Modular Sounds 1

YouTube Uploaded by pjoris2 on Aug 16, 2010

"My first youtube-video and the first patch on my reorganized modular. It showcases my new Livewire Audio Frequency Generator and uses nearly all modules of my modular.

The patch is essentially as follows:

The basic sequence is played by the Livewire AFG with random pulse width (controlled by S&H type output from the Makenoise Wogglebug) and harmonic modulation (controlled by a Doepfer LFO). Pulse and animated pulse outputs go in to a lowpass-gate (Makenoise QMMG), Buchla/Serge's take on a VCA/low pass filter. The low-pass gates are controlled by the clock from the analog sequencer and a bit of echo from Doepfers VC DSP effects is mixed in.

Pitch and tempo is controlled by a 8-step sequence from the Analog Systems RS-200 analog sequencer, quantized and transposed by 2 Analogue Solutions sequencers. The second sequencer steps every 32th step of the first, the third every 8th step of the second, so the basic sequence is 32x8x8=2048 steps long). There is some random switching of the 3 channels of the RS-200 programmed to nearly - but not quite - the same sequence, with slides introduced in the third channel.

The "drums" are played by a Dotcom system, again clocked from the RS-200 through a clock divider. The 4/4 beat is made by the dotcom VCO through a lowpass filter, with a short envelope. The "hihats" are some noise through another lowpass filter with short evelope and then treated with a Korg PME-40x analog multi-effects. I put on phaser, delay, and flanger (hey, I just got the thing, of course I'm going to use it all).

The only human intervention, after patching of course, is turning on/off the connection in a dotcom multiple wich receives the 2th and 8th divisions of the basic clock tempo. This cause the bassdrum to drop for half of the beats.

Confused ? Have a look at the video ..."

Modular Sounds 2

Uploaded by pjoris2 on Oct 23, 2010

"It's a fairly simple patch. The idea was to put down a drone with a number of slightly detuned, unstable analogue oscillators with on top a random sparkling melody. It turned out a bit different ...

The drone consists of 2 Doepfer A-110 standard VCOs and a livewire AFG tuned approximately to unison. The pulse output of the 3 VCOs go into a mixer. Frequencies and pulse widths of the 3 VCOs are modulated by various LFOs or looping envelopes. The signals are mixed together and send to the main mixer.

The random melody is the Hertz Donut digital oscillator of the Harvestman. The frequency of the oscillator is determined by the random output of the Wiard Noisering through a Doepfer Quantizer. After a while I introduce amp and shape modulation of the primary oscillator by the modulation oscillator.

This together was a bit boring - so for variety I then decided to a split the drone over 3 audio paths: 1 untreated (with which the video begins), 1 through the Harvestman Malgorithm (with Nyquist frequency modulated by a looping envelope), and one through the MakeNoise Quad Multimode Gate (lowpass & VCA mode) opened and closed by an envelope from the MakeNoise Maths module (triggered by the clock output from the Noisering). This is then again filtered by another channel of the QMMG (in lowpass mode) with cut-off frequency determined by a slow looping envelope from Maths.

I then decided to have a beat on this, which comes from a drum pattern I programmed on the Korg Elektribe ER-1 -- I'm not much into drum programming so this one is rather boring ...

In the end I found the high random sequence too annoying so I ran part of the sequence through a Doepfer A-163 VC Frequency Divider to generate a sub-octave from it and ran it through the Korg PME-40X Phase, Analogue Delay, and Flanger modules.

The flow of the video is: (1) Basic Drone, (2) Malgorithm treated signal comes in, (3) filtered drone (from the QMMG), (4) drums start, (5) suboctave of the random sequence added, (6) pure Hertz Donut signal added, which is increasingly modulated, (7) everything is gradually mixed away, till we are left (8) with some analogue delay feedback from the Korg pedals.

Hmmm, maybe not that simple.

The middle part is a bit chaotic, it is hard to find the right balance between repeating and random with the Noisering and the drums and modular were not synced. And yes, I felt like playing with the video effects in Vegas Movie Studio ...."