Jamuary 2526

I love my Make Noise synth. No matter my mood, I can always count on my Make Noise box to provide for some serious fun. The instrument is simply sublime. It’s quick, intuitive, and a breeze to perform with. Tony and crew have really done a bang-up job not only designing each module, but in making sure they fit seamlessly together as a cohesive instrument. Of course there are some modules that I have strong opinions about, but rarely do those issues inhibit creativity.

Tonight’s patch was an improvised jam. It was a long day at work and I had just under two hours to get a patch together, work out the modulation, figure some flow for the performance, however meager, and record it. Two hours is about the least amount of time I can generally create a patch from scratch, though I’ve noticed throughout this Jamuary that I am getting faster, but with the Make Noise synth I figured I’d hit record before midnight. Today I had some time to spare.

The patch is pretty involved. Every sound except the kick drum, which is STO, was generated from Spectraphon. I used both sine waves from Spectraphon to ring modulate each other in my very cool orange LED ModDemix. One copy is sent to the L channel of DXG, the other the right channel (both with dummy cables in the unused channel to preserve the stereo field), each triggered in their respective Strike inputs by René’s X and Y channel. Both sides of Spectraphon received pitch CV from the X channel. This created a really cool stereo field with the molody’s rhythm jumping back and forth in your ear, constantly changing as I improvised on René.

The second voice is where it gets a bit complicated. It was made from Spectraphon’s B side Odd and Even outputs, triggered in QMMG by using René’s Cartesian channel gate. The B side Focus is sequenced by the Y channel, and Slide was sequenced by the Cartesian channel. Varying levels of Wogglebug’s Stepped output modulated the B side Partials, as well as the B side FM Bus Index. There’s a lot of movement in this voice, but it’s always harmonically related to the first voice. Partials flying around, FM being heavily modulated, both affecting the sound of different from each output.¹ After being gated in QMMG. I sent a mix of the modulated Odd and Even signal to X-Pan to be panned back and forth in the stereo field.

Everything is mixed together in DXG and sent to Mimeophon for delay and a hint of Halo.

The kick is made using STO. A x1 gate from Tempi triggered Function which provided an envelope in X-Pan’s Aux input, I polarized Function’s negative output in Maths, in order to make it positive again, and used that to FM STO to give the kick a little more punch.

This patch was really fun to make and perform. I was shaking my skinny little ass all over the joint. As a kid from the 80s, that’s the measuring stick for a good time.

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

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

1. It occurred to me as I was writing this that I could have simply used the mixed output from Spectraphon rather than mixing them later. It would have also enabled me to not have to run the kick through the delay. ↩︎