Category: Gates

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Stochaotic Bubbles: Effervescent Chaos Up And Down

Since I’ve recently received several modules, I’ve been using them rather heavily of late, and they’ve kind of taken front and center. The Nonlinearcircuits Stochaos and Humble Audio Quad Operator are featured in many of my recent patches, and this is no exception. I wasn’t sure, exactly, what I wanted with this patch, but I knew I wanted a chaos clock that was moving fast. I wanted lots of gates firing quickly, and use those gates to hit 4 separate LPGs, this time a pair of Tokyo Gates. Then I knew I wanted these quickly firing notes to be heavily delayed, and sent to a resynthesizer to fill in space and give something for those quickly firing notes and repeats to swim in. I wasn’t imagining bubbles when I first started, but that’s what I kept coming to as I was fiddling with the patch, and after a while leaned into this theme a bit to see where I could take it.

Getting a fast chaotic clock was the easy part. I’ve been using chaos-based clocks almost exclusively for a few months. I don’t mind a grid, but most of my creative inclinations are more towards malleable textures, and chaos provides an almost perfect ebb and flow. At slow tempos it’s definitely noticeable, but this patch was to be clocked at a very high rate; perhaps even approaching audio rate, and those differences at high rate are much less noticeable As per usual, I sent the modulated chaos signal to Divide & Conquer, before sending a fast division to Stochaos. From there the chaos-generated gates would go to the CalSynth Changes to create some snappy decay envelopes that would hit the CV input of four separate Tokyo Gates. The outputs of the Tokyo Gates were mixed into 2 signals in the Mutable Instruments Veils, and finally sent to the AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer.

The audio is from the 4 operators of the Humble Audio Quad Operator. Although I initially experimented with tweaking the wave shape of the operators, several times, actually, I settled on sine waves. I also tried to work in some FM, but I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for, which is likely because I was using all 4 operators as carriers, rather than trying to use just a couple of the oscillators as carriers, with the others acting as modulators. It’s tough to get oscillators to behave when you have lots of cross frequency modulation happening. Generally it’s pretty pedestrian as far as the audio source, but there are so many individual notes that are echoed so many times that anything much more complex might be a wall of sound rather than something more enunciated.

The pitch signal is taken from a slow chaos wave through Xaoc Devices Samara II for some careful offset and attenuation before going to uO_C’s Quantermain for quantization into D minor (even if I have no idea what the oscillator is actually tuned to), before being sent to the v/oct input on the Quad Operator. That accounts for the generally up and down nature of the pitch progression. It’s also a good example on how chaos operates. It’s steady-ish, but there are definitely times when the chaos deviates from its path. Sometimes that means speeding up or slowing down. Sometimes that means direction reversals. Sometimes it means lingering at some pitches longer than others. You think you know what’s going to happen, but then the chaos surprises you, providing something interesting. Even still, I feel like there is too much of the same thing when it comes to the pitch in this patch, but since it was more an exploratory patch I think I can forgive myself.

I recently became aware to the dismal fact that my main synth, a large set of separate subsystems that comprises 1,560hp and that has another 588hp in interchangeable subsystems, did not have a vactrol-based LPG in it. Despite having several vactrol LPGs from the Make Noise LxD and Optomix, to the Nekyia Sosumi, and still more, not a single one was in my main case. All of them had been moved to either my Make Noise Satellite Subsystem, or else my Side Case. I have plenty of non-vactrol-based LPGs like the Rabid Elephant Natural Gate, Bard Synthesizers VTG, Frap Tools CUNSA, and Verbos Amp & Tone in the main case, but not one vactrol LPG. As soon as I came to this realization I knew that it couldn’t stand for a single moment longer, and moved a pair of Tokyo Tape Music Center Tokyo Gates from my side case back to the main case. I’d get 4 channels of my favorite vactrol LPG to go along with all of the additive-style oscillators I tend to gravitate towards. Three Body, Quad Operator, Algo, Mob of Emus, and many others besides pair so naturally with a LPG that it seems boneheaded to not have them ready for the occasion.

I’ve liked LPGs for a long time. My first foray was via the Make Noise Optomix, which quickly led to several others, both with and without vactrols. I like both types, but it’s the non-exactness of vactrols that really draws my ear. They can be a little sloppy, particularly when hit repeatedly with a gate or envelope. Vactrol-less LPGs like the Natural Gate or DXG too sound great, but there’s something about their precision that doesn’t feel the same as with vactrols. It’s almost too perfect, and too repeatable. I also feel that vactrols bleed prettier, which is a patching technique I love to use. I don’t know whether I was insistent in using vactrol LPGs in this patch because I thought they’d be best, or because I had just put four of them back in my main case, but I decided on using the venerable Tokyo Gate.

Even if I don’t use Tokyo Gate very often, it is my favorite of the vactrol LPGs I’ve had. Its decay is adjustable (to a degree) with the Bridge control, pleasant, and even can have a little squelch of resonance if you pin the Bridge knob full CW. Although you can directly ping Tokyo Gate with a trigger or gate just fine, I’ve found that envelopes generally sound more pleasant to the ear. There’s a harshness with slamming a gate into that isn’t there when using a well shaped decay envelope.

In this patch, because I was using sine waves, the Tokyo Gate probably performs not much different than a regular VCA. There are no harmonics in a sine wave to reveal and hide again as the filter also goes up and down with the volume, but you still get that vactrol decay which can’t really be had with anything else. I also liked the perceived sloppiness of the vactrols as they were being repeatedly hit by envelopes. All of the chaos-derived gates flying about in rapid succession, triggering short, snappy envelopes started to resemble four separate telegraph signals flying about in space.

And although the effect of four vactrol LPGs pinging away was pretty cool, I knew that I wanted a lot more of it by using delay. These pings were the start, not the end. Far from it. Rather than using one delay like I normally might, I opted to use two of them in parallel.

Delay number one was the Venus Instruments Veno-Echo. Its reverse function per channel was being modulated by chaos-derived gates from the very slow end of the Divide & Conquer. Since the original chaos clock signal itself was running quite fast, even very low divisions would trigger too frequently for me, and decided to run those gates through the CuteLab Missed Opportunities gate probability utility that I tend to use in most of my patches.

The second delay is the Olivia Artz Modular Time Machine. Using various delay taps would ensure the effervescent feeling I was getting as the patch started to take some shape, spraying delays all about the stereo space. Besides creating that bubbly feeling I was now striving for, the Time Machine is also the source audio for the Qu-Bit Aurora resynthesis module that fills in the gaps and helps create something thicker for those bubbles to float in.

Altogether we have the feeling of bubbles floating around space. One thing I might try in a future patch like this is to use the pitch as CV for the clock rate. As the pitch changes, so too does the clock, creating more gates with higher pitched bubbles, and fewer with lower pitched bubbles. I’d also be a bit more inventive with my pitch sequence as well. This is just a chaos signal triggering Quantermain as it moves through from note to note in the selected scale. Even if I want to use chaos as a source for pitch, in order for there be some quality pitch movement I’d be better off using one of the chaos derived gates to trigger the quantizer via some labyrinth of gate probability, logic, and/or a Bernoulli Gate.

Altogether there isn’t anything special about this patch other than it was experimentation throughout. Experimentation with chaos as pitch. Experimentation with extremely fast gates with vactrol LPGs. Experimentation with delay taps to get a good feeling of watching bubbles in a freshly poured glass of Coke. Experimenting with parallel delays. Experimenting with Aurora.

Modules Used:
Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster
Nonlinearcircuits Divide & Conquer
Nonlinearcircuits Stochaos
Nonlinearcircuits Triple Sloth
Xaoc Devices Samara II
CalSynth uO_C
Humble Audio Quad Operator
CuteLab Missed Opportunities
CalSynth Changes (MI Stages)
Mutable Instruments Veils
Tokyo Tape Music Center Tokyo Gate
Olivia Artz Modular Time Machine
Venus Instruments Veno-Echo
Qu-Bit Electronix Aurora
Knob Farm Ferry
Vongon Ultrasheer

Improvised and recorded in 1 take on iPad in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9.

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A Sketch With The Nonlinearcircuits Stochaos

I went into this patch with the idea that I was going to see if the Nonlinearcircuits Stochaos was appropriate for inclusion in a travel synth I’ll be taking to Alaska this summer (it’s not). I’m looking for gates. Many gates, actually. And although the Stochaos has many gate outputs, it runs on a clock, and sticks to the grid. It’s an awesome tool for what it is doing, but it’s not what I’m looking for in that synth, unfortunately. But despite not being fit for that particular project, this 8hp wonder is a fantastic Chaos or Random (or Both!) driven sequencer that can drive a whole patch.

This sketch was designed to use chaotically driven gates in order to ping the 4 operator outputs of the Humble Audio Quad Operator. Since they operate on ratios of the base pitch, it would never be out of tune, and all of the 4 operators would always have nice harmonic relationships. These pings would then go through the Venus Instruments Veno-Echo for some rather pedestrian unmodulated stereo delay that was perfect.

Since the point of the patch was to see what I could do with the Stochaos, I used it as the heart of everything. It received a clock from the Xaoc Devices Batumi II, and from there performed its wizardry sending gates to and fro. These gates pinged the 4 operator outputs in the Frap Tools CUNSA, as well as triggered various events all over the patch. Stochaos also provided the sequence which was quantized in Quantermain on the uO_C via one of its four CV outputs.

There was some modulation, but not very much. I used one of the Stochaos gate outputs to trigger the Auza Wave Packets which modulated the ratio of one of the operators on the QO. Two of its gate outputs clocked the Nonlinearcircuits Bindubba which also modulated one of the operator’s ratio. Otherwise the patch is pretty barren of modulation. The delay isn’t modulated at all, and neither is Aurora.

As per many of my recent patches I wanted to use some FFT, but rather than reaching for Panharmonium yet again, I used the Qu-Bit Electronix Aurora. I was sort of happy with the results, but I’ve never really studied Aurora in much depth, and so opted to go with whatever sounded good enough in the moment. It’s not a prominent part of the patch, but it does serve to fill in the space a bit. It’s definitely reminded me that I need to learn a few things before I go on my trip so I’m not busy manual digging instead of making music with the precious little time I’ll have.

I didn’t start this patch with a kick drum in mind. I was originally hoping to get not only random gate outputs, but randomly timed gate outputs. My original intent was to make an ambient piece, but that idea sank quickly, so I pivoted in a more rhythmic direction. Once a couple of things were settled, it was clear that the patch was begging for a kick drum. I’m not a four on the floor kind of guy, so opted for something more erratic. Still on the time grid, but not at all predictable. For this I used a divided output of Batumi II into the always fun CuteLab Missed Opportunities and adjusted the probability to taste. The kick is made with a Joranalogue Generate 8 into a Rabid Elephant Natural Gate. The trigger would go to both Natural Gate’s Hit input, as well as triggering the Joranalogue for a short envelope for both Exponential FM on Generate 8, and the Control input on Natural Gate.

Overall I’m really pleased with this patch. It’s a sketch with lots of room for improvement, but the direction and feel is very good. The biggest change I’d make is toning down the high registers. Not only are they too loud, but there’s too much of it. It’s a matter of better attenuating my CV and watching the initial knob position for ratio to ensure they don’t go that high. This alone would improve my result exponentially. I’d also like to do a better job of shaping the melody notes in CUNSA. I’m not yet pleased with the tail of those notes.

Although the Stochaos didn’t meet my need for inclusion in a travel case, I did find that it’s a fine sequencer that can control entire patches with naught but a clock input. You choose the style of decision making you want it to do, Chaos, Random, or Both, and it happily goes to work with 8 gate outputs along with 4 CV outputs, the fixed chaos signal used by the circuit, and some Pink Noise. If you’re not looking for strict control over sequencing, or you’re looking for a sequence of random gates and CV for always-surprising modulation, the Stochaos deserves a look.

Modules Used:
Nonlinearcircuits Stochaos
Nonlinearcircuits Bindubba
Xaoc Devices Batumi II
Humble Audio Quad Operator
Frap Tools Cunsa
Frap Tools Sapel (to convert 5v gates to 10v triggers)
Frap Tools Falistri (to convert 5v gates to 10v gates)
AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer
Venus-Instruments Veno-Echo
Auza Wave Packets
Knob Farm Ferry
Qu-Bit Electronix Aurora
Oto Bam

Improvided and recorded in 1 take on iPad in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9.

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Made Noise – Sketch 1

Confession time: I have a weird relationship with Make Noise. I mean, I love their modules. Most of the time. And I think their philosophy of making modules that are part of a coherent, customized musical instrument is spot on. Most of the time. But seemingly more than any other Eurorack brand, Make Noise will build a wonderful product borne of a brilliant idea, and then during the design process make one, or more, decisions that makes one wonder just what they were thinking.1

Like most people I started my Make Noise journey by integrating individual modules into a larger system. A module here and another there turned into a full 168hp Make Noise Subsystem that was integrated into a larger system mostly made up of single brand cases. Of course I’d found use of them in integrated patches, but with a couple of exceptions, I found myself opting for something other than Make Noise modules. If I had more than one or two Make Noise modules in the patch, generally most of the patch was dedicated to Make Noise modules. But there was something that always seemed amiss. I just never felt like my Make Noise Subsystem fit particularly well within a huge modular synth.

And so without any desire to rid myself of Make Noise, I’ll admit to having contemplated it several times, I decided to lean in and completely separate Make Noise from the rest. To allow it to be the instrument it wants to be on its own terms, and not a bit part in someone else’s show. To be free.

Once I made that choice, I had other hard decisions to make. By switching over to a 4 Zone CV Bus Case, I afforded myself 40 more HP, plus the CV Bus,2 but I still had to perform some rearranging to fit in everything nice and tidy. I added a couple modules that I thought were necessary to have a cohesive and “complete” Make Noise system (namely Rene v2 and a DPO). I had to pull a couple of choice modules out (LxD, MMG, STO). But before I made that switch, I decided to do a patch that included at least one of them.

I hope to make Made Noise a series of posts dedicated to the many bleeps and bloops created with my full Make Noise system. I’m sure I’ll find ways to use it with my larger synth again, but for now Make Noise will will fly solo.

This first sketch started as a rough recreation of a patch Walker Farrell did 5 years ago, called “Patch From Scratch: QPAS & Tempi.” I’ve always loved QPAS for pinging, but I had not gone all out with modulating it before while pinging. How boring. I also knew from the start that I wanted to integrate Morphagene into this patch, and I wanted to experiment with modulating zones in Mimeophon.

The patch is easy enough in theory. Some gates from Tempi, happening at various clock divisions, pinging QPAS’s input, as well as the R Radiate, L Radiate, and !!¡¡ inputs, while triggering various other events. But these gates run deep by being spread around the case through the CV Bus triggering Maths, Function, as well as clocking Mimeophon and Rene. End Of gates from Maths and Function are also being used to trigger different events around the patch. One Tempi channel is also performing some self-pleasure on the Mod input, which shifts the clock divisions around for a continuously changing rhythm and melody line. These shifts effect every aspect of the patch.

CV is sent from Rene’s X Channel to the Resonance CV input on QPAS, to keep the rhythm lively with having varied tail lengths, and changing the melody notes. There’s a familiarity there, but it’s not really repeating exactly. The Y Channel gates are triggering the Wogglebug S&H circuit, and the Cartesian Channel gates are triggering the deep kick of the STO.

The QPAS is being heavily modulated. In fact, there isn’t a control input not being used. Radiate L & R, Resonance, Freq 1, Freq 2, and both !!¡¡ inputs are modulated by gates from Tempi and CV from Rene’s X Channel, a Function envelope. Freq 1 is a bit of patch programming from the L HP output.

While the Tempi and QPAS are doing the heavy lifting throughout the patch, like a lead guitarist, the Mimeophon is what gives it some polish, and that extra bit of oomph for everything to come alive in an ever-changing flow of repeats, jitters, and screeches. While the shifting gates from Tempi are clocking Mimeophon, as well as pinging the uRate CV input, it’s also being modulated by the Maths Sum output, the Morphagene CV Output, a Maths envelope, and Wogglebug (stepped output). I wanted to get an idea of what modulating zones would be like, and it turned out even better than what I imagined it could be. The modulations between carplus strong-like sounds to long drawn out echoes created a sense of splendor and ever changing tones.

Morphagene too gets in on the action. I wanted a bubbly swirl, and by goodness I got a bubbly swirl. I’ve had Morphagene for a while, but it just wasn’t one of the granular-like processors I’d reach for. It was fun, but never integral. In this patch, it lends a level of instant fun and really brightens the sketch. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s probably too loud in the mix, but I do very much enjoy the whimsical direction it gave to an already whimsical melody. The slowing tape machine sounds, the speedy and gurgle fast forwards and rewinds all contribute to the fun.

This certainly isn’t my last patch with this new Make Noise Satellite Subsystem. It’s a level of immediacy and fun that’s hard to replicate with other brands. Here’s to the next one.

Modules Used:
Tempi
QPAS
Maths
Mimeophon
Morphagene
Rene Mk2
Wogglebug
Function
STO
DXG
X-Pan
Optomix rev2
CV Bus Mk2

Improvised and recorded in 1 take on the iPad in AUM via an Arturia AudioFuse.

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  1. The DXG being unable to not mix, and not having a way to get both LPG channels out individually seems to me to be headbangingly shortsighted. There is no good argument for their premium 4 Zone CV Bus Case having M2.5 screws and sliding nuts. I could go on.
  2. Although the CV Bus is little more than a glorified passive multiple, its implementation is incredibly well thought out and unendingly useful.
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Chaotic Gates

One of the more pressing challenges in modular synthesis is combating sameness. The same notes in the same patterns, all with identically shaped envelopes, at identical volume levels, and exactly in time. Without interventionist patching, the sameness quickly evolves to boredom. No one wants that.

One route of dealing with the problem of sameness in modular synthesis is to use separate sources for pitch and gates. Unlike all other instruments, note instantiation and note pitch are not intrinsically tied together in modular synthesis. By decoupling these facets of musical creation, you can have great levels of control fairly easily. Any change to either parameter, and your result changes in interesting ways. A regular gate pattern becomes predictable, which means that mystery and wonder are lost. Even when the gate pattern is used as part of a modulation track, as opposed to creating notes in a melody, sameness looms, and this sameness compels the synthesist to interject on some level and rid the patch of the potentiality for boredom. Today I want to focus on gate generation.

There are lots of ways to generate interesting gate patterns in the modular world. Standard clock utilities, gate probability modules, Euclidean pattern generators, random gate generators, logic modules, binary gate generators, Turing machines, and many more. All of them are capable routes of travel. It’s more a matter of function, workflow, and aesthetics that will determine which route is best for your given application.

In my latest patch I wanted a gate pattern that was at a “good” rate (read: it doesn’t take too long between gates, nor do they happen too frequently), and without discernible patterns. These gates are meant to control a simple facet in the patch: turning off and on the reverse function on the Veno-Echo. It’s not a terribly important part of the patch, but it does impart a distinct part of its character. I could have chosen a random gate generator like the one in Frap Tools Sapel, Instruo Scion, Make Noise Wogglebug, Mutable Instruments Marbles, or patched a smooth random signal into a window comparator in order to get random gates, but I wanted to experiment with chaos as a means to create gates. I use chaos regularly as modulation in most of my patches, but I’ve never really used it in a way that isn’t directly patching a chaos output to a standard modulation input like a filter cutoff or some other control. My use of chaos has been exclusively slow, direct modulation. I knew there was more to be had.

I’ve recently put together most of a Subsytem made up of modules from Nonlinearcircuits, a designer of eccentric modules I’ve long been a fan of. I’ve had a couple of Andrew’s chaos based modules, the mighty Triple Sloth and his rendition of The Hypster, for quite a while. They’ve been mainstays in my modulation cases for a couple of years. They were more recently joined by Let’s Splosh, and a few weeks later, Divide and Conquer, and I knew I wasn’t done. Quickly thereafter I added a Helvetica Scenario and a Stochaos to this chaotic modulation hub. But how to use it? There’s only so many modulation inputs in a given patch, and surely there had to be a way of using this subsystem for other purposes. Then a quick line on NLC’s page describing one of their gate sequencer modules, the 8bit Cipher, caught my attention.

Then I started really parsing the language in NLC catalog module descriptions, and noticed there was repeatedly a very deliberate use of the word “signal” to describe what goes into Clock inputs. Not a gate or rising edge, but a “signal.” For instance, on the Divide & Conquer page, the description states, “All sections will run off a signal patched into section 1.” Similarly, on the page for Helvetica Scenario it says, “To get it running, patch a signal into the clock input. Clock 2 is normalled to Clock 1 so a signal on 1 will drive both channels.”. In contrast, descriptions are quite clear when an input requires something more specific. In the description for Stochaos, it says, “To operate, just feed a gate to IN, add a reset if you like.” (All emphasis added).

And then it clicked: in the NLC universe, anything can be a clock so long as it periodically passes 1v. Nonlinearcircuits modules require nonlinear thinking, and that can lead to creative paths and surprising results.

For my clock, I knew I wanted to use a chaos signal. Sloths could work, but I wanted something more controllable, and opted for The Hypster, primarily because it has rate control from very slow to audio rate. Controlling the cycling rate allows for helping determine the window sizes; about how long it takes to cycle around and traverse 1v. With chaos this cycle could be sort of regular, or not very regular at all, but I could partially control the speed of that regularity, and that was important for designing the delay sound. I didn’t want a constant barrage of reverse delay “zips”, nor did I want only simple repeats, and I wanted the transitions from one state to the other to be organic feeling.

Although I had initially wanted to use the Stochaos from the start, with The Hypster as my clock, I soon realized that Stochaos requires a gate at its input, and not a “signal.” So I chose to use the Divide & Conquer as an intermediary. The Hypster to the Input of the Divide & Conquer, and using the 5/2 output to feed the Stochaos. From there Stochaos spits out gates based on chaos.1

Even though chaos signals are not regular, they’re not random either. In fact, if we know every factor in advance, a chaos signal can be predicted exactly. It’s just that we generally don’t have all of the information. There is a type of regularity with chaos, even if it does surprise you with each passing cycle. Think of your drive to school or work everyday. The route is the same, but the drive itself is not exactly identical on any 2 days, a phenomenon known as Intrapersonal Variability in travel. This variability is chaos. Each cycle of a chaos signal is very close to each other, like your drive to school each day, but an unknowable number of very small factors create change from one cycle to the next.

On your drive, there are subtle differences each time you take that route. Maybe you took the inside lane today when you normally take the outside lane, or you took a super wide turn at an intersection because of traffic conditions, or you left 2 minutes later than normal and got caught in traffic which slowed you down, or you had to make a very slight detour to go around an accident along the route. These subtle differences on a day to day basis, even when the overall route is the same (home to school), cause a very different track when compared at the micro level. It’s regular-ish. That’s a chaos signal.

But I wasn’t exactly dealing with only the micro level where changes from one cycle to the next are readily apparent, and I didn’t want that “sort of” regularity to appear regular, and opted to modulate the Rate and Gain of The Hypster with the Triple Sloths in order to keep noticable change happening on the macro level too. A perfectly imperfect clock signal, leading to a constantly changing stream of pulses as the mysteries of Stochaos took over, changing the state of my delay.

This portion of the patch itself is not terribly complicated. The chaotic gate programming only requires 6 cables, 2 of which are the gate outputs themselves. But this simplicity in creating the patch belies the complexity of what it’s achieving. Irregular gates can come about in many ways. It’s really easy to plug the output of a random gate generator and turn a couple of knobs to get a good result. But who wants the easy route when real discovery and learning happen when actively seeking the manual way?

Modules Used:
Nonlinearcircuits Triple Sloth
Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster
Nonlinearcircuits Stochaos
Nonlinearcircuits Divide & Conquer

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1. It’s not exactly clear to me from the patent that inspired Stochaos what method is used to derive gates at the outputs, particularly when in the Chaos setting. It mentions using noise, which is the Sto part of Stochaos, but it doesn’t fully describe the process itself outside of circuit diagrams, except to say that it uses a binary counting process.

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