The four waves from Swell Physics that control volume of the chords are all fed to four VCAs, as well as an analog comparator (Xaoc Devices Samara II).
Samara II compares the signals and outputs the Maximum (AKA, Analog OR) voltage level of all four signals at any given moment.
This signal is fed to a window comparator, (Compare 2), which generates a gate every time the Maximum signal goes below 0v.
This gate goes to the Clock input on the NOH-Modular Pianist, which changes to the next chord in the sequence.
I’ve used all kinds of slow modulation sources in my patches. Wave simulators, chaos, and slow, free-running LFOs are all staples in my modular practice, and I’ve used all of them as the engine that drives an entire patch. But one thing I’ve never tried in a lead role in a patch is good, old fashioned random modulation. Sure, I’ve used sample and hold or smooth random generators like the Frap Tools Sapél, Mutable Instruments Marbles, or Make Noise Wogglebug for specific tasks within a patch, but outside of Marbles > Rings-type patches, I’ve never based a patch on staochastic movement before.
Random is, well, random, and it’s hard to be intentional when you can’t really expect what’s going to happen next. In some circumstances, that unpredictability is perfect. In other cases, it just makes a really big mess. There are certainly ways to corral in a random signal to fit within particular parameters to allow for more predictability. That’s the basis of stochastics. Sapél has a range probability knob which directs it to choose output values predominantly from a particular range. Marbles has a switch for voltage ranges. Wogglebug similarly has a mechanism for more or less drastic changes. You can even hone random voltage in on your own with a little offset and attenuation. But it’s still random, and even if completely random might work for certain facets of a patch, using it as the main driver becomes difficult while still remaining musical.1 But I was determined to make it work, and I had just the module to help.
The Addac506 Stochastic Function Generator is a powerhouse modulation source made up of four function generators, and most of the bells a whistles one could want. Need cycling envelopes? Check. Slew limiter? Check. One shot envelopes? Check. Audio rate to very slow? Check. EOR and EOC trigger outputs. Check. Offset and attenuation to get your generated functions in the exact range you need it? Check? Some comparator action for related modulation? Check? And this checklist of features goes on and on. But the killer app of the Stochastic Function Generator is its ability to set a very precise range for both Rise and Fall times. This ability allows for some very compelling modulation that changes every cycle, but, particularly when using very slow modulation, does so organically in a way that seems transparent. It can be set to no random generation (standard envelopes), a very wide range with wildly changing Rise and Fall times, or a very narrow range where changes are subtle, and each of these can be done in three modes, slow, medium, or fast (per generator). The Addac506 is a very powerful module with a compelling feature set that can drive entire patches.
I had set out to make another E370 patch using slow modulation to fade the four wavetable oscillators in and out to create a cloud of a chord that is constantly shifting, yet still always the same. I’d been using slow moving bipolar signals for this purpose on several patches of late, but I wanted to try something a little different this time around. I’ve used chaotic systems, and I’d used both free running and synced LFOs, but I’d had problems using cycling unipolar functions in the past because no voice is ever truly out for very long. It’s a constant chord where each note changes volume, but is almost always audible. Mystery, drama, and tension are minimized; each note like a yo-yo rather than a graceful flow in and out and back in again. But the Addac506 is a little different. Unlike most function generators, with the Stochastic Function Generator you can tailor the outputs to any range you want. Those functions needn’t be unipolar, nor with wide ranging levels, and the ability to offset and attenuate signals allows one to shape your function to suit your destination without issue, and it’s this ability to perfectly condition CV before ever leaving the module that enabled me to use it in this slow fading movement I was looking for.
Setting the stochastic functions on the Addac506 is simple: set minimum and maximum Rise and Fall times, and call it a day. At the instantiation of every cycle both Rise and Fall will receive a random value between those set minimum and maximum times, and that stochastically determined envelope will come out. Flick the cycling switch and every cycle is something different. And the Addac506 gives us that, times four. It should be noted that this behavior can be replicated in any function generator that has both End Of Rise and End Of Cycle gate/trigger outputs, plus CV inputs to control the rise and fall times independently. You’ll need to add in a sample and hold or random voltage generator, plus a module for offset and attenuation to define the range of random. All this times four is a lot of patching, and a lot of modules. The Addac506 does it all seamlessly under the panel.
At first I was a little confused. Although I hadn’t initially set any offset, the output was still silent until the voltage as somewhere between 1-2 volts.2 I had anticipated needing to use negative offset to create some space between the fading out of one wave and when it will become audible again, but instead found myself using positive offset to get the flow I was after. Fortunately the flexibility of the Addac506 allowed for quick and easy adjustments to put each wave in the right zone. I added a fair amount of positive offset to the bass note of the chord so that it was always audible, while still having level changes to keep it moving. The other three oscillators used a very slight positive offset. Combining their need to get to somewhere between one and two volts before becoming audible, with the very slow nature of these ever-evolving functions determined the use of positive offset. Up to 40% of their positive range was already inaudible. Giving the functions a bit of a voltage floor rise was in order, lest far too much silence ensue.
Having already decided on my four oscillators for this chord soup, the quad wavetable oscillators of the Synthesis Technology E370, and having had the level control roughly framed out, it was time to look at modulating the wavetables to create movement within each note. The pitch of each oscillator would remain static, and to accompany the change in level, a change in timbre is natural (especially with a morphing wavetable oscillator). Having already used up the outputs of the Addac506, I looked to a familiar module, and one right next to the Stochastic Function Generator, the Addac508 Swell Physics.
Although Swell Physics is definitionally a chaos-based system, and not a random one, the uneven flow up and down of each output was perfect for the job. The bass note oscillator received modulation only on its Detune CV input, while the other three oscillators received both Wave and Detune modulation, the former from Swell Physics and the latter three free running sine wave LFOs from Batumi II. The triangle wave LFOs from Batumi II were used to pan these same three signals slowly through the stereo field with the ST Modular Sum Mix & Pan, while the bass note was planted firmly in the center. Once mixed down to stereo, the four oscillator cloud went to the AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer.
Once in the matrix mixer it was time to smooth out some of the rough edges with the Holocene Electronics Non-Linear Memory Machine, a favorite of mine since it went in the rack. As a non-clockable delay I found it a wonderful tool for long, drawn out ambient delays, especially with how it can smear repeats into an almost reverb-like sound. Although I tend to pretty heavily modulate the NLMM, I chose to go with no modulation in this patch, with smearing at about 12 o’clock on the knob, and feedback at around 11 o’clock. The NLMM was mixed with the dry signal in the matrix mixer at about a 50:50 ratio, and perhaps even favoring a bit more delay than dry signal.
This mixed signal was sent to both the output mixer and The Dradds for some broken tape machine treatment. Both sides, left and right, or light and dark as it exists in my case, were set to Tape mode at an octave up, with each side behaving slightly differently. The left side tends to randomly switch between forward and backwards playback at double-speed, while the right side randomly switches both direction and speed, although both sides were lightly modulated and sometimes change temporarily. Although I’ve always been enamored by the Dradd(s), it wasn’t until I really started to learn it have my results been what I was always hoping for. Since I sat down to really understand the Dradd(s), my patching has had an opportunity to be more intentional, with my results more satisfying and effective. Plus, having dual Dradds for a stereo field really maximizes the movement and variation it creates.
A heaping portion of distortion, courtesy of the Bizarre Jezabel Mimosa, was also used towards the end of the patch, which created occasional blips and stutters, and a sense of heavy drama. It was only used on the chord cloud and the Dradds, and even then I chose to keep a fair bit of the original dry signal in the mix. I really like the resulting sound, but something is happening that I don’t quite understand. As distortion was introduced into the mix, I did not lower the dry signal. I would have expected the volume would rise, yet it didn’t. The volume got lower, even once the dry and wet distortion signals were nearing full volume in the matrix mixer. It wasn’t until I started to lower the dry signal (the chord, its delayed signal from the NLMM, and the Dradds) that the overall volume started to become louder. My guess is there is some form of phase cancellation happening, although I don’t really know what phenomenon might explain it. You can hear it starting at about the 10 minute mark, with me starting to lower the dry level at about the 11:22 mark, which corresponded in a total output level rise. Curious, that.
Although I was quite happy with my shifting chord after a whole lot of tinkering with envelopes and CV input attenuators, I knew something was missing. I had blips of granular synthesis to break things up, but it needed more. I was hesitant to use SD Multisample as I’ve done a lot of that, but wanted something in a similar vein. Reaching back to one of my very first patches, an attempt at creating a wind chime-like sound and pattern, I decided to add in a randomly created, toy piano sound (or baby R2-D2 sounds as my oldest relayed ). I really enjoyed making that patch when I did it the first time around. It was the first patching technique I’d ever figured out on my own, and a sense of nostalgia pushed me over the edge, even if only to see if I could remember how to replicate it.
This part of the patch started at the Stochastic Function Generator’s “Average” output. This output was patched to the input of the Joranalogue Compare 2. When the Average out from the Addac506 was inside the comparator window, it spat out a gate to the cycling input on a Frap Tools Falistri. While the function was cycling, the End Of Cycle gate triggered Sapel and Quantermain. Sapel sent a value from the N2 output to both Quantermain, in order to send quantized pitch CV, and the Decay CV input of Falistri that would change the envelope length with each note. The VCO changed pitch, and the cycling envelope opened the VCA, each note with a different pitch and length. The sound went from the first VCA to the output mixer, as well as a second VCA which panned the signal to two separate delays, which were then mixed and sent to the output mixer to be mixed with the dry signal and the rest of the patch.
Although the method I ultimately used in this patch is very different than the first time around, the results are similar. The sounds are much higher in pitch, much faster, and much shorter than my original version, but the theory behind creating the sounds was the same, even if I took a different route to get there.3 I wanted short, uneven bursts, and I got them. It’s quite often these days that I realize there are many routes to the same end. Overall, this part of the patch played a very minor role, but an important one. After several listens, I’d probably integrate this part differently were I to do it again. I’d definitely have it more forward for most of the mix rather than hanging around the background. It seems to get lost sometimes, when it should be more prominent. I would also not mess up a patch connection with my second delay, the Qu-Bit Electronix Nautilus, where I plugged into the Right input, and not the left, which, with the feedback pattern chosen, put virtually all of the delay signal from Nautilus on only the Left side. Some might not even notice, but it bothers the shit out of me.
The last part of this patch is the periodic “bubble burst” with accompanying echoes (courtesy of the Xaoc Devices Sarajewo). I stole this idea straight from one of my favorite patches on the Make Noise channel. It’s a simple sound that is both unobtrusive, and only very periodic. The sound was created by pinging (ringing?) CUNSA, which also had its frequency modulated by the highly attenuated HP output of the same filter (another trick I stole from Make Noise – Thanks, Walker!). It was triggered by using a Stackcable to combine three separate gate outputs from the Stochastic Function Generator. These long functions output only very periodic gates at a random interval, so there’s no overcrowding. It also helped provide a sense of scale and depth of the musical space.
Everything ended with a round trip through the Walrus Audio Slöer, which is quickly becoming my favorite reverb. Although I’ve tended towards one of the pitch shifting algorithms, I ultimately decided on using the Dream algorithm, though the Rain algorithm also sounded nice.
I really enjoyed this patch, even if there are a few things I would definitely change. It was both challenging and highly rewarding. It offers answers to some questions, but also to more questions to explore in a future patch.
Although what is or isn’t “musical” is certainly subject to wide interpretation, I think we can still make useful generalizations, while drawing lines between something most would call musical, with yet other examples most would call sound(s) or noise. ↩︎
I’m not sure, but I suspect that the VCA/mixer I was using to process the audio has a logarithmic response, delaying its response with slow(er) signals. The manual doesn’t illuminate the VCA topography, unfortunately. ↩︎
After looking at a patch diagram of the original patch, the methods used between these two patches was quite different, even if it started similarly. It’s nice to know that there is generally more than one way to accomplish some patching goal. ↩︎
The moment the new Addac508 Swell Physics was announced, I instantly knew I’d get one as soon as it was released. Even after just having completed one of my several small modulation subsystems, I quickly moved things around on Modular Grid in order to accommodate for Swell Physics. There was no way I wasn’t going to fit in something as cool as this in my modulation.
In a long ago life in the ancient times of the late 90s and early aughts, I was an avid Scuba Diver. I met my wife in Scuba Diving class in college (it was South Florida; of course there is Scuba Diving for college credit). We ran a very active Scuba Club at our university that won several university community and environmental awards. We dove nearly every weekend for years up and down the Southeast Florida coast, the Keys, and in North Florida’s freshwater springs. I was fascinated by the ocean, and still am. An ocean simulator in my current hobby? Sign me up.
In full admission, my first date with the Swell Physics was a disaster. No matter what I did, I could never quite get what I was looking for. Ranging from “absolutely horrid” to “okay but still not very good”, I became frustrated quickly. I’d so eagerly anticipated this module, and I couldn’t tame it. Not even a little. Either waves would last too long, or not long enough. I’d have awkwardly long stretches of nothingness, or seemingly never ending havoc. I soon decided to unpatch and try again another day.
Several weeks back I decided to watch the comprehensive Batumi/Poti II review by the ever-entertaining and informative Robin Vincent at Molten Music Technology. I’ve had the Batumi II for a short while and was checking if he had any tips that might help me utilize the new functionalities in creative ways. And although he did help me understand the new module better and encouraged me to implement its more advanced functionality in more patches, what I noticed most wasn’t the Batumi II or its capabilities, but in how he was demonstrating the module with the RYK Algo. The Algo was there simply as a vessel to demonstrate what the four signals of the Batumi II were doing in the most obvious way possible: straight to the four level inputs to bring the volume of each oscillator in and out as the LFO signals from Batumi ebb and flow in their range. It was beautiful, and I was inspired, especially as the modulation got more complex. It was while I watched this video that the proverbial light bulb moment happened. “Hey. Wait a minute. The Swell Physics has four interrelated outputs too. And I’ve been curious about the Algo. Hmmmmmm….” I already have a four operator FM module in the Quad Operator, but I also remembered that first frustrating patch was with the Quad Operator, and so decided to let out that fart and buy an Algo. It wasn’t an impulse buy, I’d been eyeing it since its release, and imagining one paired with Swell Physics was the final pang of GAS that implored me to finally hit “Add to Cart.”
Although I hadn’t yet used the Algo, and was only as familiar with it as having watched the few demo videos on YouTube, plus a cursory look at the manual. I knew it should be fairly intuitive, and I was right. Using its basic functionality out of the box as a four oscillator bank, complete with panning and level adjustments, as well as detuning, wavefolding, wave shaping, and chorusing was very intuitive. Although I didn’t experiment with the FM algorithms, I’m sure those are just as intuitive. Within a minute or two I already knew what I wanted to do and how to accomplish it. The only questions were a matter of how I wanted to facilitate the process.
Having recently received the Algo, and with Robin’s demo still fresh in my mind, I decided to give that patch a go. But rather than using Batumi, I decided that Swell Physics would be the main driver of this patch.
From the get-go I knew the concept behind this patch was simple. Run the four wave outputs from the Swell Physics to the four level inputs of the Algo, and see if I could get a pleasant succession of waves that flowed freely and delicately. To my surprise, it went much more amicably this second time around, and I was able to get a nice flow of waves. I tried also using pitch CV for some change, but it didn’t sound right, nor could I get the changes from one pitch to another smooth enough to not have blips or huge slurs. I mostly left it without pitch changes because it conveyed that “lost out in the ocean” feeling more clearly to my ear.
After getting to a wave pattern I liked, I decided it was time for some modulation. To get the wave machine changing. I knew I wanted the waves to serve as modulation in this patch, including a fair bit of patch programming with the Swell Physics. I sent the “Avg” output to an Intellijel Quad VCA, and used three of the attenuated outputs on the Spread, Agitation, and Swell Size CV inputs, using the much easier to access Quad VCA knobs to control the amount, and the fourth to the Wavefolder CV input on the Algo to occasionally reveal some higher harmonics from those 4 simple sine waves floating about. Not much. Just a shade.
From here, the patch was quite simple. The first several minutes of the recording are just the Swell Physics modulating the RYK Algo, which went out to the mixer and was sent through the Vongon Ultrasheer. Later I introduced Mutable Instruments Beads in parallel with Beads running through the Bizarre Jezabel Blossom. There is no external randomization on Beads; only the onboard random used by adjusting the attenuverters. Blossom, however, is heavily modulated by the Joranalogue Orbit 3. I had thought about using the Swell Physics to also modulate Blossom, but by the time I was creating this part of the patch I had already routed Swell Physics, and sharing modulation would have necessarily meant several bits of repatching I wasn’t prepared to do. I decided to use the Orbit 3, also engaged in patch programming, as my modulation source for Blossom. Chaos and the physics of waves are not dissimilar, and they paired quite naturally.
There’s a patch that caught my ear in the days after a recent shoulder surgery while I was stuck in the recliner hopped up on pain killers, and looking for every distraction I could find in the synth-based slice of the internet to keep my time occupied. Unfortunately for my wallet during this time, I happed upon Tom Churchill’s excellent tutorial demos on the Xaoc Devices Odessa and Sofia (which led to an entire new Xaotic Dreams Subsystem). Stazma’s (AKA The Junglechrist) demo of the Verbos Harmonic Oscillator (particularly how it pairs so beautifully with the Multi-Delay Processor) led me on similar path with Verbos.
But it was one patch in particular that I kept coming back to which had me captivated. Over and over I’d listen to it, allowing its peace to wash over my ailing mind and soothe my temporarily excruciating existence. As I watched I would try to make out through an oxycodone fog what was happening, hoping that as soon as I was able I could create something like it. I took notes as best I could, and I traded my BitBox Micro so that I could acquire a Disting Ex. Although BitBox Micro is capable of playing polyphonic multisamples, and is a fantastic module in its own right, it can only do so with MIDI, and I needed to use CV and gates.
My first foray with this patch was a mess. The basic framework was more or less built out, but lots of things were off. My first problem was a horribly calibrated Disting Ex. Its pitch was wildly off, and nothing was in tune despite receiving carefully calibrated pitch CV. Once that was fixed things were much better, but I still had far too many dissonances that weren’t at all what I was looking for, and I wasn’t sure how to fix it. I couldn’t get the speed to something I felt was just right. I couldn’t get a satisfying note distribution. I wasn’t at all satisfied with it. I recorded it, but every time I’d listen back, I’d hear mere flashes of my goal disappear into a dark cloud of dissonance. Each listen prompted me to revisit the idea.
I’ve made over a dozen other modular recordings since that first try. Jamuary was productive. Not a single one of them attempts to use polyphonic multisampling. Not a single one of them uses Marbles or Disting Ex (in any capacity). I’d stepped away from it. During that time, when I would take a few moments to think about the patch, I gained some perspective, as well as some newfound patching knowledge and experience with the various patches I was making at the time. I was now better prepared to revisit this piano patch with a fresh take.
I knew that one of my initial problems to solve was that the original patch had too many notes available for CV to address. My first attempt at this patch was in C Major, and I left all 7 notes of the scale available between C1 and C5 to all 3 CV inputs. Marbles spits out randomly generated pitch CV and gates from its X and T outputs, which goes to the 3 CV and gate inputs on the Disting Ex, via Quantermain in the Micro Ornament and Crime. Despite having quantized pitch CV, using the maximum number of notes meant that any number of dissonances can happen at any point. Nobody wants to hear E juxtaposed with F, or any other dissonant intervals, with any regularity. Particularly not when there can be several dissonances occurring simultaneously. It’s harsh, when I’m looking for smooth.
Along with a key change (C Major to C Minor) I also made adjustments such that each pitch CV input would only generate particular notes of the scale, and not all of them. This change made dissonances few and far between, which meant those dissonances were now artistic tension that would quickly resolve to something more pleasing, and not a stream of clashing notes that barrel into one another, overtaking the piece. I made some minor adjustments to the Rate and Jitter controls on the Mutable Instruments Marbles to get a more satisfying pace and amount of sloppiness in note instantiation. I also tweaked the note distribution to get something resembling a bell curve in pitch generation. More notes in the middle of the range than at either extreme. Super low and piercingly high notes are good for effect, but not as a matter of regular course throughout a piece. These notes are generated randomly, but the process still needs well set boundaries in order to remain interesting. Unfettered random is every bit as boring as a fully repetitive pattern.
Now that I had a stream of piano notes I was content with, it was time to address the FX, which is what would make this piece interesting. The piano sets the path. The FX create the atmosphere around that path. During my first attempt at this patch, I tried to keep FX to a minimum. Some reverb courtesy of the Mutable Instruments Beads, followed later by its granular synthesis engine. The FX were sparse, but not really in a good way. The piece was empty and cluttered at the same time. Octave repeats spiraling off almost uncontrollably, awkwardly filling in empty space and becoming unruly when note generation temporarily sped up. It was a mess. A mess so bad, in fact, that I simply stopped recording out of frustration, and pulled the patch apart.
This time I started with the reverb. Although the FX is what would be most interesting about this piece, I knew I wanted to have the reverb set based on how it sounded with just the piano notes. I wanted a massive open space. Something between a huge cathedral and space. There needed to be bounds, but they needed to be pretty far out there. I had initially chosen to use the Vongon Ultrasheer for the reverb, but in a last minute decision decided to use the Oto Bam with its Ambient algorithm. Some adjustments to the size and decay, along with a bit of modulated chorus adjusted in the Bam, and we were set. In retrospect, I wish I had added even more chorus to lofi it up, or that I had used the Ultrasheer with some randomly modulated vibrato, but I’m still quite pleased with the result.
But what next? I had bad memories of out of control granular repeats, so decided to forego using it in favor of delay. I knew I wanted some reverse delay (because if it doesn’t have reverse delay is it even ambient?), but all reverse delay all the time quickly became taxing, its zips easily taking over the soundscape. So I decided to work on panning technique which would gradually move the source piano sounds between 2 different delays using 2 different sorts of repeats. The technique isn’t hard, even when adapting it to a full stereo signal. You can find the patch diagram here. These 2 delays are mixed, creating seamless transitions between 1 delay and the other. Very cool. I got movement and gradually changing variation. As one delay fades out, the other begins to fade in. Pretty much exactly what I wanted.
But even with gradually shifting between 2 wholly separate delays, the reverse delay was still a bit over-prominent, which meant that I needed a method to turn the reverse function on and off. Chaos to the rescue. After some tweaking to various facets of my clock, the delays were sorted. But there was still something missing.
I’ve had Panharmonium for a long time. It was one of my first large Eurorack purchases, and I definitely didn’t have the modular chops to use it effectively. In fact, I’d had a very hard time getting anything nice sounding from it. I could never seem to find the right analysis interval, and a couple of other settings really mystified me, resulting in what I can only describe as sonic sludge. A glob of abruptly shifting dissonances that sounded terrible. It was nothing like what the many YouTube demos promised were all there to be unlocked.
After watching a video titled “How I Use My Rossum Panharmonium (Part 1)” by Baséput I noticed something. The source he used is fairly sparse. I had been using full melody lines as a source and it hadn’t worked out at all. He was using the granular-like output from Morphagene as a source, which is fairly sparse, and had a beautiful result with just a couple of knob twists. Depending on your settings, just a second of a Morphagene output could hold an entire piece’s worth of sonic info. With that info in mind, I decided to use the mixed delays as my input into Panharmonium. A few more tweaks to the delays to give me shorter repeats, plus an octave up on one of them, and I felt like I had good sonic ingredients for Panharmonium to shine.
And it worked. Despite never having anything special from Panharmonium before, I was greeted almost instantly with exactly the sorts of sounds I’d always imagined making with it. In just 1 patch the Panharmonium turned from a module I had listed for sale into one I doubt I’d ever get rid of. The results are an almost choir-like accompaniment, which gives the entire piece an ethereal feel, which was pretty much what I was going for. More on this to come.
Like many people, the flagship 4ms modules, Spherical Wavetable Navigator (SWN) and Spectral Multiband Resonator (SMR), immediately grabbed my attention upon first laying eyes on them. They’re beautiful, engaging, sound mesmerizing, and perhaps most importantly, full of blinkenlights. The best demos show the promise of drone heaven and the frolicking of gently pinged filters. Everything about them induces the worst sort of GAS.
The SMR was one of my first large Eurorack purchases. The second I heard the first demo of it on a YouTube video I was absolutely hooked. I wanted the sound of Fantasy Land (not to be confused with Fantasyland). Ringing bells harmonizing about as I modulate and play with sliders, so I found a decent deal on one and pulled the trigger.
Those first few patch dates were rough. The complexity of Modular synthesis in general still all but totally eluded me. I had very little understanding of voltage ranges, attenuators and offsets, and properly using CV. To add on, the SMR has the learning curve of a steep cliff, with deep shadows under every knob turn and flick of a switch. It’s incredibly dense, and highly intimidating for a beginner, so after those first few forays I put it aside with the hopes that I might revisit it when I could more properly understand how to use it. I tried again about a year later and had better results, but still not satisfying ones. Certainly not worth the money it costs or space it occupies. I thought of selling it, but those demos….
Fast forward to the end of summer 2023. The HS baseball season was over (I keep score for a local HS team and travel with them, and then do it again for summer ball) and I once again had some time to mess about with my synth. But instead of trying to play with the SMR and get something useful, I gave in to a serious case of GAS and ordered a SWN, the SMR’s sister module of equal beauty, size, cost, and complexity, along with equally beautiful sounds emanating from within its spheres. No one ever accused me of being smart.
But this time I took a different tact before trying to use it. Rather than simply plugging in cables to see what happens, I watched 2 demo videos by the ever-engaging Red Means Recording and loopop; over and over and over, while having the manual open to refer to the official documentation when needed or desired. I wanted to understand what this beast was and how it worked, not just have an idea of what it can do. Before I ever patched a single cable I’d watched the videos at least a dozen times, and read the manual in depth so that I might have a solid grasp of the controls.
I’m glad I did that. During my first session at the controls, I only needed to consult the manual for the different LFO and scale color coding. The controls were easy, and in some ways, already ingrained. I knew which knob I needed to twist for browsing the wavetables, and how to use the same knob to select a different wavetable sphere. Instinctively I knew how to change chords. The session seemed to flow easily and it was a good time, however brief. Who knew that RTFM was a good idea?
The next day I had more time, and I was due for a longer session on the synth. Being that I’d just recently finished a 3u 84hp subsystem dedicated to 4ms , I was eager to get to patching it in a more unified way. So I was off to the races. Not just with the SWN, but I was determined also to use the SMR in conjunction. My understanding of synthesis has come a long way since my first time sitting down with it, and I wanted my longing for something beautiful out of the SMR to finally be realized. Plus, because of my newly found understanding of the SWN, I had an idea. 💡
Although I’m sure that this idea is as far from original as could be, it was still an idea that I came up with independently, and I was determined to run with it. Those 6 Level CV inputs on the SMR just so happen to correspond to 6 LFO outputs that can send envelopes, gates, or triggers. Surely 4ms didn’t design this pair this conveniently on purpose!
And it was brilliant. The patch starts with continuous pinging of each filter in succession, while modulating the Spread which sends the pinging melody up and down the scale in very interesting ways. It’s then mixed with a drone from the SWN while modulating the areas within the wavetable sphere. The 4ms Dual EnvVCA was used to modulate the Scale on SMR, which was itself modulated by one of the envelope followers. Dual EnvVCA was also used to slowly modulate the wavetable. Everything was sent to both delay and reverb. There are loads of cables in this patch, but it wasn’t terribly difficult.
Ping Pong delay is easy, right? Just tick a box in a plugin, or flick a switch on your handy stereo delay unit and you’re done, right? Well, sure, but that’s all digital. What I’m talking about is ping pong delay, old school. Patching 2 mono, analog delay units in order to create ping pong delay in the stereo field.
When I first started thinking about how to do this, very few ideas came to mind. Of course there is the pseudo ping pong trick of setting one delay time at X with the other delay at 2X, which would give you a repeat on one side then the other. But that only works for exactly 1 repeat per channel. If there is any feedback, the first delay will sound again each time the second plays, which means it’s not really ping pong at all. It’s only kinda sorta ping pong. I wanted something better. The real McCoy.
As I started to research analog ping pong patching via Google, I was quickly dismayed. There aren’t really any good sources I could find to explain the method for patching ping pong delay. Nothing. Nada. After I couldn’t find the info I was after via research, I decided to ask. I asked on an audio engineer forum. Crickets. I asked a home studio group on Facebook and was met with “Just use a plugin. It sounds the same”, as if that’s a good answer to the question of how to patch analog hardware. I looked in my own studio recording books, which were all silent on the matter. It’s as if this information just doesn’t exist, or, more accurately, was outdated by the time the internet arrived, and the knowledge on how to perform this studio trick was simply never recorded digitally. It’s a lost art from the days of yore when everything had to be patched manually, and no one outside of studios used it. A voodoo spell that not even those inside of professional working studios seem to use any longer. Analog ping pong delay is dead.
After searching for what seemed like forever, I finally happed upon a video which explains using 2 analog delays in ping pong fashion, with the aid of a desktop mixer. The patch is fairly simple, even if it’s not intuitive.
Sound Source > Ch 1 input (panned center) Ch 1 Aux Send > Delay 1 input Delay 1 > split directly to Ch 2 input (panned hard left) and Delay 2 Input Delay 2 > Ch 3 input (panned hard right) Ch 3 Aux Send > Delay 1 input Mixer Stereo Output
Be sure that both delays are set to the same time. Be extra sure that the feedback (repeats) for both delays are set to the minimum (1 repeat). The Aux Send of input 3 (Delay 2) controls the number of repeats. BEWARE: This is a feedback patch. It can get out of control very quickly.Use the Aux Send wisely.
But I don’t have a desktop mixer, and although they can be had inexpensively, I didn’t really have much use for one outside of wanting to do tape echo ping pong delay. I used to have a Xaoc Devices Praga in my eurorack synth, which would have been ideal, but I sold it in favor of decentralized mixing alongside using a matrix mixer. Hmmmm….
A matrix mixer is nothing if not a set of inputs, sends and returns. “I think I can make this work, even in the context of my matrix mixer being full stereo”, I thought. And sure enough, after several drafts in my Notability folder for synth patching, and experimenting with dummy cable theory, I had a solid plan. I just didn’t know if it would work.
The theory with a matrix mixer is the same, but because mine is stereo, I had to use make clever use of some dummy cables in order to defeat L> R normalization at the inputs to ensure everything was in the correct channel at the outputs, while still having access to the dry and wet signals independently to mix their respective levels later in an output mixer. To mix the dry and wet in the matrix as it’s patched would leave the dry signal in the left channel only. No good.
Sound source > Input 1L, with dummy cable in 1R Output AL/R > mono mixer > Delay 1 Delay 1 > Input 2L, with dummy cable in 2R Output BL > Delay 2 Delay 2 > Input 3R, with a dummy cable in 3L (it is not necessary to use a dummy cable here, but I’m using one for consistency) Output CL > Output Mixer (Pan Center) Output DL/R > Output Mixer (Pan L/R respective, or use a stereo input)
Knobs with an X are fully CCW (off). Knobs with a green check are mixed to taste. Knob with the red check is controlling feedback for the repeats. BEWARE: Ch 3A is feedback from Delay 2 to Delay 1. It can easily run away out of control and blow your speakers, headphones, and/or ear drums. Use it sparingly.
This method also makes use of a separate mono mixer to act as a send for both the source and Delay 2 to Delay 1. It what helps make the magic happen. Without the mixer, I couldn’t get the source and Delay 2 to Delay 1 without getting channels mixed up. Everything must remain on discrete channels in the matrix. As a result of the several dummy cables, Ch A’s outputs are discrete channels being used in a dual mono setup rather than in stereo, with those signals being mixed separately before going to delay 1. It was the only way to accomplish the task of sending both the source and Delay 2 inputs to Delay 1 while keeping those signals unmixed and discrete inside of the matrix mixer for final output.
Heed the inputs and outputs used very closely. It seems a bit odd, but it ensures that the stereo field is intact and signals remain properly separated until the final output mix. Deviate at your own peril.
The dry output is from Ch C, with the wet stereo output from Ch D. Pan the Ch C output to the center, with Ch D being panned L/R respectively.
This patch can likely be simplified (and perhaps sound better as a result) by splitting the audio at the Delay 1 output rather than relying on the matrix mixer to send the output of Delay 1 to Delay 2. This experiment, however, is for another day.
Although I haven’t pondered the nitty gritty of this patch in a mono matrix mixer, I think it would likely be a better tool for the job, but my first inclination is that you would need 5 outputs, and not the standard 4.
