowly started to raise the level on the looper, while lowering the level of the continuously sauntering sequence. Though this transition isn’t perfect, it’s much smoother than in tries past. I would use a crossfader like the WMD AXYS to more smoothly move between the two parts, but because the individual voices were being multitracked separately, I crossfaded in the mixer by hand using the Michigan Synth Works XVI Faderbank CV and Midi controller. The first and fourth heads were hard panned left and right at 2x forward and 4x in reverse respectively, while heads two and three were panned in the middle at 1x forward and .5x forward. I manually played the loop size and location within the loop of all four heads until it I manually faded out the hard panned parts before fading out the base melody and its half speed sibling. But not even Gloop was without its own dedicated delay, the ever-excellent Venus Instruments Veno-Echo. I used a x4 output from Gravity, with a /3 clock division set in Veno-Echo, which gave me a dotted eighth note delay, an always interesting pattern.

Both voices were mixed together in AUM and sent to the Walrus Audio Slöer using the Rain algorithm with almost no diffusion, and the clock speed at its slowest, adding to an already textured outcome. A medium long decay and high modulation finish off the track.

Modules Used:
Sitka Gravity
Nonlinearcircuits Divide & Conquer
Doboz T12
Joranalogue Filter 8
Joranalogue Contour 1
Bizarre Jezabel Blossom
Bizarre Jezabel Mimosa
Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2
Addac Systems Addac814 6×6 Stereo Matrix Mixer
Olivia Artz Modular Time Machine
Cutlasses Instruments Gloop
Venus Instruments Veno-Echo
Intellijel Amps
ST Modular SVCA
Knob Farm Ferry

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

Software Used:
Klevgrand DAW Cassette
Toneboosters TB Equalizer 4

Improvised and recorded in one take on iPad in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9.

  1. I put very little stock in the accuracy of AI at this stage in its development. However, it stated the same three conditions I had independently surmised, and so choose to engage in a bit of sweet, sweet confirmation bias. ↩︎
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Made Noise – Sketch 5

When I finished Jamuary I was resigned to taking time off before patching again. Jamuary was exhausting, and I’m tired. I wasn’t sure how long it might be before I patched again. It turns out the answer was “immediately.” By 10pm on February 1st I was bored, and so decided to put something together on the iPad for fun. I had no intention to record it. I was just playing around with a few things to see how they work. The same thing happened on the 2nd. I started to watch a YouTube video, and decided that I’d rather just do a patch on the synth that was sitting not eight feet from me than watch someone else do one. And so I did.

I knew from the start I wanted it to be in a minimalist vein. Maybe not the dictionary definition of Minimalism as a musical discipline, but still something with not much going on. You know; minimalist.

The patch started with Tempi. The base tempo was ~60bpm:

  • Channel 1 (x1) > Mimeophon
  • Channel 2 (x1) > René X Clock
  • Channel 3 (x2) > René Y Clock
  • Channel 5 (/5) > René X Mod
  • Channel 6 (/7) > René Y Mod

René received the clocks and Mod gates from Tempi on both the X and Y channels. Mod on both channels was set to Start/Stop on the Fun page. When the gate is low at their respective Mod inputs, the sequence moves forward, when it’s high, it stops. Since all four clocks are at different times, there is no continuous repeating pattern, each channel starting and stopping every bar and change. Gates and Access were adjusted for both channels throughout the performance to guard against becoming stagnant. René controlled all four voices in the patch, using just two oscillators, Spectraphon and STO. As far as I know, the scale is in C Lydian, but it sounds like I may have neglected to make the key change between C Major and C Lydian in one (or more 😬) of the channels. It doesn’t happen often, but we get a hint of dissonance on occasion.

The X Channel sent pitch CV to Spectraphon’s A side, and the trigger from the X Gate output to DXG’s Channel 1 Strike input. The Y channel was routed similarly to Spectraphon’s B side and DXG’s Channel 2 respectively. These two oscillators form the first voice, comprised of fairly sparse pings in the DXG. The mixed outputs from Spectraphon A and B were sent to DXG in a way to remain discrete left and right with their separate gate patterns. When you plug something into the Left input on any DXG channel, it normalizes to the Right channel and becomes a mono signal at the output. In order for the Left (mono) input to remain in the left channel only, a dummy cable should be plugged into the Right input. This dummy cable breaks the normalization, and will send audio at the Left channel input to only the Left channel at the output. I plugged Spectraphon’s A side Mix output into DXG’s Left input on Channel 1, along with a dummy cable in the Right input. Spectraphon’s B side Mix output went to DXG’s Right input on Channel 2. This kept the A side pings on the left side of the stereo field, and the B side pings on the right for a delightfully stereo experience of pings and echoes.

Both sides of Spectraphon were tuned to C one octave apart. Spectraphon was modulated in three places, but only moderately. The A Side Focus and Slide were modulated by a Maths envelope and Wogglebug’s Stepped outputs respectively. The B Side Slide was modulated by the Maths OR output. The slight modulation helped to have subtle timbre changes on the pinged notes, some brighter and others darker. Both sides also FM’d each other slightly. The FM Bus Index for both channels were around 8:30 on the knobs. There’s some FM, but not very much at all. Just enough to give notes a kind of bounciness once struck in the LPG. One really nice feature of the Spectraphon’s FM capability is that its sine waves always stay pure in order to avoid the problems associated with cross-modulating oscillators. No matter how much one might FM Side A, its sine wave can still modulate the B side with a clean sine wave rather than one that is FM’d. Most oscillators, once they become carriers, are useless as modulators. Not so with Spectraphon where both oscillators can be both modulator and carrier oscillators at the same time. Very nifty.

René’s Cartesian Channel performed an identical role with STO and QMMG as the X and Y channels with Spectraphon and DXG. I wanted something well above the predominant audio register in the patch. High pitched tings and drips, in the same manner as the Spectraphon pings, only even more sparse. These were designed to be ornamental notes, not the star. The Cartesian Channel CV output sent pitch CV to STO’s v/oct input, and its trigger output went to Channel 2 of QMMG for similar pinging with the Cartesian trigger. The STO’s sine output was used to keep the notes with as soft a texture as I could with pings. One interesting difference between using the QMMG and DXG as a LPG is that QMMG’s decay, at least my QMMG’s decay,1 is noticeably longer on higher pitched notes than the DXG when pinged with a trigger. In the DXG, higher pitched notes are sometimes just barely blips. This sort of behavior is generally expected with just about every LPG because of how they filter the upper harmonics. But through the QMMG, those high notes are seemingly longer. It’s certainly a result of the those juicy QMMG vactrols, and a good argument for keeping vactrol LPGs around, cadmium eaters be damned. These pings in the QMMG were mixed in with the Spectraphon A and B side pings via the Aux input in the DXG.

After I worked up the pinging I was after, I knew I wanted something more, but it had to be complementary and juxtapose itself against the very delicate pings. I was in a stream of consciousness-like trance when building this patch, and so even though I’ve documented all of the final patch connections for the entire patch, I’m not exactly sure what thought process led me to how I was going to fill in the space in a graceful way. A bit of experimentation, some clever routing, and tinkering seemed to be the answer.

I first decided I wanted to use QPAS. I’m not sure how I decided on it being heavy filtering, but I knew I needed the voice to be subtle so as not to overtake light pinging happening in the stereo field. I sent Spectraphon’s A side Sine wave to the L input on QPAS, and the B side Sub output to QPAS’s Right input. The trick was to have both oscillators filtered by QPAS, yet remain separate in the outputs. QPAS essentially became a dual mono filter with shared controls.2 The frequency knob on QPAS, for most of the performance, was moderately low, around 10 o’clock on the knob, though it was being modulated by an unsync’d Wogglebug’s Smooth output, while both Radiate knobs were being modulated by the Woggle output.

QPAS’ Left and Right outputs would become completely separate voices, unfettered by any gating or enveloping, being tamed and shaped only by the filter cutoff(s) and resonance(s) before going straight to the output. Because these outputs weren’t being gated or enveloped, they were always present, moving along with their respective pitch sequences from René, Spectraphon’s A side following the X Channel, and the B side following the Y channel. I remember really liking the sound of the voices and the feel they added, but struggled to find a solution to these sequences droning along overtaking the pings. The answer was simple: only send as much volume to QPAS’ inputs as is absolutely necessary, and allow the resonance to do some of the lifting. It’s a delicate balance between not being audible and drowning out everything else; the output needed to be always present, but delicate enough to not use all of the space in the sonic field.

The Right Low Pass and Smile Pass outputs went straight to X-Pan Channel 2 A and B inputs where they were crossfaded and slowly panned across the stereo field (by the same cycling envelope). This melody carried a mostly present sequence from the Y channel, though quite muffled by the filter and constantly swirling with the crossfading, and smoothed out with resonance, then copious amounts of Mimeophon with Halo. From the time it was introduced, this Y melody is omnipresent, filtered to various degrees, and allowed to drift through the stereo field.

The Left outputs is where the routing became a bit of voodoo. I know what connections led to this sound, but I’m not sure I understand the mechanisms that led to the result. It was a sine wave playing a sequence heavily filtered by QPAS,3 and then very heavily filtered again by QMMG. The Left Low Pass and Smile Pass outputs were routed first to QMMG channels 3 and 4. I tried all four modes, but only the Low Pass mode gave me the specter of a ghost lightly singing in the background, occasionally wavering and trembling as the pitch of the input, slowly moving filter cutoff, and resonance interacted with one another. When the voice was introduced, the filter on QMMG was completely closed, only being modulated by a cycling Maths envelope. Resonance started at about 8:30 on each knob. I slowly added more resonance, then more again, before also slowly raising the cutoff. By the time I hit stop on the recording, both the cutoff and resonance for both channels were at about 1 o’clock on the knobs. It sounds as if it’s a feedback patch, though, outside of the copious amounts of resonance in the QPAS and QMMG signal paths, tamed by the controlled input into QPAS, there is no feedback patching.4 These two outputs from QMMG were crossfaded in X-Pan, so that the sound constantly drifted and resonated in interesting ways. This led to wavering cries that occasionally had a smidge of growl enough to resonate through the Mimeophon in an incredibly beautiful way.

This voice, although the most subtle and delicate, as well as the least present, is by far my favorite part of this patch. It brings the patch to life. It’s one of the coolest sounds I’ve gotten from any patch. When I first heard that sound I stood tall and stared straight at the QMMG as if to ask it to teach me its wizardry. It was the first time I’ve looked at the QMMG as an instrument; as something more than a set VCAs, LPGs, and filters, with a mix output.

All four voices were mixed in the X-Pan, and sent to the Mimeophon for some delay-ification and Halo, the soft noise of the Mimeophon cushioning the edges in subtle ways.

Like so many patches I made during Jamuary, this patch is an open testament to a cohesive Make Noise system being a fluid instrument. It’s an absolute pleasure to play.

One small issue I had, which reinforces my desire for a couple of VCAs than can boost levels before going to the ES-9, was that the recording was ultra-quiet. The pings are very quiet, which necessitated a low volume for everything else in the patch. I needed to add a full 12.5dB in post in order to bring my peaks up to ~ -12dB in AUM.

Modules Used:
Tempi
René Mk2
Spectraphon
STO
QPAS
QMMG
DXG
X-Pan
Maths
Function
Wogglebug
Mimeophon

Improvised and recorded in one take on iPad in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9.

  1. Each QMMG will have a different response because of the natural variability of vactrols. Make Noise does a great job of matching vactrols in an individual unit as closely as possible, but there are (sometimes noticeable) differences in the decay length between different units. This is the same for all vactrol-based LPGs. ↩︎
  2. Definitely a first time using QPAS in this way. ↩︎
  3. Filtering a sine wave is about as pedestrian a job as a filter can do. It’s normally unremarkable as filters thrive on upper harmonics. ↩︎
  4. If the input level was much louder, I’m confident the resonance, particularly in QMMG, would have been screaming. Both filters have a very pronounced resonance that can run away quickly. ↩︎
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Jamuary 2025 – A Reflection

AI is just as prone to mistakes as the rest of us.

Let me get this out there first. Jamuary, while highly rewarding in many aspects, was absolutely exhausting. The self-induced compulsion to create and record something musical everyday for a month is an arduous task, even in the best of times. When life gets in the way, as it inevitably does, finding the time required to create something can be a challenge, and finding the creative energy to pull through severe time constraints is even harder. Just this month, I’ve created (and written about – another aspect of patching for me) nearly three dozen pieces of music ranging from complicated and sprawling eurorack patches to fairly simple and minimally inspired jams on the iPad. That is about 60% the total number of recordings I made all of last year. Nearly six hours (5:59:46) over 33 new recordings in 31 days is an incredible feat for me.

I’m proud of that accomplishment.

I didn’t come into Jamuary with the goal of making a recording every day. Like last year, I sought to do one every three or four days. Between work and family, life is busy. But with 2505 something happened. I had just made my seventh recording in five days, and creating 2505 was a really exciting experience for me. It was the first ambient patch I’d made with my Verbos system, and I was filled with ideas. I was on a roll, and determined to do more than last year. By 2510, I had resigned myself to recording something everyday. And so that’s what I did. On days I could take my time, I made a larger patch on the main synth. On days when I was more pressed I learned to use iPad instruments or worked up quick(er) patches on the Make Noise synth. Jamuary is less about product and more about producing. To act creatively everyday in a bid to spark more creativity. The more you do, the more you will do. There’s something to that idea because, despite having a level of fatigue and with zero intentions, I made an iPad patch on February 1st too, and recorded a beautiful patch on my Make Noise system on the 2nd.

During Jamuary I purposefully sought to do new things. To try new patching techniques or use new gear, and to use underused gear in ways I haven’t used them before. During this process I used several new (to me) techniques like ring modulation, creating dynamic triggers, and amplitude modulation using modulated noise. I purposefully sought to learn some more complex timing techniques with triggers and gates when more than one thing would happen at a time. I learned to use some of these instruments in ways I hadn’t before. It’s been an incredibly eye opening experience that has given me ideas which will take me deep into the rest of the year when I can more intentionally create without daily time constraints. Patching daily has helped to shed light on where I need improvement in my practice, and where my synth can be streamlined or made more suitable for my practice. Perhaps more importantly, Jamuary’s extensive experimentation has given me the confidence to experiment further throughout the year, and not only when I can use the informal nature of Jamuary as an excuse to not be good at something (yet). Being flawed is part of growth, and having the confidence to put out imperfect art is a major step forward.

Most people would argue that, when creating art, quality is more desirable than quantity. Under most circumstances I would absolutely agree. I and most others would rather hear one solid recording than 31 mediocre ones. With the rush of a demanding timetable, art can turn into dreaded “content.” The lifeless stuff demanded by an arbitrary schedule. But in the context of something like Jamuary, I feel that quantity is better. Jamuary is a time for proverbial rough drafts; sketches of ideas you’d like to pursue in your more artistic endeavors. It pushes you to create something everyday, and, as with any endeavor, practice begets competence. The more you do something, the better you get at it. I could actually sense my patching becoming more fluid during one Jamuary patch in particular. I built Jamuary 2518 almost completely from a schematic in my brain that I put together throughout the day while I was at work. The patching was quick and easy, and the entire session simply flowed freely. It wasn’t dissimilar to the feelings I had as a kid learning to play the trumpet.1 It’s a feeling of freedom, when you know what you want to accomplish, and can do so forthwith. The sense that you’ve taken a step towards mastering your instrument.

But these lessons come at a cost. For example, I can only remember a fraction of my Jamuary patches. About one in three. Jamuary 2505, 2507, 2508, 2509, 2511, 2513, 2518, 2522, 2526, and 2527 are particularly memorable, even if I couldn’t identify which is which from memory. Most of my recordings this month have melded into an amalgamated mass in my head. I generally document most of my patches thoroughly both here and even more in depth in a Notability notebook I’ve kept for years. But with the rush and severe time constraints imposed by Jamuary I haven’t had the time to document more than short synopses, if that much, which I’m hoping doesn’t come to bite me down the road while trying to perform a technique that I only have scattered notes on. Part of the reason for not writing as much is the extreme time constraints Jamuary imposes, particularly in the context of real life. Another reason is that I’m exhausted. Once I’m done with my day, then create and record a patch, I scarcely have the energy or drive to write much and document more thoroughly. During a normal month with a normal patch, I might use a couple of weeks to patch, tweak, and record a track, taking copious notes along the way. I might take another week writing about it. It’s a much more open-ended way of working that allows for reflection and improvement to better service the patch and accompanying post explaining it. Jamuary doesn’t provide for such luxuries.

Despite its taxing nature full of compromises, however, participating fully in Jamuary has been a highly rewarding experience. Not just in my own patching, but in my daily interactions with people from all over the world. To hear their daily creations has been as fruitful as making my own. On several occasions this Jamuary I was inspired by someone else’s recording, or by someone’s comments about mine, pushing me towards trying something new. Unlike every other Jamuary participant, I’ve posted my recordings exclusively on peaks and nulls (though there is another brave blogger who has used his own site too, even if with the help of SoundCloud). Most use some form of social media. Instagram or YouTube, mostly. As a result, I’ve certainly had a smaller audience than I might have had I chosen to use social media. But even with that choice, I’ve had visitors listen to and read about my Jamuary creations from every continent (except Antarctica). 42 countries in total, and while only sharing links to my daily Jamuary recordings in exactly two places, the Jamuary thread on lines, and DivKid’s Discord server, along with a couple of straggler links on Modwiggler or lines in specific threads, and all without help from The Algorithm. Though I may only get a fraction of listens that social media might otherwise provide, that I can still have an international audience by doing self-publication on my own blog where I have full control over how my music is presented only supports my choice to remain free of social media. Be the change you want to see.

My single most listened to Jamuary recording (throughout the month) was Jamuary 2505, with 88 visitors through February 1 . 2505 is one of the handful of patches this past month that I remember vividly. It was a patch that centered on the Verbos Polyphonic Envelope and Harmonic Oscillator, phasing different harmonics in and out of audibility. There was even a bonus patch that also incorporated Panharmonium and the Dradd(s). It’s one of the best patches I’ve made with my Verbos case, and is something I’ll return to in the months ahead. As late as the 25th, it was in a seemingly insurmountable lead with nearly five times the number of visitors than the next closest post. Then something happened. A couple of scattered links on Modwiggler started to bear fruit. 2525, a beautiful Marbles > Rings > Beads patch, was hit with over 20 visitors in just one day. The next day I made a really fun Make Noise jam, and sprinkled a link on lines. Within two days 2526 had half as many visitors as 2505, and by the end of the month, had just four fewer visitors. It’s amazing what can happen when you put links in good places.

It would be very hard for me to choose a favorite Jamuary patch. It’s like trying to choose a favorite child. All of them have highlights and deficiencies, and I’ve done patches in several styles. Jamuary creations are meant to be sketches made during an avalanche of creative output which makes attachment to any one near impossible. Like I mentioned earlier, there are some patches I don’t really remember much at all from memory. But I do have several highlight moments in several patches. Whether the result of some cool patching technique or trick I figured out to make something work as I wanted it to, a happy accident, or a bit of joy at how much fun I was having, there are many memorable bits throughout Jamuary. The “crickets” in 2506 where I channeled a patching technique I gleaned from Ras Thavas’s experiments. A eureka moment in 2505 while performing an ambient patch with my Verbos case. Another eureka moment in 2511 using the same technique, only patched manually (as opposed to having a module do much of the work) with my Make Noise synth. Stepping well outside my comfort zone by using midi sequencers and software instruments in 2507, and expanding that patch with the modular in 2508, and running with the idea in 2516, 2520, and 2521. The absolute surprise of the wonderful stereo field I had when using the Optotronics Lockhart Stereo Wavefolder in 2514. The smile I had on my face while shaking that ass performing 2526. The moment that the Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2 clicked for me during 2515, and was later reinforced, it’s intoxicating crunch having caused a major pivot away from the initial plan in 2527. Getting to know the Spectraphon in several patches. The Gloop, particularly during my run through just before recording 2530. All of these moments have left lasting impressions and given me ideas for many patches to come.

Overall I can’t tell you how many discreet modules I’ve used this Jamuary. Going back through 31 days of module lists for collation isn’t really a task I’m interested in performing, even if I would like to know the answer. And outside of the AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer, ST Modular SVCA, and Knob Farm Ferry, which were used in every patch on the main synth, I don’t know which one was used most. My impression, however, is that the Frap Tools Falistri is likely in that conversation. Either as an envelope or a modulator, I felt like I used it in an over-represented number of patches, but such is the utility of good tools (no pun intended). The CuteLab Missed Opportunities seemed to find its way into most patches. My chain of Intellijel Amps was also used copiously, and in various ways. As bog standard VCAs, a mixer or mixers, and even a large mult, spreading various attenuated and/or modulated copies of a CV around the synth that controlled all modulation throughout a patch. The Dradd(s) and Veno-Echo made several appearances.

But it wasn’t just the sheer number of modules I used. Throughout Jamuary I explicitly sought to use several new-to-me modules, or modules that have gone underused for one reason or another. The Make Noise Spectraphon was the biggest highlight for me in this category. I’ve had it for a couple of months, but never installed it until just before I performed my first patch with it during 2511. After a handful of uses this Jamuary it has now become my favorite Make Noise oscillator, and I’ve only really scratched the surface with one mode. Other modules I finally got around to using for the first time were the Mannequins Just Friends, Verbos Voltage Multistage, Sequence Selector, and Polyphonic Envelope, Mutable Instruments Blades and Tides v2, Optotronics Stereo Lockhart Wavefolder, Vostok Instruments Asset, Nonlinearcircuits Helvetica Scenario and Let’s Get Fenestrated, 4ms Dual Looping Delay, Cutlasses Gloop, and of course the Disting NT. There are probably others.

There are also other modules I hadn’t used in some time. All of the Verbos case had been out of action being expanded for the better part of the last nine months before Jamuary. Ditto with the Mutable Instruments case. It had been more than a year since I used Rings and I can’t remember when I last used Data Bender before 2525. Ditto Kermit Mk3, which made a prominent appearance in 2506, and will surely make others throughout this year. I’ve also explored functionalities I haven’t used very much within modules that I regularly use. I finally got around to trying, however little, the wave shaping and wave folding abilities of the Frap Tools Brenso. Up until Jamuary I’d used Brenso sparingly, and only with the sine or triangle wave outputs. The four quadrant multiplier in Falistri and ModDemix got a fair amount of use for the first time as I explored ring modulation in various patches throughout Jamuary. Before now they’d only been used as regular VCAs. I also used Falistri fairly extensively as an oscillator, and will be doing that much more as I move to a quad Falistri system.

I, of course, also delved, for the first time, into using only midi and software instruments during several Jamuary recordings. I’ve certainly messed around with multisample instruments before, but it’s always been more of an “Oh, look. This is pretty cool, I guess” sort of experience. I’d open Decent Sampler, load in an instrument, play the built-in keyboard for a while, then close it back up while saying something like, “I should try doing this with the modular.” Well, this Jamuary I did, and I’m very glad I took that very unnerving first step. Some of my prettiest creations were a result of using the iPad environment. I greatly enjoyed the feeling of having created something different such that I’ve taken positive steps towards having more integration between hardware and software environments by getting a Befaco MIDI Thing v2 so that I might be able to use software sequencers, particularly the wonderful Alexandernaut Fugue Machine, with my synth.

Jamuary also had me realize the necessity of and how I rely on some functionalities. It has never been more clear to me how integral a stereo matrix mixer is to my patches. The AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer is used in every patch on the main synth. As my patching has become more involved and complicated, I’ve leaned on it more and more, to the point of realizing the four channels of I/O is just not enough. There were several patches throughout this Jamuary when I had to find workarounds for not having enough in the matrix. It’s prompted me to get the new Addac Systems Addac814 6×6 Stereo Matrix Mixer, an expandable system up to (and perhaps beyond) an 18×18 channel configuration. It’s bigger than the 018 (33hp vs 18hp), has odd hp (which is always awkward), and has a non-standard UI for a matrix mixer which will take some time getting used to, but the tradeoffs seem like the extra channels and potential expandability will be worth it. I’ve also realized just how much I like pinging. Whether filters or LPGs, pinging has become an important part of my patches. It’s my main way of imparting some sort of percussion-like sounds, and no single sound in Eurorack quite compares to the beautiful decay of a well tuned LPG, whether vactrol or otherwise.

Overall Jamuary was a blast. The challenge of creating a new patch everyday got my creative juices flowing, and I’m still in a very creative mode as I write this two patches post Jamuary’s conclusion. The sense of accomplishment has helped foster more confidence in my skills as a synthesist, and has only made me want to do more. I have a very positive sense of direction and drive towards more creation. That said, I’m not sure if I’ll fully participate next year or not. It’s likely to depend on my personal circumstances next year. Only time will tell.

To close this already long patch, I’ll leave you with a playlist of some of the highest of lights from this Jamuary.

  1. I ultimately played trumpet into college and was trained as an orchestral musician for a time. ↩︎
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Jamuary 2531

I wanted to do something very different today. Throughout Jamuary I’ve done drones, rhythmic pieces that one might even dance to, as well as many other styles. I even have a classic Rings > Beads patch. It had been a long while since I played my 4ms case. I can recall the last patch I used it. It was a pretty cool patch featuring the Ensemble Oscillator (though not one I uploaded to peaks and nulls), and before that was a patch last February. I hadn’t touched it at all during this Jamuary; it was one of the two cases I hadn’t touched at all (the other was my Instruo case), and I wanted to hear those sweet, sweet wavetables again.

I had initially set out to duplicate my 4ms Wonderland patch. I really enjoyed that patch and wanted to see if I could do it again. The answer is probably, at least a close enough version of it, but I ran into the same problem I had when making it the first time. The output levels of the Spectral Multiband Resonator pings are so low as to need significant boosting. In order to get them in an audible range for humans, I needed to boost them by 20dB, then run them to another VCA to boost them yet more. All this boosting added significant noise. I’m sure it’s something I will lean into in the future (who doesn’t like a bit of noise?), but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with it for tonight. So I decided to use the Spherical Wavetable Navigator to trigger itself in LFO > VCA mode rather than drone in the background. I started it with no transposition or Spread, then slowly introduced modulation to both, along with the modulation present in the Browse, Latitude, WT Spread, and Depth parameters of the wavetables, constantly changing the timbre and voicing. This made the SWN go up and down minor scales, and have different arpeggio patterns.

The SWN was sent to the 4ms Dual Looping Delay, another first-use module this Jamuary. What a cool delay that I’ll definitely need to explore. In the process, I used the Industrial Music Electronics Malgorithm Mk2 in the feedback loop, often times a little too eagerly. I manually rode the input level to the Malgorithm. There was a sweet spot where I could get good crunch without starting to runaway with feedback. This crunched up some already fairly crunchy wavetables in a really nice way. The mix was sent to the output mixer for some reverb.

I also decided to have a second crack at the Cutlasses Gloop. Last night was loads of fun, even if the recording wasn’t perfect. What an excellent little instrument. I need to practice looping, especially when trying to use four different loops simultaneously. Looping slower or more sparse material is much easier. It’s definitely a performative skill I haven’t used much of in the past, and my meager skills show. There’s some unintended jumpiness as I tried to shorten and move the individual loops within the large loop. Though far more gracefully than yesterday’s debacle, the transition between the source and the looped recording was a little rough around the edges. I also made a boneheaded mistake with this track: I never put a reverb send on it in AUM (😬), so the only tails it had were the delays tails, which rode the edge of self-oscillation throughout the Gloop section due to giving slightly too much juice to the input level on Malgorithm. It’s better than nothing, but would have been better with reverb and not low-riding oscillation. This was not intentional. I likely mistook it for reverb, though I did know something wasn’t right.

The Shaped Dual EnvVCA and Dual EnvVCA performed all modulation in this patch. All of their outputs were modulating something. The Spread and Transpose on SWN, the Latitude, Longitude, and Depth on the SWN to navigate the wavetable sphere, as well as the Shape of two of the LFOs.

Modules Used:
4ms Spherical Wavetable Navigator
4ms Dual EnvVCA
4ms Shaped Dual EnvVCA
4ms Dual Looping Delay
Industrial Music Electronics Malgorithm Mk2
Cutlasses Gloop
AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer
Intellijel Amps
ST Modular SVCA
Knob Farm Ferry

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

Improvised and recorded in one take on iPad in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9.

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Jamuary 2530

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do today. I initially settled on a simple piano into an occasionally reversed delay patch, but wanted more than this very Rings-into-Clouds-like aesthetic. If I wanted that today, I’d just use Rings-into-Beads. But there’s a new module I recently got, and it was kinda staring at me wide-eyed, asking “Can you play with me now?”, akin to a small boy begging his busy father for just a few minutes of time. Or something like that. Whatever.

I was set on buying the new Cutlasses Gloop the very first time I saw it. Gloop is a four head tape looper. Each head can be played simultaneously, in either direction at various speeds. Each head can play the entire loop or any snippet down to small grains. It’s a fantastic looper on paper. I received it a couple of weeks ago, but just hadn’t gotten around to playing it yet. Once I realized that I wanted to use Gloop today, the patch pivoted and started to take on a life of its own. But I made the unfortunate decision to still incorporate the whole reverse delay and Beads thing. It’s not that it sounds bad. It doesn’t. It sounds really nice, actually. But it doesn’t fit with the looper direction very well, and I didn’t have the courage to dump the work I’d already done. It added several unnecessary minutes to the recording, and because of a now fixed peculiarity in how the module operates,1 I flubbed the performance, and had to add more unnecessary time to the recording in order to get the settings right and get to looping. That doesn’t happen until over nine minutes into the recording. Such is Jamuary.

The patch isn’t terribly difficult, even if there’s a lot of patch cables. I patched four cycling functions from the Addac506 to Numberwang, adjusted the rise and fall range to something that produced a nice cadence of gates in the Disting NT. The same four functions went to the Vostok Instruments Asset where I attenuated and offset all four channels into specific ranges of notes so as not to overcrowd the sonic range by using attenuation only. These four signals were patched to the Disting NT CV inputs for the quantizer to voice everything in D minor.

The piano went to the stereo matrix mixer where it was sent to the Veno-Echo, Beads, and Gloop.

Veno-Echo provided the sumptuous delayed sounds, randomly triggered into reverse by End of Rise gate outs on the Addac506, via the CuteLab Missed Opportunities, with a low probability of allowing the gate through.

Beads was set to have medium length grains with a sharper envelope, the buffer being slowly scanned at one octave up. The Beads output was sent directly to the mixer for multitracking.

One unfortunate fact of looping more or less randomly generated parts is that you get what you get. Sometimes, like during my first run-through, you’re able to capture a really good loop. Something you can work with. But other times, you’re not left with much, and you kind of need to eat your own dog food and pretend it tastes great. Such is this recording, I think. It’s not offensive. Not by a long shot. But had this been a take for anything other than Jamuary, I would have re-done it (as well as jettisoned other parts). Looping can be inspiring when you have a good loop. But it can feel like work when you have to search around for good looping points.

I completely neglected to snap any pics of this patch, which is a shame. Next time. And I’ll definitely be revisiting Gloop very soon.

Modules Used:
Addac Systems Addac506 Stochastic Function Generator
Nonlinearcircuits Numberwang
Expert Sleepers Disting NT
Vostok Instruments Asset
AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer
CuteLab Missed Opportunities
Venus Instruments Veno-Echo
Mutable Instruments Beads
Cutlasses Gloop
Knob Farm Ferry
ST Modular SVCA
Intellijel Quad VCA

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

  1. This behavior has been fixed in the newest firmware, but I haven’t installed it yet. When you cleared a loop, all tape head settings would revert to the default. I didn’t realize it until I was in the midst of performing the patch. ↩︎
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Jamuary 2529

Hitting record before midnight counts.

A completely ripped off note progression (E, F#, G#, B) from Alessandro Cortini’s piece titled ERA on the Make Noise Records release Strega Musica.

0-Control fed the pitch sequence to Strega, which Strega-fied it. Strega’s triangle wave output was copied and patched to channels one and two of QMMG for some low pass filtering, with slightly different cutoff frequencies and differently attenuated modulation to helped create a stereo effect in the note progression. I first tried feeding it through QPAS, but it simply didn’t sound very good.

The blip bloops were a failed experiment. I was hoping for sporadic, sparkly bits that would ornament the droning note sequence, but it ended up not really at all what I’d hoped. Jamuary inherently comes with struggles, and sometime the time demands that you push record, ready or not. I probably should have had those notes be simple sine or triangle waves from Spectraphon. Instead I tried to be cute by using the even and odd mixed outputs with some heavy handed modulation to Slide and Focus on both sides. It didn’t really work. It exists, and juxtaposes itself against the dark drone, but that’s about it. I added to the confusion by using the Sample and Hold feature to control both the X and Y channels of René,, and haphazardly at that.

Well call today’s patch…a Time/Filter Experiment gone wrong.

Modules Used:
0-Control
Strega
René Mk2
Tempi
Spectraphon
ModDemix
Function
QMMG
DXG
Maths
Wogglebug
ModDemix
Mimeophon

Improvised and recorded in one take on iPad in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9.

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Jamuary 2528

Long day at work so this will be a quick and dirty patch notes….

The Make Noise system has my back again.

QPAS pinging away. Sequenced and pinged by René. Smile Pass and Bandpass outputs both sent to X-Pan and crossfaded, although I don’t know there’s much difference between them in the output. Spectraphon supplied both ring modulated and FM tones. For FM tones, Spectraphon A is on left, Spectraphon B on right. They are tuned an octave apart. Both mixes enveloped by a Fall modulated Maths functions in DXG.

Both QPAS and Spectraphon had every CV input modulated by…something. Wogglebug, René, Maths, Tempi, Maths Functions, the OR and SUM outputs on Maths, and just about anything else I could find.

Everything mixed in DXG and sent to Mimeophon for some delay and a decent amount of Halo. Had a little too much fun using the 0-Coast Slope output to modulate Mimeophon’s uTime CV input.

Kick was created by the 0-Coast. A steady clock from Tempi triggered the Contour on the 0-Coast. The Contour output was attenuated and sent to the v/oct input to give the kick some punch. The kick is dry in the mix.

Modules Used:
René Mk2
Tempi
Spectraphon
ModDemix
Function
QPAS
Maths
Wogglebug
X-Pan
Mimeophon
0-Coast

Improvised and recorded in one take on iPad in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9.

Posted on

Jamuary 2527

When I set out to do today’s Jamuary patch I had initially planned on recreating, at least in spirit, a patch I did as a test for a travel synth during the summer. After setting up the piano portion of the patch, I changed my mind and decided against creating a sub bass sequence, or indeed using any distortion as I did in that patch. In part was because I was highly taken aback when, instead of plugging the piano output into the Qu-Bit Nautilus, as I did in that patch, I reached for the extremely lo-fi Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2. The natural decay of the delay was plenty dirty in all the best of ways, and decided to go with it instead of introducing some other form of distortion. From there the patch went a very different direction. Rather than a sad yet hopeful tenor, this one is just sad.

For this patch I decided to use Stochaos as my gate producer for triggering the piano sounds, being fed by a chaotically controlled clock. I’m a fan of using chaos as a clock source. I’ve used multiple methods of using chaos to create off beat rhythms, from using Numberwang to running a chaos signal through Divide & Conquer, a clock divider than can use any signal as a clock input. Today I used, for the first time, the Nonlinearcircuits Let’s Get Fenestrated, a comparator NLC-style, fed by a heavily modulated The Hypster. This process created a perfectly ultra-wonky clock, which then fed Stochaos. Stochaos spat out four gates at the Disting NT inputs which triggered both the quantizer and the Poly Multisample player.

The audio was sent to the AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer, and on to the Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2 for some soul-crushingly beautiful repeats that seem to disintegrate as they decay away. I seriously contemplated just leaving the patch at that, adding in some reverb, and calling it a day, but I knew that I could add to it subtly and give it some more life. To give it some other textures to contemplate and heighten the overall mood of the piece without distracting too much from the piano and those beautiful repeats.

I started with the Qu-Bit Electronix Data Bender, but I knew I only wanted to use that sparingly and didn’t think it would add enough by itself, so opted also to send the piano notes to the Dradd(s) for some good old fashioned time stretching. This was perfect and even allowed me to use the Data Bender even more sparingly so as not to overwhelm the Piano with failure. I slowly controlled the Data Bender output in the ST Modular SVCA with a modulated LFO from the Frap Tools Falistri. To modulate the length of the LFO I used an attenuated and slightly offset Smooth Random output from Sapel into the Both CV input. An inverted copy of the LFO was sent to a second SVCA which very slightly lowered the volume of the Piano and its repeats while the Data Bender did the thing.

The Dradd(s) add tons of texture with their medium-to-short grains, re-creating the piano at a slow crawl, filling in space and adding a layer of intrigue. Like a splash in water, the Dradd(s) created a distorted view of what’s underneath: slivers of sound overlapping and rippling off each other in a beautiful chorus. I’m still infatuated with the dual Dradd(s). I’ve used lots of granular processors in Eurorack. Of the continuous processing type, those that don’t rely on pre-recording to a buffer, but instead have a continuous buffer and don’t require recording a certain bit of material to process, I have a very difficult time choosing between the Dradd(s) and the Mutable Instruments Beads. It seems like I can always find something fascinating. That I can always use it to find something beautiful inside of the audio itself.

Modules Used:
Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster
Nonlinearcircuits Let’s Get Fenestrated
Nonlinearcircuits Stochaos
Nonlinearcircuits De-Escalate
Expert Sleepers Disting NT
Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2
Qu-Bit Electronix Data Bender
Pladask Elektrisk Dradd(s)
Frap Tools Falistri
Frap Tools Sapél
Vostok Instruments Asset
AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer
ST Modular SVCA
Intellijel Quad VCA
Knob Farm Ferry

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

Improvised and recorded in one take on iPad in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9.


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