3 Modules #4: Clouds, Ears, Ripples

Published on Apr 25, 2017 Comparative Irrelevance

All parts here.

"Wow, this one turned out to be a lot of fun! As you can hear, this patch is capable of a wide range of craziness – all without using any "support" modules, and without any added reverb or other out-of-the-rack effects. (show more)

I figured the "obvious" way to go here, would be to use Ears' contact mic as a sound source, filter the audio through Ripples, and tag on the Clouds as a delay/reverb effect at the end. So, naturally, I decided to do something completely different. :)

Patch notes:
This is basically a feedback loop, from Clouds' output via Ears, through Ripples' 4 pole LPF, and back into Clouds. For most of the patch, though, Ripples' resonance is at full, which means it produces sine tones – the audio input is virtually inaudible at max resonance.

However, by using Ears' envelope follower output to control the gain on Ripples, there's still a feedback response, even when the audio input is drowned by the resonance peak. I think it's easy to forget that Ears is more than just a contact mic/external audio input. Its envelope follower and gate makes it ideally suited to control feedback loops in this manner.

The sine tones/fed back audio is passed from Ripples to Clouds, which chops it up into grains, pitch shifts those grains, and adds reverb. I'm manually modulating the grain size, density, texture (i.e. grain envelope shape) and reverb mix level. The pitch is modulated with an audio signal from Ripples BP2 output. However, since the pitch is set "per grain", the result is more akin to a S&H pitch modulation than audio rate FM.

Thanks for watching!

The series overview spreadsheet can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/..."