Today I decided to go back to a technique I’ve rarely used, and on a much grander scale. I don’t use noise very often, and when I do it tends to be for the obvious use cases. Hit hats, wind and ocean sounds, sprays, etc. I seldomly use it for modulation, and only once have I used noise of any flavor to amplitude modulate an oscillators wave. Today I would do it again, times eight.
I conceived of using noise to modulate all eight harmonics of the Verbos Harmonic Oscillator this morning as my wife was talking to me. I even popped up a bit at the idea, and she took notice.
Wife: “What?”
Me: “Nothing. Just had a thought occur to me. Not even sure if it’s worth a shit.”
I spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon thinking about how I wanted to do this patch. I knew that just noise into each harmonic’s VCA wasn’t it. Then it occurred to me: Chaos! As soon as this though hit my brain I knew what to do, and immediately went to the synth to start patching.
I ran blue noise from Sapel to input 1 of the Intellijel Amps. Amps is a special sort of VCA. Everything cascades. All inputs cascade, as do CV inputs, and there are mixing outputs as well. It’s incredibly flexible. I have four of them chained together to be an eight channel “super VCA/submixer” and it’s been a great choice. Since each input cascades, I only needed one noise input to run this entire section of the patch. Every other channel received that same blue noise input as well. Into each channel’s CV input I patched one of the eight outputs from Nonlinearcircuits The Hypster to chaotically modulate the noise levels of all eight channels independently. Once that was patched, I ran each Amps output to its own Harmonic Oscillator VCA input at random. The only part of this patch that was planned were the first and fifth harmonics, which received their noise modulation from the U and -U outputs on The Hypster as they’re the outputs with the highest amplitude. Each harmonic was slowly brought in by slowly adjusting each CV attenuator individually at random until they were all playing. The nature of chaos means that cycles, even if semi-regular at times, don’t repeat exactly the same, and the harmonics never played the same twice, which kept movement interesting. There were often pauses or redirections in motion for each harmonic. Wonderful.
The mixed HO output was patched to the Multi-Delay Processor. I’ve been taken in by the earthy sound of the Harmonic Oscillator. Each harmonic sine wave has a little hair on it once you give them a little push. The drive in the MultixDelay Processor, both on the input and on each tap output, accentuates that hair in all the right ways. This Verbos ecosystem is warm and inviting, but it can also roar. Taps four and eight were patched to the Verbos Scan & Pan, hard panned left and right, and the output of the MDP, which only had the dry signal, was patched to be in the middle of the mix. This mix created a strong signal with some subtle stereo movement which ended up being fantastic. This stereo signal was then patched to the stereo matrix mixer to be spread around to different effects.
The Rossum Panharmonium fed the Holocene Electronics Non-Linear Memory Machine, which was set with a fairly slow delay and full clockwise smearing, which really smoothed out the Panharmonium’s output for an accompanying drone that floats along beside the ever moving Harmonic Oscillator. This output then fed the Dradd(s), which did its thing in Grain Mode (although I think I forgot to turn on the modulation to both P1 and P2 on both Dradds 😬 – I’m also not convinced it isn’t lost in the mix).
I’m very pleased with how this patch turned out and was a great success at using this technique which I’ll be sure to use more often.
I was always sure that a Verbos system could do ambient, but it’s not what I read in their brand identity. Mark Verbos, the owner of Verbos, has noted several times in interviews that his main inspiration in both making music and instruments is his love for techno. The sounds his instruments make are raw, and there doesn’t seem a clear path to ambient paradise when I look at Verbos module faceplates. But in an interview I recently watched, Verbos mentioned that one of the first questions he was asked when the Harmonic Oscillator was whether it can do ambient drones, something he hadn’t considered at all when he was designing it. Nearly a decade later we know Verbos systems can used to perform ambient music, but it wasn’t until today, after a couple of days using sequencers and rhythms, that I finally decided to see what I could do.
The patch began with the Polyphonic Envelope, each of the four outputs to a different harmonic of the Harmonic Oscillator, with the All output patched to the fundamental. In a new technique for me, I decided to use blue noise from Sapel as an amplitude modulator for the fifth harmonic, which ended up being fantastic. I followed that up with very short, randomly generated pings to the eighth harmonic. As a means to more beef, I also frequency modulated the HO with its own second harmonic. The Mixed output of the HO was sent first through Amp & Tone for a bit of conditioning and resonance before going to the Multi-Delay Processor. The MDP was set to output the dry signal and some volume level delay taps, while I patched four separate individual delay tap outputs to the Scan & Pan for stereo-ification.
After some fuddling around with the Polyphonic Envelope, I finally got to a nice flow of envelopes, each triggered once the decay stage of the previous envelope begins in a beautiful cascade that cycles over and over. After a bit of figuring out some movement for the patch, I decided it was ready to record. Only this time, I decided on using some final reverb, my every trusty Walrus Audio Slöer, instead of relying solely on the reverb from the MDP. This was a great choice.
Having recorded the patch and still wanting more, I decided to process the Verbos voice through the Panharmonium (crossfaded saw waves) > the Bizarre Jezabel Pkhia, as well as the Dradd(s) to add some movement and edge, and recorded it again, so today we get another bonus patch.
I’m quite happy with how this patch turned out. This is definitely a route I’ll be exploring more in depth this year.
Most of the time in modular synthesis drift is bad. Musicians all over will do whatever is necessary to mitigate drifting clocks or rhythms. Module makers of all sorts include resets specifically for the purpose of realigning the outputs to an incoming clock with the explicit goal of avoiding drift. Maintaining time is crucial in any beat driven track. Except when it’s not. And it’s this rhythmic drift that I wanted to explore in this otherwise beat driven patch.
It’s no secret that I like chaos. I use it for modulation or as a clock in most patches. I generally don’t expect or even desire steady clocks when I use chaos, but I also don’t generally produce beat driven compositions, and when I have I’ve tended towards uniform clocks and on-beat rhythms like most people. But today I wanted to explore a beat driven patch that uses chaos as its driving force. Rather than fear the drift, I endeavored to lean into the inherent wandering of chaotic signals while using them as lead in creating the rhythms. What I got is a wonderful dance of rhythms that want to be in line, but just can’t quite maintain their focus to make it last the whole way through. A set of rhythms that are mostly on the grid, but that occasionally drift before finally meandering their way back to the beat, like an ADHD dad in a grocery store. What we hear is the beauty of chaos in real time.
A few months ago I emailed Andrew at Nonlinearcircuits to ask for a module recommendation. I had lots of CV producers, but outside of sequencers, a clock divider, and EOR/EOC gates on function generators, I didn’t have many modules that can produce a plethora of gates. Although he had a couple of module recommendations, none came more highly suggested than Numberwang. “It’s like Let’s Splosh, but for gates” were his exact words, and I was sold. Whether using regularly timed signals like LFOs or cycling envelopes, or irregular signals like chaos or random, I’d have a gate creation machine that would be directly related to the signals feeding it.
Although I wasn’t sure how this experiment in chaos-driven rhythms would turn out, I knew I could get at least one of the waves to be in time. NLC’s The Hypster has 3 controls (frequency, gain, and damping). As explained in the Build Guide, “Damping keeps the circuits in the range of useful, somewhat regular modulation signals. As we’ll see later, more damping leads to more regular sine-like oscillations.” The guide goes on to show that although the signals are not exactly what we’d call uniform, if we use a good mixture of both both gain and damping, at least one of them will be regular(ish). Regular enough to drive a beat from. What I heard while using Natural Gate to tune the regularity of the incoming gate, saw via Numberwang’s copious blinkenlights, and with my metronome confirmed it.
With Natural Gate pinging away on my down beat, it was time to find those drifting rhythms I was after, hoping that the chaos feeding Numberwang wasn’t too far dampened and too regular. But things proverbially fell in line all too quickly. After trying several outputs on Numberwang in order to get the perfect four beat sequence, I found it. Beat one of the gate sequence is always on time, at the blazing tempo of 53bpm. This is also the beat that controls the kick and hats (using Pam’s as a 2x clock multiplier). Gates two, three, and four drift slightly. And not in that weird, timely way that slightly out of sync clocks drift and realign,1 but in a more organic way that both speeds up and slows down around that base tempo while being on grid most of the time. It’s a playful game between the clock and its trailing rhythms, not unlike three dogs drifting around its steadily paced owner on a nice walk in the afternoon.
Now that I had a good gate sequence, I needed some pitch to go with it. This patch uses four outputs from the Joranalogue Generate 3 as the main sound source. All four of the outputs (odd, even, full, and core) have very different sounds and timbres, and are up to two and a half octaves apart,2 each patched to a Natural Gate input. But even though I was only using a single pitch sequence for four separate parts, I knew I wanted that pitch to be derived from the same source as my rhythms. I wanted as much of the patch as possible to be driven by those four original chaos outputs. Using a mult, I ran the same four The Hypster outputs used to create my gate sequence in Numberwang to Let’s Splosh, and randomly chose four outputs that were then mixed in the Atomosynth Transmon before making its way to Quantermain for quantization (E Japanese), and finally to Generate 3’s v/oct input. These four Let’s Splosh outputs were modulated in this very excellent voltage controlled matrix mixer via four outputs from the Nonlinearcircuits Frisson. Using four mixed sources for pitch allows for some easy flexibility when trying to add variety. A twist of any of the knobs on the mixer will give a different result in the final pitch sequence. The pitch change was being clocked in Quantermain by one of the unused Numberwang outputs, along with all four notes in the sequence at the Natural Gates’ “Hit” inputs. Once the “Open” parameter on Natural Gate was closed to give the notes definition outside of pitch and timbre changes at about 1:30 in, those same gates also triggered four envelopes on a pair of Frap Tools Falistris to modulate the “Open” parameter and give each note just a little more punch and space.
But Let’s Splosh wasn’t finished doing its part at deriving the pitch sequence, as 10 other outputs were used to modulate various parts of the patch. From subtle changes in the hi hat’s envelope decay, to modulating the “Even”, “Odd”, and “Fundamental” CV inputs on Generate 3 that are constantly changing the timbre of each note produced, and both P1 and P2 CV inputs on both Pladask Elektrisk Dradds used in the patch, Let’s Splosh, and the four signals that feed it, are all over this patch. In total 14 of the 16 Let’s Splosh outputs were used, spreading out remnants and recombinations of those four original chaos signals throughout the entire patch. The only independent module in play that isn’t being driven by those four original chaos signals is the NLC Frisson, which plays a somewhat minor role in modulating direct descendants of those four original chaos signals in getting a pitch CV.
From here the patch is relatively simple, mostly with the sequence running through various effects. The most obvious effect is the ever-wonderful Olivia Artz Modular Time Machine. The taps on the delay combined with feedback can take a very simple four note sequence and turn it into any rhythm I can imagine, and plenty others I can’t, even if the one in this patch is rather unimaginative with all of the taps active, though at different levels. But it’s not just some ornamental delay that I was after either. It’s the Time Machine, when juxtaposed against the steady kick drum, that fully reveals the chaotically drifting rhythm. It’s the key to the entire endeavor. The sequence is only four notes long, and all four notes are quick plucks in Natural Gate. There isn’t much musical information to go on, despite the pains taken to create the patch, and it’s the Time Machine that helps bring that very simple sequence to life. With Time Machine, the slightly out of place notes in the sequence are given a chance to wander. It exposes the frolicsome ebb and flow of chaos for all to see.
Another accompanying effect used in the patch is the always beautiful Rossum Electro-Music Panharmonium. I’ve found Panharmonium to be indispensable in my patches, and have written about it before, as it allows me to fill sonic holes in a very organic way, using the main driver of the composition as its muse. Pitching the Panharmonium up or down to suit my needs, I can fill gaps in the frequency spectrum, or avoid the clashing of instruments in a particular spectrum. I also frequently use it for its excellent ability to fill space, especially in patches that are otherwise sparse, and since it follows its input directly, it’s always harmonically related. In this patch I pitched Panharmonium down an octave using cross faded sines, and ran it through the Bizarre Jezabel Mimosa as an insert, adding progressively more and more distortion as the piece progressed, with it running full wet, though not full distortion, by the end. This creates a bed of pads for these meandering rhythms to float through, while filling space in the frequency spectrum. It helps create texture, and gives the composition some weight.
A pair of Pladask Elektrisk Dradds also made an appearance, even if it didn’t really work out. Using the dry sequence and its many repeats from the Time Machine, my first thought was to fade the granular outputs of the Dradds in and out. Something to add some ornamentation to the patch, but without being prominent. It sounded great when I was setting it up, but is barely audible for most of the patch. Which brings me to the new SetonixSynth Shaka modular voltage controlled stereo matrix mixer.
It’s also no secret that I really like the AI Synthesis 018 Stereo Matrix Mixer. It fundamentally changed the way that I patch and how I go about composing pieces from the moment it was first installed. It opened up a lot of opportunities for how I enjoy patching in modular. I’ve used it in literally every patch since it went in the case. It prompted me to buy the also excellent Atomosynth Transmon voltage controlled matrix mixer. When SetonixSynth announced earlier this summer that they would be releasing a voltage controlled stereo matrix mixer, I knew I was going to get it. I quickly joined the pre-sale mailing list which would give a goodly discount on the first units sold. As soon as I got the email with a link a couple of months later, I went ahead and purchased a Shaka 8 and two Shaka 4 expanders for a four input, four output voltage controlled stereo matrix mixer. There’s the very real possibility that I purchased the first one sold once that link went live. As soon as I got it, it went in the case. I used it in my first patch after putting it in, though I didn’t use any voltage control, opting to see just how close it is to the AI Synthesis on an even playing field. It sounded great. Like the AI Synthesis, the Shaka system is made foremost with high quality sound in mind. But I did notice that the exponential nature of the volume control was unlike anything I’d used before. There’s no sound output until you get to about noon on the dial, and it moves up rather quickly from there. According to the developer, at full attenuation, the output is at -100dB, while it’s still a remarkable -50dB with the dial at noon, maxing out at unity gain (8v) at full clockwise. Adding CV up to 10v can output your signal at +20dB. But that leaves just half a knob twist to dial in the level of each node, making fiddling with knobs a must, and the need for precision is paramount, especially if you’re to perform with it. I won’t say I had trouble dialing in good levels with the knobs. It was easy enough, even if that meant paying much closer attention to a simple process than I normally might.
But once I decided to try and use CV control with this patch, I was stymied by the exponential nature of the level control. I’ve never used an exponential VCA before. All of mine are either linear, or somehow switchable between linear and logarithmic. I was trying to do relatively simple things that I’ve done since my very first patch, like using a cycling envelope to open and close a VCA, and I simply couldn’t figure it out. My first thought was that since the VCA is fully open at 8v, I’d send an 8v envelope in the CV input for a channel and everything would be right with the world. Only it wasn’t. With an 8v envelope from Zadar and the knob at full CCW, I got virtually nothing from the output. I would hear the two Dradds granular-ing away for perhaps two seconds of a 20 second envelope. I couldn’t get any sound at all until the envelope was higher than 6v. I was stumped, with no idea what the problem was, much less a solution. I tried adding some offset with the knob, but that only led to blowing the signal out quickly. I never did find a good solution, hence the sparse appearance of the Dradds.
But hope isn’t lost. In the Shaka thread at Modwiggler, I noted my frustration and was given a couple of tips by the developer. He admits that using CV will take some adjustments to how one might normally patch a VCA. In his last response to me he noted, “With such a slow moving LFO, your best bet is probably to attenuate it more into the range you want. The full attenuation of this module is -100dB, the maximum allowed by the VCA it’s using, so at 10 o’clock it attenuates by -65dB and at noon it attenuates by -50dB. Depending on the input signal that is still a lot of attenuation, so is probably where you want to start for many applications.” He further goes on to say that having silence was his goal at full attenuation, noting that it was the largest concern from testers during development. Having had mixers and other gear that bleeds audio where it doesn’t belong, whether in an output or via crosstalk between separate channels, I can’t say that I blame him. If it’s not a vactrol based device, it shouldn’t ever bleed.
That said, this needed conditioning of CV before going to a VC mixer seems to be trading one hurdle for another. A voltage controlled mixer is desired so that you don’t need separate VCAs to manage signal levels. They’re built right in. That’s a highly desirable feature, especially with stereo signals. But if I need a VCA, or an attenuator, to condition my CV for use in the mixer CV inputs, I’ve simply traded out the reason why I need a VCA pre-mixer. It’s a side step, when the point is an improvement. An external VCA is an external VCA whether it’s used for note shaping before a mixer or envelope attenuation in order to shape the note in the mixer. Add in the relative complexity of having to carefully attenuate and shape the CV alongside meticulous knob placement on the mixer itself so that the CV functions in the way you think it should, and I’m not yet convinced that this particular implementation a real step forward. I’m not yet ready to give up on the Shaka system. It’s a very powerful idea that could bring yet another boon to my patching in the same way the AI Synthesis 018 did over a year ago. But if these VCAs don’t function like virtually every other VCA I regularly use, and CV preparation is more of a chore than simply using a VCA for note shaping before the mixer, I’ll have to re-evaluate its place in my rack.
Unfortunately I was unable to get good CV control over the Dradds’ level, and it only peeks through seldomly, and for only a short time. Fortunately my inability to get good CV control over the Dradds wasn’t a crucial part of the composition, and despite its absence, the patch sounds great.
The last part of the patch couldn’t be simpler. The kick drum is a simple filter ring with the Frap Tools Cunsa. The same envelope used to hit the filter input is also used as FM to give the drum a bit more punch. The hats are just as simple, using white noise from Sapel that is patched through Cunsa using a HP output. The VCA in Cunsa is hit by an envelope with a very lightly modulated decay to introduce some difference. Something between a fully closed “tic”, and a very slightly opened “pshh.” Both envelopes are clocked originally from that same regular downbeat of the four step sequence, but it’s patched through Pamela’s Pro Workout. Both outputs are at a 2x multiplier, with the hi hat output being shifted 50% to be on the offbeat.
Overall, this was a really fun patch to make. I had an idea that I was able to bring to fruition, despite some difficulties with a new piece of gear. I’ll keep working with the Shaka system until I either conclude that it’s better than the AI Synthesis 018, or I’ll sell it and wait for the next alternative.
Or how how the turn signal in your car will drift in and out of time with music or another car’s turn signal. ↩︎
As explained in the Generate 3 manual, “[The Core output] is the 10 Vpp triangle wave output straight from Generate 3’s VCO core. Also note that it is at half the frequency of, so one octave below, the fundamental output, and thus can be used as a sub-octave signal” The manual continues on to note that the “Even” output is a saw wave at twice the frequency of the fundamental, the odd is an octave and a half higher (beginning on the 3rd harmonic), and the “Full” wave being all harmonics, including the fundamental. ↩︎
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.
One facet of my latest patch that I’m quite happy with, even if it needs refinement, is the Panharmonium voice. I struggled for a long time to get anything I liked at all from Panharmonium, much less something nice. Something that pleased me. It wasn’t until this patch that I finally made something I wanted to keep. There’s some dissonance in spots, which is something I’d like to improve on, but overall it’s a beautiful soundscape.
The input is the wet delay signals, output to Reverb. No modulation. A fairly slow analysis interval, some glide, some blur, some feedback, down 1 octave.
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.
