For Jamuary 2nd I decided to revisit a sequence that my younger son “made” over the summer. And by “made” I mean that he came in and altered permanently a sequence I had been building, but had not yet saved. I decided to save his for future use, and that future use is now.
The sequence is sparse, but provides a good set of notes to be mixed up and thrown in a soup of delay, granular synthesis, re-synthesis, and reverb. The result is a slightly futuristic ambient stroll on the moon.
Ordinarily I’d have a patch diagram, but not today. The audio and basic control paths are simple enough. A sequence going from Oxi One to Brenso. Brenso’s sine and triangle wave are output to Cunsa inputs 1&3 (which normal to 2&4 respectively). The grouped outputs are used in a stereo configuration. This goes out to the stereo matrix mixer and on to several effects. But there is heavy modulation throughout, and that’s what I won’t attempt to diagram. That said, I do have a couple of pics….
Let’s Splosh does most of the heavily lifting for modulation in this patch. Four outputs from Triple Sloths, which is itself modulated by The Hypster, feed the Splosh inputs. Virtually all of Splosh’s outputs are modulating something on Veno-Echo, Cornflakes, or Cunsa.
I didn’t get the result I had originally envisioned when deciding on using all 4 Cunsa filters in a stereo configuration. Initially I was going to slowly modulate the cutoff and resonance of all 4 filters independently, hoping to find some quad peaks, but I decided it was more important that I explore the “LPG” functionality of CUNSA, so instead modulated the filter cutoff with envelopes. I’m not sure this is the correct material for that sort of business anyways.
Today’s patch ended up with 2 separate recordings. The first was a bit more intentional. I wouldn’t go so far as to say composed, or even written, but it was roughly planned to go the way it did. Start with the sequence drenched in reverb, followed by delay, granular, and finally the Endless Processor.
The second recording was a lot of twisting knobs on the matrix mixer to see what sort of craziness I might unveil. I didn’t get into any feedback patching with the matrix mixer, so we didn’t really get out of hand, but we do have some silliness here.
Modules Used:
Oxi One
Frap Tools Brenso
Frap Tools Falistri
Frap Tools CUNSA
Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster
Nonlinearcircuits Triple Sloths
Nonlinearcircuits Let’s Splosh
AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer
Venus Instruments Veno-Echo
Blukač Endless Processor
Miso Modular Cornflakes
Knob Farm Ferry
Vongon Ultrasheer
Both variations were performed and recorded in 1 take on January 2. Recorded in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9 on iPad.