Jamuary 2619 – peaks and nulls

I had a good chunk of a very descriptive post for this patch and then had a massive brain fart and, in a fit of not paying the proper attention, deleted it all. In that light, this post will be short(er).

I was inspired by a recent video from Make Noise wherein Walker used a triangle function to Activate the various channels of the NUSS. During 2615 I used his idea as a small portion of that patch, but today decided I wanted to extend my base and make it the focal point. It ended up being the only part.

This patch is actually quite deceiving in its simplicity. It’s not very difficult or technical at all. It started, as so many patches do, with an ever-changing function from Maths. The End Of Cycle output triggered Wogglebug which produced a random voltage that was sent to the Both input on Maths Channel Four which changed the length of the triangle wave. The shape was more exponential than linear, though not fully exponential. As the voltage increased, the function Activated Polimaths (and Multiwave) channels. First slowly, then quickly, and finally slowly again as the function approached zero volts. The EOC trigger also advanced René’s X Channel, sending a new pitch with every cycle of the Maths function.

There was a lot of modulation happening, though all of it was basic. No modulation of my modulators. No fancy CV mixes. Just standard level and/or polarity shifts for modulation targets that didn’t have its own attenuator. There was a goodly mixture of modulation sources, however, ranging from external signals like Maths and Multimod, but also from internal sources like Multiwave’s Multimod, and via both Spread Modulation. Because of all of this modulation, the illusion given was almost as if every channel Activation was accompanied by its own pitch voltage, though the pitch stayed the same through each cycle.

The last touch was the addition of Degrader, a bit crushing and sample reduction plugin. I’ve used it a couple of times this Jamuary, but it was never quite right. In this patch it was just about perfect.

A little bit of Mimeophon and Otterley and that was that. This recording has a definite lullaby feel to it. I’d have no hesitations about putting this recording in a nursery, or indeed in my own headphones as I fall asleep.