I’ve had a full Make Noise synth for a while. In fact, I had far more Make Noise modules than I had space for, and with the recent release of Multimod, their new modulation tool, I decided to spring for a second 4-Zone CV Bus Case to avoid having to constantly rearrange the case from patch to patch. Multimod is an interesting tool. Billed as an eight output buffered multiple with several tricks up its sleeve, it presents a new method of spreading modulation signals around a case. It uses phasing, time, and speed manipulation in order to conjure this newfound magic. Fugue-like sequences can be created, as can wild modulation schemes, and many other things besides, all created from a single input signal. Being a Make Noise fan, I ordered one knowing only that it was a modulation source. If Make Noise has a gap in their lineup, it’s modulation sources. Once I saw the initial demo videos by Sarah Belle Reid and Red Means Recording, I ordered a second.
Although upon receiving them I used the new Multimods briefly to get an idea of how they worked, I hadn’t yet delved into what they can really do. I roughly recreated a couple of patches found in the videos, such as sending a sequence to several oscillators, and even trying it as a multitap, pitch shifting delay, but these were surface level primers, not any sort of real exploration. Being that Multimod presents a very new way of sending modulation around a synth, I was unsure how I might want to use them. My initial thought in ordering two was to use one for CV manipulation, and the second as an audio processor. I’ll certainly do more of that in the future, but I wanted to see if I couldn’t tackle an issue I noticed right away.
One of the highlights of the video demonstrations were the creation of fugue-like sequences, where many oscillators would receive the same sequence, but at different speeds or phased in time in interesting ways. But I also noticed immediately that although the sequence pitch data was spread around, there wasn’t a good way of spreading around an accompanying gate sequence for articulation. Some attempts at remedying this conundrum that I’ve seen involve using a separate gate sequencer, or even just a clock. And while deriving pitch and gate sequences independently is a particular strength of eurorack, that method seemed haphazard and insufficient for this application. I wanted more. I wanted the entire sequence at all of the outputs regardless of the speed or phase. So I thought about it, and suddenly a potential answer came to mind. Use one Multimod for processing the pitch sequence, and the other for processing the gate sequence. But there was still the problem of movement. I needed to move the knobs the exact same amount at the exact same time in order for the outputs on both modules to follow. How would I modulate them so that they were always doing the same thing at the same time and the gate sequences were following their pitch CV counterparts?
The CV Bus.
Although a Maths channel two or three could be used as an offset in the same way, I decided to use the CV outputs of the Noisy Fruits Lab Lemon, a very excellent standalone CV/MIDI controller, to manually control Multimod’s Time and Spread controls. My goals here were simple: to use two Multimod’s to control a single René CV and gate sequence, with the outputs on both being in sync with one another. If Multimod were an all analog module, I think this experiment would likely be dead in the water. I’m not convinced that parts and control tolerances would be close enough such that they would remain identical through modulation. But since Multimod is all digital, I surmised that so long as all of the Init settings were the same on both, they should (very theoretically) react the same to identical control voltage received at the same time.
To start, I copied a x2 clock from Tempi to both Multimod Tempo inputs, with a second /16 clock to both Reset inputs. This ensured that the clocks of both units would always be in sync. I then patched René’s X CV channel to the first Multimod input, and the X Gate output to the second Multimod input. The Init setting on both Multimods were simple: Phase at full CCW, Spread at Noon, with the Spread CV attenuverter at full CW, and Time at full CCW. With these settings, things worked just as they should: a single CV and gate sequence from all eight outputs happening at precisely the same time. So far, so good. I then patched the Lemon fader CV outputs to the CV Bus, and then to both the Time and Spread CV inputs on both Multimods.1 A single CV source should (again, theoretically) modulate both units identically such that as the CV sequence speeds up (or slows down), the gate sequence simultaneously does the same, and corresponding outputs on each Multimod should remain in sync.
For the oscillators I chose the Spectraphon.2 The first Multimod output one was patched to Oscillator A, with Output four patched to Oscillator B. The mixed outputs of each side of Spectraphon were then patched to QMMG inputs one and two. Outputs one and four of the second Multimod were patched to QMMG’s CV inputs, with both QMMG channels in LPG mode (though it sounded cool in LPF mode too). With identical modulation going to both the Time and Spread CV inputs of both Multimods at the same time, the CV and Gate sequence outputs should (theoretically) also be in sync with changes. The CV sequence from output one on the first Multimod should match the gate sequence from output one on the second Multimod. Ditto with the other outputs.
To be honest, I’m not sure if the patch worked like it should have in theory. What I mean to say is that the result is ultra-cool whether theory was borne out in practice or not. Things sound correct with the resulting sequence from Multimods output four, the output that is affected least by changes to Time and Spread. But I can’t really tell if the pitch and gate sequences from Multimods output one, the output affected most by changes to Time and Spread, is synced in the same way. The sequence is moving pretty fast. Hearing individual triggers can be tough at super high speeds, especially when slamming triggers into vactrols, like those in QMMG. Not only is there inherent bleed, but the fall response is such that you can’t always hear individually triggered notes if they’re in quick succession. DXG would likely have been a better candidate for testing the precision of the altered sequence because each trigger is annunciated clearly in a way that isn’t possible with vactrols. That said, I’m a huge fan of vactrol bleed. It can be a beautiful effect when used with intention, and although I wasn’t looking for any particular sound with this patch, vactrol bleed certainly showed off its character in this test recording.
The QMMG outputs were sent to X-Pan, with the Channel four sequence mixed in the middle, while the Channel one sequence was slowly panned left to right and back again through the stereo field by a cycling Maths triangle function. The stereo output of X-Pan was sent to Mimeophon for some finishing with beautiful repeats and Halo.
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.
When I turned on my Make Noise synth tonight, I had anticipated some more experimentation with filter wobble. I had both QMMG and QPAS right in front of me, and so far in my brief experimentation, these two filters had been the best at it. And I did do some of that. It was the first thing I did for about 30 minutes. But, as it so often does, the patch sent me in a different direction. It’s still a delicate patch, but not in that kind of way.
This patch won’t get the full patch breakdown, but I’ll lay out the basic framework.
René X Channel > Spectraphon B (stereo outputs) > QPAS (Smile Pass 😁) > X-Pan Spectraphon B (Sub) > QMMG Ch 2 (LPG) > QMMG Ch 1 (VCA) > X-Pan The recording starts out with only the QPAS outputs, before bringing in the LPD’d version. Both are crossfaded once the LPG’d version is brought in. The resonance, particularly on QPAS, got a smidge out of hand, but nothing ear screaming or offensive.
René Y channel > Spectraphon A (stereo outputs) > QMMG Ch 3 & 4 (LPF) > X-Pan (Aux) This is the slower, lower voice that was brought in last. Spectraphon’s A side Focus and Slide were modulated by Wogglebug. Once bright in, this voice was only level controlled by the cutoff of the filter in QMMG. I slowly brought up the envelope amount in Maths to open it further and further.
X-Pan (stereo outputs) > Mimeophon > Output
Maths is doing a lot of work, modulating the filter cutoff of both Both QPAS and QMMG, Radiate on QPAS, controlling the envelope level to the QMMG in LPG mode, as well as the crossfading of the continuous playing sequence and the pinged one. I need to find a better way to activate the crossfader. Since I was using a copy of a Maths Unity output in both of X-Pan’s Crossfade CV inputs, I couldn’t just attenuate it to 0v then introduce the crossfading by turning a knob. So I inserted the cables when I was ready to introduce the voice. You can hear that little fumble as that voice is brought in.
I used a reverb send from my mixer to the Maneco Labs Otterley Reverb for some reverb (duh) as well as a touch of granular treatment.
One of the beautiful things about eurorack is the many happy accidents that we all run into on occasion. Those times when some combination of conditions present at just the right moment seems to produce something magical. You don’t necessarily know what got you there, but nonetheless, here it is and it’s glorious. Though we may not always know exactly what leads to these enigmatic moments of splendor, there are things we can consider when seeking to be able to use those sounds as part of your artistic arsenal. It’s one thing to hap into something beautiful, however you might describe that term, but it’s another thing altogether to reproduce whatever it is you heard to make that magic an intentional part of your sound. To play it, rather than have it fall in your lap.
A couple of days after Jamuary concluded I made a patch on the Make Noise synth that made me stand up and stare. There was a whisper. An oscillator speaking softly into a filter’s ear, quivering as it tried to muster enough courage to get sound out. It wasn’t unlike bowing a string as lightly as possible, or trying to play a wind instrument as quietly as one can. There was a vulnerability in the voice, seemingly lacking the confidence to speak, or like trying to speak when you’re crying and your lips quiver. There was a wobble that was absolutely intoxicating, and I was set on trying to reproduce that wobble.
When I first set out to try and recreate this sound, I first isolated the conditions of the patch I wanted to emulate. Of course oscillators can’t speak softly. They only know one output level, generally speaking. I documented every patch connection and knob setting from this sub-patch. I verified modulation sources and any peculiarities. I thought about this patch a lot, writing extensively in my Notability patch book, and narrowed it down to three factors. At least theoretically.
As low a level going into the filter as possible. On my original patch, I used QPAS as my first filter, and controlled levels with the input VCA knob. I initially did this out of necessity because the other voice in the patch was very quiet by its nature, and when any real level was given to the oscillator going through QPAS it was too loud. I discovered later that night that the lower the level, the better the conditions for interesting wobbles. If your filter does not have input level control, you can use an attenuator or VCA before going to the filter input.
A filter with some fairly aggressive resonance. It need not scream like a Polivoks, but the resonance needs to be pronounced before it goes into self oscillation. If the resonance is non-linear, it’s even better. I’ve also surmised, perhaps errantly, that a vactrol-based filter would be better suited to this job because of the inherent drag and voltage drift of vactrols. The filter creating pronounced wobble in my Make Noise patch was QMMG, a vactrol-based filter, processing a signal that had already gone through QPAS. I could be wrong, but my experiments trying to reproduce the wobble seem to bear out this conclusion. I don’t have a vactrol-based filter in my main synth, but none of the filters I used in my experiments had the same sort of wobble as that produced by the QMMG.
A slow moving modulation signal that moves the cutoff frequency through the fundamental frequency of the note. I’ve found the slower the better, but there are diminishing returns to that proposition. When you add resonance to a filter, you’re creating a small hump in the EQ curve at the cutoff frequency by feeding it back into the filter’s input. When that cutoff frequency intersects and passes through the fundamental frequency of whatever signal you’re passing through it, you get a small wobble. The resonance itself and the modulator’s frequency and shape can alter that wobble some, and can change its character, as do any curves you might put on your modulating signal.
Of course all of this was theoretical, and much of it still is, even if I’ve received some form of verification via Google AI, and tangible signs that I’m on the right track through my subsequent experimentation.1
When I set out to make a patch yesterday, my goal was to first experiment with recreating filter wobble through my main synth where I have a plethora of filters of all sorts. My first thought was to experiment wholly within the Frap Tools Cunsa. I can create sine waves with the first filter and still have three filters with which to experiment, all with normalized patching to make things simple. I was pretty quickly able to create some wobble using my three guideposts listed above, but it was very consistent, and exciting as it was to know I was on the right path, I felt that perhaps the Cunsa was simply too polite a filter to get the best results. Abandoning Cunsa, I next went to the Joranalogue Generate 3 feeding Filter 8, but I never felt like I could get anything close to what I wanted. The cutoff was always too high, and I couldn’t tame the harmonics in a way I wanted. So I switched to a single sine wave from Filter 8 feeding the Bizarre Jezabel Seju Stereo, which was okay, but not special, so I went to the Pkhia, which didn’t work very well. I moved on to the Pkhi Mk3, and had a promising start, but it didn’t progress much. Finally I went to the Blossom, a multi-output filter inspired by the legendary Mannequins Three Sisters, and I heard…something interesting. The wobble was there, and had a bit more character than the simple hump like the rest of the filters. I had found the subject for the rest of the day’s experiments. I spent well over two hours exploring different filters, and of those I tried, a simple sine wave into Blossom was definitely the most compelling. I have other filters that I think are good candidates, namely the Verbos Amp & Tone and Instruo I-ō47, but neither of those cases were in the synth when I turned it on. I’m definitely interested in trying those filters, as both have just the right kind of resonance, I think, to be compelling options.
After I’d finalized a base sound I wanted to use for the rest of the patch, a single sine wave into a resonant low pass filter, I worked up a sequence in C Lydian on the very excellent Doboz T12, and went to work. Like the voice used in my Make Noise patch, this voice would also be completely un-gated, sauntering along, only being level modulated in the filter by the slowly moving function of a cycling Contour 1. The cutoff point is set lower than the lowest fundamental frequency so that there would be times when no notes of the sequence come through. Because Blossom doesn’t have level input control, I ran the output of Filter 8 through an attenuator to initially make the sound as quiet as possible while still being (mostly) audible.
I decided to use a staggered clock. One that is gated by a clock divider, so as to never have continuous repetition. I multed a single x1 clock output from the Sitka Gravity to the Nonlinearcircuits Divide & Conquer in order to create my gate. Because the Gravity is in its infancy, there are several basic things it can’t do. As of now, Gravity’s clock (and sequencer) only outputs triggers, and not gates, so I couldn’t use the duty cycle of a gate output (like those on Pamela’s Pro (and New, and OG) Workout) to gate the x1 trigger that would ultimately go to the clock input on the sequencer. I wanted the clock to start and stop every five beats, and Divide & Conquer was able to provide a gate that enabled that staggered clock for my sequence to follow. The sequence itself is simple. It’s a couple of scale lines going up, with a very low probability (11%) of getting a quantized random pitch within seven semitones (a fifth) of any given step of the sequence. But because the cutoff frequency of the filter goes below the lowest fundamental pitch, the sequence flows in and out and isn’t steady. Notes hold in beautiful ways, and the sequence doesn’t repeat despite being only 16 steps long.
Once through the now occasionally wobbling filter, the audio went straight to the Bizarre Jezabel Mimosa. Mimosa is what I consider to be the most beautiful distortion I’ve heard in any format, short of very high dollar guitar amps. Of course the word beautiful is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but what I mean is that it can heavily distort something, while still allowing the source to shine. It adds life, even when the dials are pinned. No matter what, you can always let some of the original dry signal through which helps keep shape in the audio regardless of the amount of distortion is applied. From gentle piano notes and sine waves (such as those in today’s patch) to ripping saw clouds Mimosa just does the right things whether using it for some gentle saturation or full on sonic destruction.
In this patch Mimosa started gently, with both the output volume and distortion amount both turned low. As the piece progressed, gain was adjusted upwards at multiple points. The first place was the original audio signal on the way into the Blossom. This allowed its resonance to growl a bit more rather than wobble. Higher input levels into the filter also mean higher output levels from the filter, and Mimosa is very sensitive to input level. Even at the same knob settings, input level is a crucial determinant of the final sound. Lower levels at the input might just have a bit of coloration or slight crunch, whereas loud sounds will rip or soar. It’s part of Mimosa’s magic. After I adjusted the initial input as loud as I dared, I started to slowly raise the output volume and distortion amount on Mimosa, as well as the amount of wet signal. From gently whispering and quivering to finally finding one’s voice to sing, all from nothing but subtle gain changes along the way. From Mimosa, the audio went to a new addition in the synth; the Addac Systems Addac814 6×6 Stereo Matrix Mixer to be distrusted to several effects.
It should be reiterated here that every sound is this patch arises from one single sine wave fed by one simple sequence, with but a single parameter being modulated by a lone triangle function (the filter cutoff). Of course that isn’t the only sound in total. That lone sine wave is repeated all over the place with overlapping delays, looped with four simultaneous digital tape heads and a delay of its own, and reverberated. The first delay, a Bizarre Jezabel Quarté Mk2, mostly added some lovely texture. A bit of a wash of decays in the wake of the melody, its gritty tail disintegrating into nothingness, which added depth and color. Repeats were set to moderately long, with a slow(er) delay time. With the PT2399 delay chips, the longer the delay time, the noisier it will be. The second delay was an Olivia Artz Modular Time Machine, with 4 active taps. It’s clear digital voice echoing the distorted sines near perfectly. Both delays are set to different times which really served to fill out space and maximize this one simple voice with the most basic of sound waves.
As beautiful as this very simple sequence was, I wanted to see if I couldn’t perform some complimentary embellishments, and decided to once again delve into the Cutlasses Instruments Gloop. I’ve only used Gloop a couple of times, but it’s already captured my attention. Some modules take some time to gel with. Despite some sloppy transitioning in my first couple of uses, I immediately took to Gloop. Its interface is (mostly) intuitive, and it’s a capable looper with some very cool tricks. It’s pretty easy to create compelling loops with Gloop. That said, it does have some drawbacks, at least in its current iteration. Though it’s packed with some clever effects that can be eminently useful with a looper, delay, reverb, and a host of tape-related effects like tape degradation, wobble, noise, and saturation, these effects can only be used on one channel or the other, and not both. Though Gloop has two outputs, it’s not really stereo, but dual mono. Each of the four heads can be panned in a stereo fashion and be used in one or both outputs as if it were a stereo signal, but for reasons I don’t understand the effects can only be used in one output at a time. This imbalance can definitely be a problem when trying to create a consistent stereo field. I was hoping to use the degradation effect, wherein the audio degrades as it would on a tape machine with each successive loop, fading out to nothing after a time. In loopers this is generally simulated by constantly low passing the signal at progressively lower cutoff frequencies in order to gradually roll off the highs. It’s a crucial component of Frippertronics, for instance. Allowing a loop to fade to nothing is also a beautiful way to end a track, and unfortunately I can’t do that with Gloop while using both output channels. In lieu of using Gloop to add tape hiss, I was able to add noise to both channels in the mixer via the very excellent DAW Cassette by Klevgrand, but that was an improvised half-measure. I think I can patch a workaround, but it definitely won’t function in quite the same way. A slow moving negative function into a wide open filter cutoff should get me at least part of the way there. Timing would be an issue. How long should this envelope be? What happens if I get to the end of the function, and I haven’t pressed stop on the recorder? Will the cutoff reset to fully open? That would be bad. But those are problems for another day.
I recorded a length of the sequence to Gloop, then while the sequence continued to play configured the four play heads and slowly started to raise the level on the looper, while lowering the level of the continuously sauntering sequence. Though this transition isn’t perfect, it’s much smoother than in tries past. I would use a crossfader like the WMD AXYS to more smoothly move between the two parts, but because the individual voices were being multitracked separately, I crossfaded in the mixer by hand using the Michigan Synth Works XVI Faderbank CV and Midi controller. The first and fourth heads were hard panned left and right at 2x forward and 4x in reverse respectively, while heads two and three were panned in the middle at 1x forward and .5x forward. I manually played the loop size and location within the loop of all four heads until it I manually faded out the hard panned parts before fading out the base melody and its half speed sibling. But not even Gloop was without its own dedicated delay, the ever-excellent Venus Instruments Veno-Echo. I used a x4 output from Gravity, with a /3 clock division set in Veno-Echo, which gave me a dotted eighth note delay, an always interesting pattern.
Both voices were mixed together in AUM and sent to the Walrus Audio Slöer using the Rain algorithm with almost no diffusion, and the clock speed at its slowest, adding to an already textured outcome. A medium long decay and high modulation finish off the track.
I put very little stock in the accuracy of AI at this stage in its development. However, it stated the same three conditions I had independently surmised, and so choose to engage in a bit of sweet, sweet confirmation bias. ↩︎
When I finished Jamuary I was resigned to taking time off before patching again. Jamuary was exhausting, and I’m tired. I wasn’t sure how long it might be before I patched again. It turns out the answer was “immediately.” By 10pm on February 1st I was bored, and so decided to put something together on the iPad for fun. I had no intention to record it. I was just playing around with a few things to see how they work. The same thing happened on the 2nd. I started to watch a YouTube video, and decided that I’d rather just do a patch on the synth that was sitting not eight feet from me than watch someone else do one. And so I did.
The patch started with Tempi. The base tempo was ~60bpm:
Channel 1 (x1) > Mimeophon
Channel 2 (x1) > René X Clock
Channel 3 (x2) > René Y Clock
Channel 5 (/5) > René X Mod
Channel 6 (/7) > René Y Mod
René received the clocks and Mod gates from Tempi on both the X and Y channels. Mod on both channels was set to Start/Stop on the Fun page. When the gate is low at their respective Mod inputs, the sequence moves forward, when it’s high, it stops. Since all four clocks are at different times, there is no continuous repeating pattern, each channel starting and stopping every bar and change. Gates and Access were adjusted for both channels throughout the performance to guard against becoming stagnant. René controlled all four voices in the patch, using just two oscillators, Spectraphon and STO. As far as I know, the scale is in C Lydian, but it sounds like I may have neglected to make the key change between C Major and C Lydian in one (or more 😬) of the channels. It doesn’t happen often, but we get a hint of dissonance on occasion.
The X Channel sent pitch CV to Spectraphon’s A side, and the trigger from the X Gate output to DXG’s Channel 1 Strike input. The Y channel was routed similarly to Spectraphon’s B side and DXG’s Channel 2 respectively. These two oscillators form the first voice, comprised of fairly sparse pings in the DXG. The mixed outputs from Spectraphon A and B were sent to DXG in a way to remain discrete left and right with their separate gate patterns. When you plug something into the Left input on any DXG channel, it normalizes to the Right channel and becomes a mono signal at the output. In order for the Left (mono) input to remain in the left channel only, a dummy cable should be plugged into the Right input. This dummy cable breaks the normalization, and will send audio at the Left channel input to only the Left channel at the output. I plugged Spectraphon’s A side Mix output into DXG’s Left input on Channel 1, along with a dummy cable in the Right input. Spectraphon’s B side Mix output went to DXG’s Right input on Channel 2. This kept the A side pings on the left side of the stereo field, and the B side pings on the right for a delightfully stereo experience of pings and echoes.
Both sides of Spectraphon were tuned to C one octave apart. Spectraphon was modulated in three places, but only moderately. The A Side Focus and Slide were modulated by a Maths envelope and Wogglebug’s Stepped outputs respectively. The B Side Slide was modulated by the Maths OR output. The slight modulation helped to have subtle timbre changes on the pinged notes, some brighter and others darker. Both sides also FM’d each other slightly. The FM Bus Index for both channels were around 8:30 on the knobs. There’s some FM, but not very much at all. Just enough to give notes a kind of bounciness once struck in the LPG. One really nice feature of the Spectraphon’s FM capability is that its sine waves always stay pure in order to avoid the problems associated with cross-modulating oscillators. No matter how much one might FM Side A, its sine wave can still modulate the B side with a clean sine wave rather than one that is FM’d. Most oscillators, once they become carriers, are useless as modulators. Not so with Spectraphon where both oscillators can be both modulator and carrier oscillators at the same time. Very nifty.
René’s Cartesian Channel performed an identical role with STO and QMMG as the X and Y channels with Spectraphon and DXG. I wanted something well above the predominant audio register in the patch. High pitched tings and drips, in the same manner as the Spectraphon pings, only even more sparse. These were designed to be ornamental notes, not the star. The Cartesian Channel CV output sent pitch CV to STO’s v/oct input, and its trigger output went to Channel 2 of QMMG for similar pinging with the Cartesian trigger. The STO’s sine output was used to keep the notes with as soft a texture as I could with pings. One interesting difference between using the QMMG and DXG as a LPG is that QMMG’s decay, at least my QMMG’s decay,1 is noticeably longer on higher pitched notes than the DXG when pinged with a trigger. In the DXG, higher pitched notes are sometimes just barely blips. This sort of behavior is generally expected with just about every LPG because of how they filter the upper harmonics. But through the QMMG, those high notes are seemingly longer. It’s certainly a result of the those juicy QMMG vactrols, and a good argument for keeping vactrol LPGs around, cadmium eaters be damned. These pings in the QMMG were mixed in with the Spectraphon A and B side pings via the Aux input in the DXG.
After I worked up the pinging I was after, I knew I wanted something more, but it had to be complementary and juxtapose itself against the very delicate pings. I was in a stream of consciousness-like trance when building this patch, and so even though I’ve documented all of the final patch connections for the entire patch, I’m not exactly sure what thought process led me to how I was going to fill in the space in a graceful way. A bit of experimentation, some clever routing, and tinkering seemed to be the answer.
I first decided I wanted to use QPAS. I’m not sure how I decided on it being heavy filtering, but I knew I needed the voice to be subtle so as not to overtake light pinging happening in the stereo field. I sent Spectraphon’s A side Sine wave to the L input on QPAS, and the B side Sub output to QPAS’s Right input. The trick was to have both oscillators filtered by QPAS, yet remain separate in the outputs. QPAS essentially became a dual mono filter with shared controls.2 The frequency knob on QPAS, for most of the performance, was moderately low, around 10 o’clock on the knob, though it was being modulated by an unsync’d Wogglebug’s Smooth output, while both Radiate knobs were being modulated by the Woggle output.
QPAS’ Left and Right outputs would become completely separate voices, unfettered by any gating or enveloping, being tamed and shaped only by the filter cutoff(s) and resonance(s) before going straight to the output. Because these outputs weren’t being gated or enveloped, they were always present, moving along with their respective pitch sequences from René, Spectraphon’s A side following the X Channel, and the B side following the Y channel. I remember really liking the sound of the voices and the feel they added, but struggled to find a solution to these sequences droning along overtaking the pings. The answer was simple: only send as much volume to QPAS’ inputs as is absolutely necessary, and allow the resonance to do some of the lifting. It’s a delicate balance between not being audible and drowning out everything else; the output needed to be always present, but delicate enough to not use all of the space in the sonic field.
The Right Low Pass and Smile Pass outputs went straight to X-Pan Channel 2 A and B inputs where they were crossfaded and slowly panned across the stereo field (by the same cycling envelope). This melody carried a mostly present sequence from the Y channel, though quite muffled by the filter and constantly swirling with the crossfading, and smoothed out with resonance, then copious amounts of Mimeophon with Halo. From the time it was introduced, this Y melody is omnipresent, filtered to various degrees, and allowed to drift through the stereo field.
The Left outputs is where the routing became a bit of voodoo. I know what connections led to this sound, but I’m not sure I understand the mechanisms that led to the result. It was a sine wave playing a sequence heavily filtered by QPAS,3 and then very heavily filtered again by QMMG. The Left Low Pass and Smile Pass outputs were routed first to QMMG channels 3 and 4. I tried all four modes, but only the Low Pass mode gave me the specter of a ghost lightly singing in the background, occasionally wavering and trembling as the pitch of the input, slowly moving filter cutoff, and resonance interacted with one another. When the voice was introduced, the filter on QMMG was completely closed, only being modulated by a cycling Maths envelope. Resonance started at about 8:30 on each knob. I slowly added more resonance, then more again, before also slowly raising the cutoff. By the time I hit stop on the recording, both the cutoff and resonance for both channels were at about 1 o’clock on the knobs. It sounds as if it’s a feedback patch, though, outside of the copious amounts of resonance in the QPAS and QMMG signal paths, tamed by the controlled input into QPAS, there is no feedback patching.4 These two outputs from QMMG were crossfaded in X-Pan, so that the sound constantly drifted and resonated in interesting ways. This led to wavering cries that occasionally had a smidge of growl enough to resonate through the Mimeophon in an incredibly beautiful way.
This voice, although the most subtle and delicate, as well as the least present, is by far my favorite part of this patch. It brings the patch to life. It’s one of the coolest sounds I’ve gotten from any patch. When I first heard that sound I stood tall and stared straight at the QMMG as if to ask it to teach me its wizardry. It was the first time I’ve looked at the QMMG as an instrument; as something more than a set VCAs, LPGs, and filters, with a mix output.
All four voices were mixed in the X-Pan, and sent to the Mimeophon for some delay-ification and Halo, the soft noise of the Mimeophon cushioning the edges in subtle ways.
Like so many patches I made during Jamuary, this patch is an open testament to a cohesive Make Noise system being a fluid instrument. It’s an absolute pleasure to play.
One small issue I had, which reinforces my desire for a couple of VCAs than can boost levels before going to the ES-9, was that the recording was ultra-quiet. The pings are very quiet, which necessitated a low volume for everything else in the patch. I needed to add a full 12.5dB in post in order to bring my peaks up to ~ -12dB in AUM.
Each QMMG will have a different response because of the natural variability of vactrols. Make Noise does a great job of matching vactrols in an individual unit as closely as possible, but there are (sometimes noticeable) differences in the decay length between different units. This is the same for all vactrol-based LPGs. ↩︎
Definitely a first time using QPAS in this way. ↩︎
Filtering a sine wave is about as pedestrian a job as a filter can do. It’s normally unremarkable as filters thrive on upper harmonics. ↩︎
If the input level was much louder, I’m confident the resonance, particularly in QMMG, would have been screaming. Both filters have a very pronounced resonance that can run away quickly. ↩︎
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.
To be fair, I struggle with just about everything with the Oxi One. I really need to revisit it with purpose. ↩︎
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. ↩︎
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). ↩︎
I keep it no secret that I’m a certified delay junky. I love all kinds of delay from murky analog repeats, to the beautiful compression of tape delay, to pristine copies of digital delays. I dig them all. Even if my collection has shrunken significantly, at one time I had over 30 delay pedals, I still have a few delay pedals I consider choice, like the Oto Bim, Vongon Polyphrase, and the Free The Tone Future Factory FF-1Y Future Factory. I have dual Echofix EF-X2 tape delays. And it shouldn’t be a surprise that I have several Eurorack delay modules. From the mighty Verbos Multi-Delay Processor, to the Xaoc Devices Sarajewo, and the Qu-Bit Electronix Nautilus to the Venus Instruments Veno-Echo (plus yet more), I’m covered when it comes to Eurorack delays. But when the new Time Machine from Olivia Artz Modular was announced, I knew there was no way I could pass on it for too long before I hit “Add to Cart.” Due to a confluence of random events, I was informed by OAM within minutes of the Time Machine being released for sale at Perfect Circuit, and so was able to snag one quick without the ~6 week wait time if you order direct from OAM. I would have ordered one anyways, but bypassing the wait was a nice surprise, and moving their product through retail stores helps them get more retail orders and wider distribution.
When I imagined the Time Machine, I was imagining a stereo version of the Verbos Multi-Delay Processor. I’m sure much of the Time Machine was influenced by the MDP, from its looks to its multi-tap nature. And although it can certainly replicate some of the things the MDP does, the Time Machine is definitely something different, and highly rewarding. True stereo is a wonder to behold.
One thing I’ve learned about testing delays is that if you really want to hear its voice, you need to feed it short transient signals. This moves the dry signal more out of the way and allows the delay room to breathe and be heard on its own terms. I use these quick notes to test every delay I get. With Eurorack, that test is almost always short pings in an LPG in order to see what’s its limits are. How clean (or dirty) are the repeats? How does the feedback behave? Does it do The Thing?1 How do the taps behave? How does the feedback go into entropy? This simple test allows me to really evaluate how a delay sounds and behaves.
This er of this patch is sets of sparse plucks of the Bard Synthesizers VTG (Vacuum Tube Gate – it sounds wonderful, if not quite like a traditional LPG). These plucks are created using the Humble Audio Quad Operator, which has the 2 waves being modulated by The Hypster, and one of the Ratios modulated by the Bindubba, into the LPG’s two input channels. The gates are hit by envelopes created by the CalSynth Changes (MI Stages), which is triggered by chaos-derived gates of the Stochaos. From the VTG, it goes straight to the matrix mixer, and onto the Time Machine.
After tweaking the Time Machine faders to get a delay pattern I really liked, I was pleased with what was happening, but I wanted more. Delays are cool and all, but dancing repeats do not make a track. After a second it clicked: “Panharmonium really likes short transients!” Although I wasn’t at all sure what I might get out of the Panharmonium, I thought it would be interesting, and that assumption was correct. After wiggling some knobs and adjusting the sampling interval (using a division of the clock used for the Time Machine), what I got was far more than interesting. It was the best thing I’ve heard from the Panharmonium in my own practice. A sort of distorted cello/upright bass sound that really fills in the space, and is harmonically relevant to the repeats that form the base of the track. Even if you can’t hear the repeats themselves through the Panharmonium, the sound of the it is a direct transliteration of those repeats in the form of resynthesis. Without the repeats, the Panharmonium isn’t making any sound. Since the Panharmonium sounded almost like something you’d hear in a sludge metal or Post-Rock context, I decided to also route the Panharmonium output to the Bizarre Jezabel Mimosa and really give it some drive, which was a perfect choice.
The patch is finished off with some reverb courtesy of the Oto Bam Ambient algorithm.
Improvised and recorded in 1 take on iPad in AUM via the Expert Sleepers ES-9.
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When it can sit on the edge of feedback without running away uncontrollably. It’s even better when it can do that at a low volume, while still allowing your repeats to go through at full volume. The EF-X2 is masterful at this trick.
I’m not going to go in depth on this patch as there’s a lot of modulation happening and I can’t possibly document it without rambling in circles. I’m also using several techniques I’ve already written about, like using chaos at a clock, running a delay into the Panharmonium, using tape delays, and panning using VCAs.
A couple things of note:
The Echofix EF-X2 tape delays have incredibly good overdrive. The clipping is all analog and is both warm and musical. I would absolutely use the preamp alone to add anything from subtle saturation to thick overdrive. All of the distortion in this track is from the pair of EF-X2 tape echoes.
The Pianist by NOH-Modular is a highly capable chord sequencer. Building progressions is easy and the interface is intuitive. It certainly has faults (that I’ll discuss later in a more comprehensive review), but overall it does an absolutely fantastic job.
Odessa is Odessa and I will make no apologies for it.
This is the first patch during which I’ve used both the go-to AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer alongside my new mono (voltage controlled) matrix mixer, the Transmon by Atomosynth. I used the latter to mix the Sofia Mix output with the Odessa partials outputs, while panning the Odessa fundamental slowly from left to right (although I can’t really hear the panning in the mix if I’m honest). Having a voltage controlled matrix mixer with individual outs for 12 of the 16 channels, along with 8 channels that can attenuvert makes for a compelling piece of kit. The possibilities are endless.
