Category: Granular Synthesis

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A Polyphonic Experiment

During one Jamuary patch, I had the pleasure of using the Alexandernaut Fugue Machine Midi sequencer extraordinaire. I enjoyed it so much that I sought a MIDI > CV converter so that I could bring that particular brand of magic into my synth. Sequencing is easily the most challenging part of eurorack for me. I’m quickly learning that, at least in the immediate term, “battleship” sequencers and me don’t work well together. The options are oftentimes overwhelming and programming them can be a constant exercise in frustration. When you’re trying to play a polyphonic patch, these frustrations compound as the patch gets more and more complex. Of the large sequencers I’ve used René v2 is easily my favorite. I find it to be the most intuitive sequencer I’ve used. The sequencer in the Doboz T12 is also easy to catch on, and the Verbos Voltage Multistage is ultra-simple. But I’ve done nothing but get my teeth kicked in by some of my larger sequencers. Frap Tools USTA, Oxi One, and 4ms Catalyst Sequencer in particular. Perhaps it’s the lack of effort with learning them, or that I simply quit on them too quickly, but nothing kills a moment like manual digging in the midst of a patch. Fugue Machine, even if it’s walled in its own very small box, is but one of many tools that make sequencing much less of a chore, and can help spark the creative drive to explore more advanced sequencing. Fortunately, there are good ways of leveraging MIDI tools in Eurorack.

I searched for a couple of weeks for my ideal MIDI > CV converter. My main consideration was for sequencing polyphonic patches, so it needed to have at least four channels of pitch CV, gates, and velocity. There are several options. One of the more compelling options is the Der Mann Mitt Der Maschine DROID. It’s a CV generating and processing powerhouse that can do almost anything that can be done with CV, including MIDI > CV conversion. I even have a DROID, and it has a killer feature set. If you can program it. It turns out that I can program DROID. It’s not terribly hard, even if I still do it by hand rather than using the GUI tool to create patches. But DROID would take more space, and would only be useful in this capacity, needing all eight CV outputs for pitch and velocity CV. So I kept searching, and finally settled on the relatively new Befaco MIDI Thing V2. I already have and use the Befaco CV Thing CV > MIDI converter and find it good at its job, even if the screen is not fit for middle-aged eyes. It’s only 6hp, and can sit right next to the CV Thing.

One of the MIDI Thing’s features is that it has 12 outputs. Exactly enough for four voices worth of outputs, and what’s more is that the exact configuration for my initial intentions with MIDI > CV conversion is already saved as a preset, or Pre-Def in Befaco-speak, for quick and easy input and output configuration. I simply set the MIDI Thing to “Predef 2: Multi Timbric” in the Global Menu and it automatically set the incoming MIDI channels to 1-4 and preconfigured the outputs. Pretty slick. Since I was already in for a lot of patching, I opted to forego using the velocity outputs. That wasn’t a step I was terribly interested in today. I wanted pitch CV and gates to trigger envelopes, and by golly that’s what I got after spending less than one minute in the MIDI Thing configuration screen.1

Once I had my MIDI routed in the AUM MIDI Matrix, and properly set MIDI ”Predef-ed” in the MIDI Thing, I fired up Fugue Machine. Since I was testing the functionality of the MIDI Thing and how that would work with a modular system, I wasn’t overly worried with an elaborate, or even original, sequence, and just used one of the included presets. Although I had played with the sequence length and transposition while running through the patch before recording it (which was all supremely cool), I simply forgot when I improvised the recording. I was more preoccupied with timing each channel, the levels of each oscillator, and crossfading the ending. As a result, this recording is a repetitive sequence. It doesn’t repeat exactly because of the modulation, but there’s no variation in anything other than oscillator timbre.

For oscillators I chose the always excellent Synthesis Technology E370, with a User-Loaded Wavetable titled NOV that was left from a previous owner. Thanks, dude. It’s pretty outstanding. Tuning each oscillator to unison (in Morph X/Y mode), I ran each of the pitch outputs from the MIDI Thing to the v/oct inputs. I followed that up by using the eight outputs of the Nonlinearcircuits Frisson to modulate both the X and Y parameters of each wavetable for all four oscillators. This constant timbre changing caused by the modulation also causes dramatic volume changes as waves morph in and out of more and less prominent waveforms in the table. I initially wanted something glitchy, and turned Glitch on HIGH with Interpolation Off for each of the four channels, and while it was cool, it didn’t fit at all in with the overall tenor of the sequence itself. The tonality is too “positive”, being in the key of A Lydian, and the sequence too upbeat. I suspect it would work fantastically on slower, more drone-ish material.

After I routed the pitch CV and modulation, I ran the gates to two Frap Tools Falistris for some enveloping. In addition to being enveloped at the Control inputs, three of the four gate outputs were also multed to the Hit input on one of two Rabid Elephant Natural Gates to provide some beautiful pinging of these ever-changing tones coming from the E370. All four channels were processed through Natural Gate, but only three were pinged. The bass note was only enveloped. In this process I made a grievous oversight. While Falistri is a perfectly good tool for this job, particularly the pluckier notes, more defined shaping with a ADSR would have really served the slower voices well. It so happens that I have perhaps the most advanced ADSR generator in Eurorack, but I didn’t even think to use it, and when I did, I was way too deep in the patch to re-patch and reconfigure the envelopes, so I let it go.

To be honest, I was expecting hurdles to cross, but I was surprised when it all just worked. CV did what it’s supposed to do. Gates did what they were supposed to do. Everything was perfectly in tune and on time.

Once the notes were created in their respective Natural Gate, all four outputs went to the ST Modular Sum Mix & Pan. While three of the four channels were panned to mono, the fastest moving and highest pitched voice was being slowly panned in the stereo field. The stereo output was then routed to the Addac814 6×6 Stereo Matrix Mixer, and sent to the Venus Instruments Veno-Echo. To ensure a solid clock for the delay, I used the now-defunct (or at least unavailable in the United States according to the App Store – which would seem weird) CoVariant Clock AUv3 plugin, which converted the MIDI clock in AUM to CV and sent it out an ES-9 output as an analog clock. I’ve never really sought to use a MIDI clock as the master clock outside of the iPad. I’ve certainly never used it as the master clock in a Eurorack patch. But this clock was flawless, likely to due CV being generated directly at the source, minimizing switches and pass-thru cabling or USB MIDI jitter. Hopefully CoVariant remains a working plugin in iOS for a while to come as there are currently no other direct MIDI > CV clock converters on the iPad. Veno-Echo was set at x2 on both sides with similar feedback just shy of noon. I also added a smidge of drive in order to enhance the sample reduction I put in the feedback loop. Veno-Echo, with its cross-feedback and width parameter, really can create an enormous stereo field

And so can the Dradd(s). It’s no secret I’m absolutely smitten by dual Dradd(s). Despite this infatuation, my first instinct was to patch in Beads, but Beads just didn’t really have what I was looking for today. At least I couldn’t find it. But the Dradd(s) did. In fact, I had to decide between two modes which both had something very cool to offer. I ultimately chose the Tape mode because the octave up was too much to resist. I slowly started to fade out the oscillators once the Dradd(s) were at full volume, and allowed its magic to guide the rest of the recording, fading out in a glorious wash of the Rain algorithm on the Walrus Audio Slöer.

Modules Used:
Befaco MIDI Thing V2
Synthesis Technology E370
Frap Tools Falistri
Frap Tools Sapel
Rabid Elephant Natural Gate
Nonlinearcircuits Frisson
ST Modular Sum Mix & Pan
ST Modular SVCA
Addac Systems Addac814 6×6 Stereo Matrix Mixer
Venus Instruments Veno-Echo
Pladask Elektrisk Dradd(s)
Knob Farm Ferry

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

Plugins Used:
Alexandernaut Fugue Machine
CoVariant by Alan Clifton

  1. It should be noted that the MIDI Thing also produced velocity CV, I just didn’t use it. ↩︎
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Jamuary 2530

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do today. I initially settled on a simple piano into an occasionally reversed delay patch, but wanted more than this very Rings-into-Clouds-like aesthetic. If I wanted that today, I’d just use Rings-into-Beads. But there’s a new module I recently got, and it was kinda staring at me wide-eyed, asking “Can you play with me now?”, akin to a small boy begging his busy father for just a few minutes of time. Or something like that. Whatever.

I was set on buying the new Cutlasses Gloop the very first time I saw it. Gloop is a four head tape looper. Each head can be played simultaneously, in either direction at various speeds. Each head can play the entire loop or any snippet down to small grains. It’s a fantastic looper on paper. I received it a couple of weeks ago, but just hadn’t gotten around to playing it yet. Once I realized that I wanted to use Gloop today, the patch pivoted and started to take on a life of its own. But I made the unfortunate decision to still incorporate the whole reverse delay and Beads thing. It’s not that it sounds bad. It doesn’t. It sounds really nice, actually. But it doesn’t fit with the looper direction very well, and I didn’t have the courage to dump the work I’d already done. It added several unnecessary minutes to the recording, and because of a now fixed peculiarity in how the module operates,1 I flubbed the performance, and had to add more unnecessary time to the recording in order to get the settings right and get to looping. That doesn’t happen until over nine minutes into the recording. Such is Jamuary.

The patch isn’t terribly difficult, even if there’s a lot of patch cables. I patched four cycling functions from the Addac506 to Numberwang, adjusted the rise and fall range to something that produced a nice cadence of gates in the Disting NT. The same four functions went to the Vostok Instruments Asset where I attenuated and offset all four channels into specific ranges of notes so as not to overcrowd the sonic range by using attenuation only. These four signals were patched to the Disting NT CV inputs for the quantizer to voice everything in D minor.

The piano went to the stereo matrix mixer where it was sent to the Veno-Echo, Beads, and Gloop.

Veno-Echo provided the sumptuous delayed sounds, randomly triggered into reverse by End of Rise gate outs on the Addac506, via the CuteLab Missed Opportunities, with a low probability of allowing the gate through.

Beads was set to have medium length grains with a sharper envelope, the buffer being slowly scanned at one octave up. The Beads output was sent directly to the mixer for multitracking.

One unfortunate fact of looping more or less randomly generated parts is that you get what you get. Sometimes, like during my first run-through, you’re able to capture a really good loop. Something you can work with. But other times, you’re not left with much, and you kind of need to eat your own dog food and pretend it tastes great. Such is this recording, I think. It’s not offensive. Not by a long shot. But had this been a take for anything other than Jamuary, I would have re-done it (as well as jettisoned other parts). Looping can be inspiring when you have a good loop. But it can feel like work when you have to search around for good looping points.

I completely neglected to snap any pics of this patch, which is a shame. Next time. And I’ll definitely be revisiting Gloop very soon.

Modules Used:
Addac Systems Addac506 Stochastic Function Generator
Nonlinearcircuits Numberwang
Expert Sleepers Disting NT
Vostok Instruments Asset
AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer
CuteLab Missed Opportunities
Venus Instruments Veno-Echo
Mutable Instruments Beads
Cutlasses Gloop
Knob Farm Ferry
ST Modular SVCA
Intellijel Quad VCA

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

  1. This behavior has been fixed in the newest firmware, but I haven’t installed it yet. When you cleared a loop, all tape head settings would revert to the default. I didn’t realize it until I was in the midst of performing the patch. ↩︎
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Jamuary 2527

When I set out to do today’s Jamuary patch I had initially planned on recreating, at least in spirit, a patch I did as a test for a travel synth during the summer. After setting up the piano portion of the patch, I changed my mind and decided against creating a sub bass sequence, or indeed using any distortion as I did in that patch. In part was because I was highly taken aback when, instead of plugging the piano output into the Qu-Bit Nautilus, as I did in that patch, I reached for the extremely lo-fi Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2. The natural decay of the delay was plenty dirty in all the best of ways, and decided to go with it instead of introducing some other form of distortion. From there the patch went a very different direction. Rather than a sad yet hopeful tenor, this one is just sad.

For this patch I decided to use Stochaos as my gate producer for triggering the piano sounds, being fed by a chaotically controlled clock. I’m a fan of using chaos as a clock source. I’ve used multiple methods of using chaos to create off beat rhythms, from using Numberwang to running a chaos signal through Divide & Conquer, a clock divider than can use any signal as a clock input. Today I used, for the first time, the Nonlinearcircuits Let’s Get Fenestrated, a comparator NLC-style, fed by a heavily modulated The Hypster. This process created a perfectly ultra-wonky clock, which then fed Stochaos. Stochaos spat out four gates at the Disting NT inputs which triggered both the quantizer and the Poly Multisample player.

The audio was sent to the AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer, and on to the Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2 for some soul-crushingly beautiful repeats that seem to disintegrate as they decay away. I seriously contemplated just leaving the patch at that, adding in some reverb, and calling it a day, but I knew that I could add to it subtly and give it some more life. To give it some other textures to contemplate and heighten the overall mood of the piece without distracting too much from the piano and those beautiful repeats.

I started with the Qu-Bit Electronix Data Bender, but I knew I only wanted to use that sparingly and didn’t think it would add enough by itself, so opted also to send the piano notes to the Dradd(s) for some good old fashioned time stretching. This was perfect and even allowed me to use the Data Bender even more sparingly so as not to overwhelm the Piano with failure. I slowly controlled the Data Bender output in the ST Modular SVCA with a modulated LFO from the Frap Tools Falistri. To modulate the length of the LFO I used an attenuated and slightly offset Smooth Random output from Sapel into the Both CV input. An inverted copy of the LFO was sent to a second SVCA which very slightly lowered the volume of the Piano and its repeats while the Data Bender did the thing.

The Dradd(s) add tons of texture with their medium-to-short grains, re-creating the piano at a slow crawl, filling in space and adding a layer of intrigue. Like a splash in water, the Dradd(s) created a distorted view of what’s underneath: slivers of sound overlapping and rippling off each other in a beautiful chorus. I’m still infatuated with the dual Dradd(s). I’ve used lots of granular processors in Eurorack. Of the continuous processing type, those that don’t rely on pre-recording to a buffer, but instead have a continuous buffer and don’t require recording a certain bit of material to process, I have a very difficult time choosing between the Dradd(s) and the Mutable Instruments Beads. It seems like I can always find something fascinating. That I can always use it to find something beautiful inside of the audio itself.

Modules Used:
Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster
Nonlinearcircuits Let’s Get Fenestrated
Nonlinearcircuits Stochaos
Nonlinearcircuits De-Escalate
Expert Sleepers Disting NT
Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2
Qu-Bit Electronix Data Bender
Pladask Elektrisk Dradd(s)
Frap Tools Falistri
Frap Tools Sapél
Vostok Instruments Asset
AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer
ST Modular SVCA
Intellijel Quad VCA
Knob Farm Ferry

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

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


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Jamuary 2525

Today’s Jamuary is not only a classic patch, it’s a meme in the modular world. With a small twist. That’s right, it’s Marbles > Rings > Beads. Although the true classic is Rings > Clouds, Beads is a fine substitute. I haven’t used any of my Mutable Instruments modules in a long time. I removed that case from the synth a few months ago in order to expand it, and while I was filling it up, it went completely unused. It’s one of the downsides of having a modular modular synth. There’s always something missing. Beads had been a staple in many of my patches until I pulled it out. To the MI case I added several choice modules. Blades, Stages, Tides v2, and am still in the process of adding one last module before the case will be complete. But I decided that today I’d do a patch I haven’t done in a very long time.

Rings into Clouds is a eurorack gateway drug. It’s a patch that many of us try at least once, and for good reason. Some people never venture any further and come up with something new every time. Such is the depth of this venerable duo. But Beads, although borne of, is not Clouds. You can do many similar things, but they are each their own instrument. Like so many Rings > Clouds patches before, this Rings > Beads patch all started with Marbles, and wonderfully musical random CV and gate generator, spitting out random CV to Rings’ v/oct input. With Rings a gate or trigger isn’t necessary. It detects changes in incoming CV and automatically generates notes when the CV has sufficiently changed. It’s a brilliant design, and dead simple to use. It’s no wonder why Rings is one of the first modules so many of us try. I know it was one of my first modules, and despite having other methods of producing the same sounds,1 it will never leave my synth. You needn’t know any fancy synthesis techniques to get incredibly beautiful sounds right out of the gate. Marbles was set to a moderately slow tempo with lots of jitter as to not become regular, and off we went. Set in Sympathetic Strings mode, Rings was left completely unmodulated. As Rings received new pitch information it sent notes to the venerable (and infamous) Beads, Mutable Instruments’ final module before closing shop in 2022.2

I’ve had Beads since its initial release. I’m one of those lucky enough to have been able to get one, as after the second batch was shipped a few months later, all production stopped, prices soared, and for a while became unobtainium. It took me a while, perhaps a year, to come to grips with Beads. The first couple of patches were a cacophony of grains overtaking everything else in the patch. It was messy, unruly, and I couldn’t figure out how to tame it. So I set it aside for a while. Once I became more familiar with the building blocks of granular synthesis (and synthesis in general) and how they worked in concert, I gave it another try and was bewildered by its beauty. Ever since then I’ve been hooked, and it’s become a tool that would be almost inconceivable to lose.

In this patch Beads was set to a moderately low number of randomly generated grains, while fairly heavily modulating Time, scanning the recording buffer, Shape, changing the composition of each grain, and Size from small to moderately large. This modulation allowed grains that were quite plucky to much longer “slides” through the buffer. Long grains can be a very interesting sound, and one I’ve explored some, but will seek to experiment with more in the future. The Quality setting is in Scorched Cassette mode, both for the longer buffer, as well as the saturated goodness it imparts on the audio. A little bit of blowout and compression goes a long way.

Once out of Beads, the audio went to Blades for some light, somewhere-between -Bandpass-and-High Pass Filtering, and the very slightest bit of Drive. Blades is new-to-me module I haven’t used before this patch, and now that the MI case is back in action, I’ll definitely be using it much more.

The bass drone is courtesy of Plaits playing what amounts to a very (very) lightly FM’d sine wave, with some modulation only to the Morph CV input to give it a small bit of motion so as not to become stale. I have no idea what note it is that’s droning away. I simply tuned it to the Rings output by ear and called it a day.

All modulation throughout the patch was done by Tides v2. This was also my first time using Tides, so I have no idea what mode it was in, or generally how it functions. What I do know is that I managed to get a quad of slow LFOs that are all phasing in and out of each other. I’ll have to read the manual to get a better idea of how it works, but it’s hard to mess up slow modulation sources too badly. One frustrating instance during making this patch was that although I had installed Stages in the case as part of the expansion, I hadn’t actually plugged it in. So despite desiring more modulation, I didn’t have access to any inside the MI case other than Tides, and so opted to not use any more modulation at all. I wanted as much as possible done only with this case, only using other modules for getting from the case to the interface.

With one exception.

One module I’ve also had for a very long time is the Qu-Bit Electronix Data Bender. Along with Rings (and Typhoon, one of the many versions of Clouds), it was one of the very first Eurorack modules I bought once I was bit by the bug. I used it a bunch initially to learn how, even if I’ve forgotten most of it after a few years, but haven’t really touched it since, generally favoring granular synthesis for glitchiness. Data Bender has a very unique sound. It’s the sound of failure. CD skipping, digital buffer errors, tape malfunctions, bit and sample reduction, and any other sort of audio failure, analog and/or digital, you can imagine. I’ve tended to enjoy its take on digital errors when I’ve used it and when I hear it in other people’s work. A sort of glitchiness that harkens back to the earliest days of my musical awakening as an adolescent as I was forming my own aesthetic in music. The days of CD players in the 80s that would skip if you farted across the room, and the multitude of buffering errors in the newly emerging internet through players like WinAmp were commonplace. Data Bender makes that failure musical. I would have thought that two different forms of glitch, from Beads and Data Bender might have been too much. But the effects were sufficiently different that they complemented rather than competed against one another.

Modules Used:
Mutable Instruments Marbles
Mutable Instruments Rings
Mutable Instruments Beads
Mutable Instruments Blades
Mutable Instruments Plaits
Mutable Instruments Tides v2
Qu-Bit Electronix Data Bender
AI Synthesis 018 Matrix Mixer

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

  1. Since Rings, and all of the Mutable Instruments modules, have been open sourced, several variations have appeared from miniaturized versions like Rangoon and nanoRings, to the software being ported to multifunction modules like the Expert Sleepers Disting Ex and NT. ↩︎
  2. Emilie Gillet, the former head of Mutable Instruments, is said to have created Beads in order to address “flaws” in how most people seemed to use Clouds, or to correct perceived shortcomings in how Clouds functioned. Although it took nearly three years after Clouds’ discontinuation to finally release Beads and was highly anticipated, it initially had a mixed reception. Now it’s the only Mutable Instruments module that hasn’t been released to open source. ↩︎
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Jamuary 2523

I haven’t felt as bad as I did today for a long while. I even called in sick to work, which is something I don’t generally do. It was hard to get motivated for Jamuary today, but, as usual, once I finally mustered the energy to turn the synth on, the rest of the world kind of melted away for a short time, even if today wasn’t destined to be a fully from-scratch patch.

Today’s Jamuary patch is a re-work of yesterday’s patch. My first inclination was to simply swap the effects on the piano and Panharmonium and call it a day, but the result wasn’t at all what I had in mind, so decided on using different effects entirely.

The base of today’s patch was exactly the same as yesterday. The four outputs from the Addac506 were split to Numberwang and Let’s Splosh, which sent gates and CV respectively to the Disting NT, which quantized the CV and passed it to the Poly Multisample algorithm that spat out audio.

The audio, via the AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer, was sent to the Venus Instruments Veno-Echo for some slow repeats that were occasionally triggered into reverse using spare gate outputs from Numberwang. Both the dry and repeated audio were sent to Panharmonium, set to an octave down. Panharmonium is a magical module. It can sometimes be hard to tame, but when you finally find that sweet spot in a given patch, it has the capacity like few other things to gracefully fill up space and create a floating bed of awesomeness. Panharmonium was sent to the Dradd(s) in Tape Mode, each side played 2x speed, one forward, the other in reverse, with just enough feedback to occasionally shimmer upwards another octave. I’ve been absolutely amazed with the sounds I’ve gotten with dual Dradd(s). Of the many GAS-induced purchases I’ve made in modular, a second Dradd is amongst the best of those decisions.

The Piano/Veno-Echo, Panharmonium, and Dradd(s) were all separately sent to the output mixer for some reverb in the always lovely Walrus Audio Slöer.

Modules Used:
Addac Systems Addac506 Stochastic Function Generator
Nonlinearcircuits Numberwang
Nonlinearcircuits Let’s Splosh
Nonlinearcircuits Divide & Conquer
Expert Sleepers Disting NT
Venus Instruments Veno-Echo
Rossum Electro-Music Panharmonium
Pladask Elektrisk Dradd(s)
Intellijel Amps
Frap Tools Falistri
Knob Farm Ferry
ST Modular SCVA

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

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Jamuary 2520

I worked a very long and cold day today. Didn’t get home until after 10pm. So it’s another iPad day. No energy for a full description.

Fugue Machine feeding midi to four separate instances of Decidedly Decent Sampler playing four separate software instruments.1 A violin, a piano, some string volitions, and a choir. Each instrument is sent to Fluss, and to reverb. Late in the piece we go with full Fluss into reverb with no dry signal from any of the instruments.

Software Used:
Alexandernaut Fugue Machine
Decidedly Decent Sampler
Bram Bos + Hainbach Fluss
Eventide BlackHole Reverb

Performed and recorded in 1 take in AUM on iPad.

  1. I wasn’t convinced I’d be able to run 4 separate instances of Decent Sampler, but it ran it like a champ. ↩︎
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Jamuary 2519

Despite having to hazard snowy conditions doing afternoon obligations, I finally had a bit of time today to patch as the sun was beginning to set on what is about to be a very cold night. Like, for real. It’s gonna be cold as balls.1

I didn’t have an idea ready to go for today, so resorted to a couple of patches that I’ve done variations of in the past and wanted to further explore. I finally used Just Friends as a six part oscillator, with a lightly modulated Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster chaotically controlling their levels in six VCAs, while also modulating Just Friends’ Shape to get subtle timbre shifts. I didn’t seek a particular harmonic relationship between the different oscillators, but I turned Intone clockwise from noon until I got something that sounded a little dark but still pleasant.

Once these waves were level modulated and mixed to stereo in an Intellijel Amps, with odd Identity outputs on the left channel and even ones on the right, the mix was sent to the Olivia Artz Modular Time Machine for some delay before being sent to the output mixer and some reverb. I also sent a passthrough of this output to the Dradd(s) for some granular synthesis in Tape mode. I initially wanted it in an octave up mode, but between the high pitched bleeps, that were further pitched up in their own delay and granular-esque process, there was too much going on in that higher frequency range and it became too much to deal with. In lieu, I went with what amounts to using a tape machine that stutters at half speed. The effect here isn’t dramatic, but it does add a lot of movement in the stereo field which is really interesting.

The second voice was a simple triangle wave from a Falistri, using the other generator as its envelope and trigger source in the Rabid Elephant Natural Gate. The EOC output also triggered Sapel, which supplied both a new fall time for the envelope, as well as pitch for the oscillator, varying both note pitch and length. Although this sub-patch worked as it should, it was weirdly patched. It could have been great simplified without any penalty whatsoever. The inefficiency is due to it being what was left from other ideas. Rather than re-patching, I recycled what was already going on. I initially combined both generators’ bipolar outputs in Falistri’s four quadrant multiplier for some ring modulated tones, but ultimately opted for a sparkly sound over the marimba sound. The output from Natural Gate was sent to the Holocene Electronics Non-Linear Memory Machine for some delay and buffer freezing, which created some really cool effects, especially the aliasing on the pitched up notes. I wanted to devise a way to scan the buffer only while it was frozen, but couldn’t quite figure out how to do that with the current patch and gating technique. It definitely stumped me. I’ve done a recent patch where I was able to scan the buffer only when it was frozen, but it used an entirely different triggering mechanism and today I didn’t have there wherewithal to work together an algorithm to get it done. That said, the effect it does create is very cool. Almost Data Bender-like, which appeals to me.

I ran into a dreaded problem while recording today’s patch. It doesn’t occur often, only a handful of times that I can remember, but it is a problems channel bleed/crosstalk in my mixer. It can be clearly heard for at least the first two minutes and 20 seconds, and intermittently throughout the recording. It only happens under circumstances like today, with much lower pitched audio in one input, and much higher pitched audio in some other channel. Think sparkles. You know, kind of like in today’s patch. It’s really annoying, even if I don’t notice it in most circumstances. Fortunately the builder is super-responsive, and we’ll see if he has a fix or mitigation for it.

Modules Used:
Mannequins Just Friends
Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster
Nonlinearcircuits De-Escalate
CuteLab Missed Opportunities
Intellijel Amps
Olivia Artz Modular Time Machine
Frap Tools Falistri
Frap Tools Sapel
Rabit Elephant Natural Gate
Holocene Electronics Non-Linear Memory Machine
AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer
Knob Farm Ferry
ST Modular SVCA

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

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

  1. In America, at least for my generation where I grew up (South Florida), “as balls” is a popular unit of measurement. You can use it similarly to “as fuck”, although “as balls” isn’t quite as flexible. It works, however, under many circumstances. Hot as balls. Cold as balls. Busy as balls. Heavy as balls. Far as balls. It can also sometimes be used in a slightly different form as an adjective. (E.g., balls cold, balls hot). ↩︎
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Jamuary 2515

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.

Modules Used:
Mannequins Just Friends
Calsynth Changes
Bizarre Jezabel Mimosa
Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2
Pladask Elektrisk Dradd(s)
Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster
Nonlinearcircuits De-Escalate
Intellijel Amps
AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer
Addac Systems Addac506 Stochastic Function Generator
Knob Farm Ferry

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

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

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Jamuary 2510

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.

Plugins Used:
Alexandernaut Fugue Machine
Decidedly Decent Sampler
Numerical RP1 – Dual Digital Delay
Blue Mangoo Stratosphere Cloud Reverb
Bram Bos + Hainbach Fluss

Performed and recorded in 1 take in AUM on iPad.

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Jamuary 2508

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.

Modules Used:
AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer
Venus Instruments Veno-Echo
Pladask Elektrisk Dradd(s)
Rossum Electro-Music Panharmonium
Nonlinearcircuits Triple Sloth
CuteLab Missed Opportunities
Calsynth Twiigs
Frap Tools 333
Knob Farm Ferry

Outboard Gear Used:
Walrus Audio Slöer

Plugins Used:
Alexandernaut Fugue Machine
Klevgrand Speldosa
Decidedly Decent Sampler
Toneboosters TB Equalizer
CoVariant

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

  1. To be fair, I struggle with just about everything with the Oxi One. I really need to revisit it with purpose. ↩︎
  2. 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. ↩︎
  3. 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). ↩︎
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