Another long day at work and little time after for music making means another iPad day. In the spirit of Jamuary, the show must go on. Today I further experimented with using Alexandernaut’s truly excellent plugin, Fugue Machine. But rather than using Speldosa or some other bright and plucky sounds or cello, which I’ve done already this month, I decided to go very slow, sparse, and somber, using three of the four Fugue Machine outputs to feed the Decidedly Decent Sampler with Flannel Piano, while the fourth output fed a second instance of Decent Sampler and The Quiet Choir by Joshua Meltzer (available free on Pianobook). I can’t wait to have the ability to use Fugue Machine with the modular.
Today’s Jamuary was hard. I’m tired, and I made the fatal mistake of waiting until the last minute. The result isn’t bad. I actually like it, even if I’d make changes in a future revision. But in the spirit of using some unfamiliar gear during Jamuary, I ran into unfamiliar problems. I couldn’t find a filter I liked, had a hard time choosing delays, and had to patch and re-patch several times, only to arrive at a fairly simple audio chain and control scheme. I made dumb mistakes that hampered the effort and made it much more difficult than it should be.
Jamuary 2513 and 2514 were both rhythmic driven patches, and cool as they were, I was ready for something slow today. Up in the top right corner of my synth (as it’s currently configured) sits the revered Mannequins Just Friends. I haven’t had it too long, perhaps three or four months, but I hadn’t had the occasion to use it yet and I figured there’s no better time than right now to pop that particular cherry. Though I know Just Friends is many things, including a harmonic oscillator, I wanted to try its modulation capabilities during my premier with it. From all reports, it’s utterly fantastic in that role. So I set it at a slow yet still moving Time, and let it loose. The Hypster, via De-Escalate, modulated both Intone and Curve to keep the movement of each function in constant flux.
I thought about using virtually every multi-oscillator module I had. The E370, Falistri(s), 4Vox, CUNSA, Harmonic Oscillator, Quad Operator, and several others. But for some reason, I settled on using a Calsynth Changes, a very excellent 1:1 Mutable Instruments Stages clone, in Harmonic Oscillator (AKA Ouroboros mode). It’s not really a conventional choice for use as an oscillator, though it does the job great, and has the added benefit of having exactly six oscillators with six shapes (I used triangle waves), conveniently matching the six outputs of Just Friends.
Initially I tried to control the levels of each oscillator directly on Changes, but it doesn’t work great that way, so I opted to patch each output to a individual VCAs to be modulated by Just Friends, with the odd harmonics left and the even harmonics right. The output goes directly to the Bizarre Jezabel Mimosa, then Quarté Mk2 for a bit of lo-fi-ification. I had two looping triangle envelopes modulating time on both delay channels for some vibrato (even if I couldn’t hone in the modulation to my satisfaction), and, as the performance progressed, fed a slow looping stochastic function from the Addac506 to Mimosa’s wet/dry CV input. The noisy delay made Mimosa superfluous in some ways, but the effect is still nice, though probably not necessary, especially since I was also overdriving the VCAs with hot envelopes and, for much of the performance, with the attenuator wide open.
As a last minute addition, I also added a send to the Dradd brothers (in Grain mode) for some more gritty texture. This patch is full of texture. I tried to send the Dradd(s) through a delay, but couldn’t find one I liked quickly enough, and so abandoned the idea and ran it straight to the mixer for some reverb treatment.
The result is a pretty epic drone, perhaps a bit reminiscent of Alessandro Cortini (if I may be so bold), especially with the signature noisy PT2399 sound from the delay chips.
I set out today to experiment with exactly two things: a dynamic trigger patch technique suggested by none other than DivKid, and a new stereo wavefolder that I haven’t used nearly enough. It started off as a simple patch, that turned into a beast.
Dynamic triggers are interesting. Normally a trigger’s amplitude doesn’t matter. Most triggers simply cue other modules to do whatever it is they do. But some drum modules, filters, and LPGs thrive when fed with dynamic triggers because it allows individual hits to be different volumes, which brings an interesting dimension to LPG pings. There’s variety; a variance that adds character and drama.
The patch itself isn’t that difficult. The key is to both attenuate and offset noise, and use that in a VCA CV input. In a thread about Dynamic Triggers on Modwiggler, DivKid writes,
It’s also good to remember (for all of us, I know I need a reminder sometimes) that CV utilities are our friends. Offset and attenuation would get you a long way. So rather than fully random. Take a CV utility and use an offset of say 3V (roughly) and then mix in the noise but attenuated and you’ll have a series of values that are hovering and dancing around the offset. Musically and sort of “humanised” around that offset.
Although it sounded easy enough, I asked, on his Discord server, to elaborate, and he confirmed that the patch is as easy as I imagined it would be:
Trigger > VCA input
Offset/attenuated noise > VCA CV input
If you have a VCA with both level bias/offset and CV attenuators (like the Intellijel Amps, Quad VCA, or many others), simply patch the trigger to the input, set the offset to taste (3V, for example), and set the CV attenuator to taste. If you set it at around 1V, you’ll have triggers between 2-4V. The more attenuated the noise, the closer the triggers will be to the offset level. However you do it, it’s a dynamic treat.
I did this patch times four, using four copies of a Frap Tools Sapel trigger, each patched to the CuteLab Missed Opportunities for probability processing before going to the Intellijel Amps in order to be dynamically controlled by the offset and attenuated noise. Amps made this patch much easier because it has CV inputs that normalize, which means I only needed to use a single patch cable to feed all four channels doing trigger processing.1
These now dynamic triggers pinged four Rabid Elephant Natural Gates, which does register dynamic triggers, where I used four Frap Tools Falistri generators as oscillators before being mixed and sent to the Venus Instruments Veno-Echo.2 There are a lot of patch cables, with plenty of mults and Stackcables throughout. Triggers were flying everywhere in the patch. From Sapel to Missed Opportunities, Amps to Stochastic Function Generator, and Ornament & Crime’s legendary Quantermain quad quantizer algorithm. And that’s just to create notes. Other triggers went to the Nonlinearcircuits Divide & Conquer and Stochaos (to trigger its rather excellent stepped CV outputs), Veno-Echo, and Calsynth Changes, which modulated a lackluster kick and the very very cool Optotronics Stereo Lockhart Wavefolder.
The wavefolder was surely the high point in this patch for me. I really only understand how half of it works, but it’s ultra-fun. It adds harmonics in really interesting ways, fed by sharp envelopes to each side from a Calsynth Changes, triggered by a Calsynth Twiigs quad Bernoulli gate based on the Mutable Instruments Branches. This creates some exceptionally cool stereo movement that I’ll have to explore more of.
I also used the Industrial Music Electronics Malgorithm Mk2 for part, which was cool, but was overshadowed by the wavefolder once it was added.
I actually used all eight VCAs in my Amps chain to dynamically control four triggers and four snappy, stochastic envelopes from the Addac506 Stochastic Function Generator which were patched to the Natural Gates’ Control CV inputs. ↩︎
I meant to mix these down in a slightly stereo orientation, but I simply forgot to turn the pan knobs. 😕 ↩︎
I hit record on the patch at 11:56pm EST. It counts. A even longer day at work than yesterday, but I was able to make it in time.
I started tonight with another feedback patch, but was completely uninspired, so went to a Make Noise Jam. René v2 is an incredibly good sequencer for live jamming. I’m not very good at sequencing, but René doesn’t care. It just works and things flow freely. Spectraphon is exceeding all expectations at this point. It sounds friggin’ good.
The quick and dirty….
X Channel controls Spectraphon A Odd/Even outputs in QMMG Channels 1 and 2.
Y Channel controls Spectraphon B Odd/Even outputs in QMMG Channels 4 and 3.
C Channel sends pitch to QPAS, which is pinging away to a steady clock, but it’s input is faded in and out by a cycling Function via its VCA.
Wogglebug, Maths, and the other Function do some modulation to Partials, Slide, Radiance L and R, and QPAS’ Frequency.
All three voices mixed in DXG and sent through Mimeophon, then the Maneco Labs Otterley Reverb.
This patch was really fun and making it exemplifies Make Noise’s strengths as instrument designers. The cohesiveness of the modules as a set, and the physical UI are really conducive to just jamming out and having fun.
I had to work long hours today, and my back hurts bad, but I still wanted to put something together to keep Jamuary plugging along. Normally on days like this I would have done a quick patch on the iPad, but today I decided on a reasonably simple Make Noise feedback patch, using a very similar patch to my first feedback exploration. I need work on my feedback patching, but there are definitely many nice parts.
The quick and dirty notes:
QPAS L LP output > Mimeophon L Input Mimeophon L Output > Output mixer AND QPAS L Input Mimeophon R Output > Output mixer
With this configuration you’re monitoring from the Left and Right Mimeophon outputs. I also added a dark and dirty reverb, the Maneco Labs Otterley, before going to the output for a little extra murkiness.
Modules Used: Make Noise QPAS Make Noise Mimeophon Make Noise Maths Make Noise Function Make Noise Wogglebug Maneco Labs Otterley
It’s been a while since I’d played my Make Noise synth. It’s not part of my main synth, but down in my media room where I spend time to myself at night. Knowing my work schedule today, I knew that I wouldn’t have time to make a patch on the main synth, and I wanted more than just the iPad. So I made sure that tonight would be my return to this wonderful instrument. Only today I had a new addition. After dealing with a few technical difficulties with my audio interface, I was ready to go.
I was never really enthused by Spectraphon. Lots of people had an immediate case of GAS when it was announced, but it wasn’t something that drew my interest. Several months after release, I saw a couple of intriguing patches, and decided to revisit the early Spectraphon demo videos to get a decent hold of what it was and was not. Upon release, its resynthesis capability was the emphasis of most synthesists, and it turns out I was more interested in it being an oscillator, so when I found one at a decent price, I ordered it. Though I’ve had it for a couple of months, I hadn’t installed it until tonight with this very patch in mind.
Jamuary 2511 was inspired by my recent patch, Jamuary 2505, which used the cascading envelopes from the Verbos Polyphonic Envelope. Make Noise doesn’t have a cascading envelope, but it’s easy enough to patch up using End Of Rise or End of Cycle outputs that Make Noise’s function generators do have. The envelopes don’t have the same sort of close relationship as with the Polyphonic Envelope, but each function can be tailored specifically how you want them, and each envelope can still be triggered the same way. I used four functions for the drone, each bringing its oscillator in and out of audibility. The first envelope started with Maths Ch1, then to the first Function, and then to a second. The second function generator in Maths won’t work for this patch because it only has a EOC trigger, and I needed EOR gates to trigger the next envelope so as one chord tone was falling, another would be rising. The second Function triggered Contour on the 0-Coast, which in turn completed the cycle by triggering Maths. The chain started with a gate output from 0-Control, before I quickly switched cables. All four envelopes had their decays modulated in one form or another so the recycling chain of chord tones wouldn’t repeat exactly the same.
In total five separate oscillators are used in this patch. Maths Ch1 controlled Spectraphon A’s Odd and Even outputs in DXG. The first Function controlled Spectraphon B’s Odd and Even outputs in DXG. Both sides had Partials, Slide, and Focus modulated to some degree, and oscillator A was having its FM Bus lightly modulated to give it a bit of growl. The second Function controlled STO’s Waveshaper output in QMMG (LPG mode), and Contour controlled 0-Coast’s oscillator with its built-in LPG. Strega just drones on.
All of these signals were mixed in stereo, and sent to QPAS and out of the Smile Pass outputs for some subtle picking out of harmonics and a gooey, gooey swirl. The cutoff frequency was modulated by Maths Ch2, cycling away, and Radiate L and R were modulated by Wogglebug. I gave QPAS increasing amounts of drive as the patch played on.
From QPAS signal went to Mimeophon for some delay and further stereo movement. I had it modulated, but it just didn’t sound very good, so took it all off.
When I first got Strega I was preoccupied by figuring out the best way to stereo-ize it. It doesn’t exactly need it, Strega is a wall of sound kind of wash, but some movement in the stereo field is nice. It turns out I had the answer the whole time: Mimeophon. I hadn’t yet tried that until tonight (for some stupid reason or another), but it’s perfect. QPAS works great too, but it can be too much at times, whereas the Mimeophon is more subtle. I had used a stereo reverb in the past, but I wanted more.
There was also a new pedal in the mix tonight for reverb, the AC Noises Ricorda. My audio interface was giving me fits tonight when I sought to use sends, and so I couldn’t use it how I normally would. I had to control the wet/dry mix on the pedal, which is less than ideal, and it didn’t work exactly how I wanted it to work. The reverb sounds great, even if I’m a bit less enthused with its implementation of granular, which seemed to spit out grains in even intervals. First one, then two at twice the speed, then four, then eight, etc. it just didn’t sound natural. I’ll have to dig in the manual to get that sorted. I also used it to add noise with a scratchy pot, that was pretty cool, even if I didn’t use it enough.
Between work and the second snow storm this week I was super short on time, which made today another iPad only affair. I started with something similar as with Jamuary 2507 and 2508, the Alexandernaut Fugue Machine feeding two instantiations of Decent Sampler, one with cello samples and the other with viola. Both go through some delay and reverb, and later Fluss, a beautiful granular synthesizer by Bram Bos and Hainbach.
I have lots to work to do with these sort of patches, and with this one in particular. I’m a midi novice, and still inexperienced with software instruments, particularly those on the iPad, so good chunks of my time were figuring the best way to do X or Y. It’s a pain, but the effort has not gone unrewarded, and, more importantly, I’ve opened a new world of possibilities for the future.
Today I decided to go back to a technique I’ve rarely used, and on a much grander scale. I don’t use noise very often, and when I do it tends to be for the obvious use cases. Hit hats, wind and ocean sounds, sprays, etc. I seldomly use it for modulation, and only once have I used noise of any flavor to amplitude modulate an oscillators wave. Today I would do it again, times eight.
I conceived of using noise to modulate all eight harmonics of the Verbos Harmonic Oscillator this morning as my wife was talking to me. I even popped up a bit at the idea, and she took notice.
Wife: “What?”
Me: “Nothing. Just had a thought occur to me. Not even sure if it’s worth a shit.”
I spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon thinking about how I wanted to do this patch. I knew that just noise into each harmonic’s VCA wasn’t it. Then it occurred to me: Chaos! As soon as this though hit my brain I knew what to do, and immediately went to the synth to start patching.
I ran blue noise from Sapel to input 1 of the Intellijel Amps. Amps is a special sort of VCA. Everything cascades. All inputs cascade, as do CV inputs, and there are mixing outputs as well. It’s incredibly flexible. I have four of them chained together to be an eight channel “super VCA/submixer” and it’s been a great choice. Since each input cascades, I only needed one noise input to run this entire section of the patch. Every other channel received that same blue noise input as well. Into each channel’s CV input I patched one of the eight outputs from Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster to chaotically modulate the noise levels of all eight channels independently. Once that was patched, I ran each Amps output to its own Harmonic Oscillator VCA input at random. The only part of this patch that was planned were the first and fifth harmonics, which received their noise modulation from the U and -U outputs on The Hypster as they’re the outputs with the highest amplitude. Each harmonic was slowly brought in by slowly adjusting each CV attenuator individually at random until they were all playing. The nature of chaos means that cycles, even if semi-regular at times, don’t repeat exactly the same, and the harmonics never played the same twice, which kept movement interesting. There were often pauses or redirections in motion for each harmonic. Wonderful.
The mixed HO output was patched to the Multi-Delay Processor. I’ve been taken in by the earthy sound of the Harmonic Oscillator. Each harmonic sine wave has a little hair on it once you give them a little push. The drive in the MultixDelay Processor, both on the input and on each tap output, accentuates that hair in all the right ways. This Verbos ecosystem is warm and inviting, but it can also roar. Taps four and eight were patched to the Verbos Scan & Pan, hard panned left and right, and the output of the MDP, which only had the dry signal, was patched to be in the middle of the mix. This mix created a strong signal with some subtle stereo movement which ended up being fantastic. This stereo signal was then patched to the stereo matrix mixer to be spread around to different effects.
The Rossum Panharmonium fed the Holocene Electronics Non-Linear Memory Machine, which was set with a fairly slow delay and full clockwise smearing, which really smoothed out the Panharmonium’s output for an accompanying drone that floats along beside the ever moving Harmonic Oscillator. This output then fed the Dradd(s), which did its thing in Grain Mode (although I think I forgot to turn on the modulation to both P1 and P2 on both Dradds 😬 – I’m also not convinced it isn’t lost in the mix).
I’m very pleased with how this patch turned out and was a great success at using this technique which I’ll be sure to use more often.
I was short on time yesterday, so put together a reasonably simple patch on the iPad. This Jamuary I’m purposefully trying to use unfamiliar techniques with unfamiliar instruments, and that’s what yesterday was all about in the little time I had. But the patch turned out so beautifully that I wanted to take some time to explore its possibilities in the modular. My first thought was to try and use the Oxi One as a Midi > CV converter so that I might patch the outputs of the Alexandernaut Fugue Machine to something like the Synthesis Technology E370 or some other quad sound source. But despite spending the better part of three hours trying to figure it out,1 I still had achieved no progress and so abandoned the idea and decided to do the next best thing. To patch a more intentional version of Jamuary 2507 into the modular and run it through several effects and see if I couldn’t come up with something new.
The initial patch is the same. Fugue Machine feeds the Klevgrand Speldosa and Decidedly Decent Sampler software instruments in AUM. Yesterday those went to reverb and I called it a day. The patch was beautiful and full of promise. Today went much further. The outputs of both Speldosa and the Cello samples were sent from AUM, via the ES-9 outputs, to the AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer so that they might be spread around the system to three different effects, shifted and morphed matrix style, and finally sent back to AUM before getting some reverb. Though I’m trying new techniques with new things, that doesn’t mean everything in a single patch, lest I become overwhelmed and frustrated.2 The effects I chose were the Venus Instruments Veno-Echo,3 Pladask Elektrisk Dradd brothers, and the Rossum Electro-Music Panharmonium. Speldosa and the cello samples were sent to the delay, with Speldosa only going to Panharmonium, while the cello only was initially sent to the Dradd(s), before adding the delay to the Dradd(s)’ input, slowly adding more, and allowing those higher pitched notes to be granular-ized and spread through the stereo field. The Dradd(s) really turned out to be the highlight, though the delay isn’t far behind. Panharmonium sounds nice, as it always does, but seemed to get lost when it wasn’t leveled as a prominent voice in the mix at a given moment.
To be fair, I struggle with just about everything with the Oxi One. I really need to revisit it with purpose. ↩︎
I recently suffered that sort of frustration when I put two completely unfamiliar modules in my Xmas 2024 Synth. It was an exercise in frustration when it should have been a relaxing time. ↩︎
I used CoVariant, a now seemingly discontinued midi > cv plugin for the iPad to send out an analog clock from the iPad that is perfectly in sync with the midi clock generated by AUM. I will never delete this plugin as long as it continues to work. It also does midi > CV conversion (but I couldn’t figure it out). ↩︎
I don’t use software very often. I’ve never recorded a piece of music using only software. Until today.
With work looming early, and the promise of a late evening, a full modular patch just isn’t in the cards today. So I decided to pull out the iPad and create…something. Though just a little bit of effort went into it, I’m supremely happy with the result.
The patch is simple. The Alexandernaut Fugue Machine, a wonderfully conceived four head interactive midi piano roll where each head can be sent in any direction, at any speed or octave, sent 3 channels of midi data to Klevgrand Speldosa, a beautiful music box plugin for iPad, while sending a fourth stream of midi data to Decent Sampler loaded with the DK Solo Cello Spurs sample pack. Both software instruments are sent to the Eventide BlackHole Reverb, and out.
It’s not a super low effort day, I needed to figure out how to do a few things, and come up with a quick and dirty improvisation, but it’s not a high effort day. Whatever effort, the result is wonderful; in the spirit of Olafur Arnalds. After eight modular recordings in six days I think I can forgive myself.
