A Patch A Day by hamiltonulmer

Update: you can find hamiltonulmer's page here.

"I am not new to music, but I am new to modular synthesis. So I am creating one simple patch a day in order to get used to my small system.

I will do approximately 365 patches over the next year. Over that course of time I will likely add modules, change my setup, and explore various rabbit holes.

Two questions arise from these constraints. First, is a small 6U, 84HP system musically sufficient and diverse enough for a worthwhile patch, every day? Second, given that no matter what I intend on recording a patch a day, regardless of the outcome or circumnstance, what is the relationship between quantity and quality?"

via Pierre Serné on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge

Playlist:
(these are in reverse order by hamiltonulmer - Day 1 was missing in the playlist so I embedded it below).

A Patch A Day, No. 7 Published on May 15, 2013

"Another slow drone. I realized that the Quadra produces slopes. Cyclable slopes. If set at a high enough attack and decay, the slopes oscillate, just like the Maths. So I have 8 oscillators on my rack.

It is clear that, if I wanted to create polyphony, I would need more oscillators. But it is also clear that I have plenty if I want these oscillators to remain at the same frequency.

I output the SUM of the Maths, with both ch.'s 1 and 4 oscillating (opening swell), the Quadra ENV 3 and 4 next, and the sines from the DPO. The Quadra ENVs are ouputing to the Dual Index, which I'm using as a two-channel mixer again, which then goes into the PM Mixer. Everything gets sent to the MMG, which slowly opens via ENV 4 of the Quadra, slowly cycling.

I use the Graphic Sequencer to jump between 0 and 5V, which hits the RES of the MMG, and the steps for the Graphic Sequencer provided by Wogglebug.

So yes, it is possible to get more voices out of this creature. They're still unmoving. Perhaps soon I will have the Quadra pinging itself to open and close, to provide a simple two-note progression. Could be quite neat."

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A Patch A Day, No. 6Published on May 14, 2013

"Attempt to blend some polyphony with some of the rhythmic explorations from previous days. Felt unsuccessful. The main takeaway: for a small system like this, the devil can easily get his due. If one is not careful, either rhythm or polyphony suffers. If you're clever enough, neither suffer. THAT, right there, is the sweet spot.

As I've said before, I am a creature of polyphony. Most of my other writing has strong harmonic roots. My small system, however, does not lend itself well to my usual kind of writing. I cannot, for instance, create four-part harmonies that progress and modulate the way I normally would. I can, however, produce static chords, and that's about as far as I can take it with the resources I have.

So today was an attempt to see how far I could stretch my resources to produce something somewhat musical.

Maths has the duty of providing the tonic and third, while VCO A of the DPO also doubles the third, but drifts upward according to the FM bus.

VCO B of the DPO plays a small sequence, which moves with the percussive element.

I also output the FINAL from the DPO into the RING MOD of the Wogglebug, again - was at the time the only other oscillator I could output to something (though the Wogglebug has two oscillator outs, now that I think about it). Today I attempted to use the Quadra to gate the ring mod'd signal in the MMG, and created a slightly more complex (though not particularly enjoyable) rhythm.

Regarding the final stage of the signal, I used my Pittsburgh Modular Mixer to submix the pitched elements, and output that into the Dual Index, which I actually used as a two-channel unity mixer, in a way. Well, the first channel of the DI actually worked as a mixer for the polyphonic / pitched elements, while the second was treated merely as a mixer.

Overall, not particularly happy with this one, but I think there are some keen ideas here waiting to be honed."

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A Patch A Day, No. 5Published on May 13, 2013

"First attempt at using Maths as the main ascending slope, with the Graphic Sequencer modulating a stepped walk around said slope, into the tame machine. Also, another attempt at some percussion, this time being sensitive to additional stabs.

This patch began as something different than I intended. I managed to get the Maths and Graphic Sequencer to create this amazing sort-of-Shepard sequencer, where the ear picks up two different voices ascending. I turned off the power, however, and seemd to have completely lost the pattern. Such a shame. I spent the next hour twiddling knobs to recover what I had found, to no avail. This one isn't so bad, either, though.

As with yesterday I used the Wogglebug's ring mod to create a snare-ish sound, which I then gated with the Quadra into the Dual Index. I then output that VCA'd signal into the Dual Index again, according to ENV 4 of the Quadra, which opens and closes just slowly enough to swell every two kick hits. I am flicking the QUAD 3+4 switch to produce a pretty interesting snare pattern. (Sorry for the clicks in the recording.)

The kick sound was made the same way it was in yesterday's - using the DPO FINAL output on VCO B into the MMG, opened briefly by the Graphic Sequencer's stage 1 output.

One thing I wanted to try today - using the EOC 4 out of the Quadra (keep in mind this outputs the end of the swell for the snare sound) to strike the kick drum. I twiddled the decay on Ch. 4 of the Quadra to get it to line up just enough to sound like there's a kick on the upbeat of 4, and the cycle triggering occurs such that the upbeat kick happens every other cycle. I start the patch with the STRIKE bit not plugged in. Seems the most efficient way to do this sort of thing.

Aside from that, playing the Tame Machine's scale playing was, as always, hit or miss. I loved the progression - some bread-and-butter harmonies that might have been inspired by Schoenberg's "Gurrelieder." It will straight-up change which "patch" it is on if it gets too high a voltage in the CV in. Annoying as hell.

Many avenues to explore in this vein. Quite promising. Wish the recording was better, but it is more important that this get finished than it be perfect. As always."

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A Patch A Day, No. 4Published on May 12, 2013

"First purely rhythmic / percussive patch. Exploring the limits of a vanilla clock divider as the sole source of musical events. Deeper "playing" of the synth.

This one is fairly straightforward, though more complex than the previous ones.

CAST:
Doepfer Clock Divider (main beat placement logic)
Make Noise Maths (main clock from ch. 1, oscillator from channel 4)
Make Noise DPO (sound sources for kicks & squawking birds)
Graphic Sequencer (manually modulating the kick, as you see in the video)
Intellijel Quadra (opening and closing the kick)
Make Noise Wiard Wogglebug (ring modulation for snare-ish sound)
Make Noise MMG (opening and closing the squawking sound, along with accents)
Pittsburgh Modular Dual Index (opening and closing snare & kick)
Pittsburgh Modular Mixer
Pittsburgh Modular InOut
NOT USED:
Pittsburgh Modular midi2
Flame Tame Machine

Maths provides a very quick clock, and the Doepfer clock divider handles much of the logic. I think it makes sense to break everything down by which division does what:

/2 - output into the RES IN of the MMG, producing the wild pulsating creature noise. VCO A (sine) of the DPO is running into the MMG AC IN (at a high frequency), while VCO B (sine) is going into the DC IN of the MMG.
/4 - into Quadra, TRIG 1, which outputs to my Dual Index VCA. The OR 1+2 of the Quadra is shifting the Graphic sequencer, whose sliders I'm moving to make kicks that fall in willy-nilly patterns. The FINAL channel of the DPO is what's being VCA'd, which is our four on the floor pattern.
/8 is going into TRIG 3 of the Quadra, which is opening the Dual Index. The source in is actually channel 3 of the Maths, going into the RING MOD IN of the Wogglebug, who gets a VCA open and close from the divider. This is producing the sort-of-snarish sound. I don't have a proper source of noise on this system, so this is as close as I get.
/16 - this is going into FREQ 1 of the MMG, which effectively is opening up the signal generated through the /2 subpatch described above.
/32 - provides a singe ACCENT into the MMG. Small effect, but nice color.
/64 - flips the DPO's FINAL shape from sine to triangle, which affects the kick tone after what sounds like 2 bars.

All in all, percussion is pretty hard. WIth a vanilla clock divider like Doepfer's, you are somewhat limited by what you can do, but of course I could have coerced some more interesting rhythms using the Quadra as well."

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A Patch A Day, No. 3 Published on May 11, 2013

"I had a studio day today to work on Makeunder-related stuff, so I was pressed for time on this one. Still kind of a fun musical idea, but not great from an exploratory point of view.

Overall, this is a pretty unmusical take. Pacing is funky, fades are sloppy. But it is more important that it is finished than it being perfect. I still have another 362 of these to go. Some are allowed to exhibit lackluster performance.

At any rate, today's patch is simple as hell, and I didn't get much out of it that I didn't also get from PotD No. 1. Everything clocked by the Quadra via the clock divider. I think you can probably guess what's coming from where.

In case you can't, the clock divider goes into the graphic sequencer, which outputs to the tame machine, controlling VCO A of the DPO, which is providing the fun sequence.

I wanted the lower pitched stab to occur on what felt like the upbeat (at least in my head), so I had to pull the patch cable on the graphic sequencer and put it back in a bunch to get the alignment right. So that was interesting. Clock alignment is tricky without more utility modules.

The clock divider opens up the mmg for one of the channels, like in PotD No. 1.

Added the Wogglebug to walk ch. 4 of the Maths around the block, which is what's happening at the beginning.

Aside from all this, this is the first major reorg of this rack. The patch cable density issues are much more manageable now that I moved the dual index West just a bit, and the mixer is much more playable on the lower 3U. Sticking the Wogglebug in the Northwest is a much better fit, since that is not something I play much, and the clock divider being in the Northeast is similar. All the playable bits - Quadra, Maths, DPO, Tame, Graphic Sequencer, Mixer - all are right where they should be. So that's a big win.

Another thing that has emerged is that I find myself ONLY playing the mixer - that is, those are the only knobs that I am moving. Seems limited and silly, doesn't it? Something about patches that speak for themselves is appealing, however. Will have to try something interesting tomorrow. The point of sticking to 6U, for the most part, is to force myself to be as resourceful as possible. There are unavoidable constraints - percussion, for instance, is limited to practically nothing but what kind of kick I might get out of the DPO & what the ring modulation on my Wogglebug will do to a signal - but that's half the fun of music. Pushing your constraints until they break.

Finally, the main sequence playing the DPO seems to always benefit from a little FM from VCO B. Gives a dirty feel. This is something I'm finding myself more drawn to.

Everything running into the clean channel of my Weber custom amp."

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A Patch A Day, No. 2 Published on May 10, 2013

"Secundal drones, heavy FM modulation, slowly opening filter, revealing saw-ish waves. I enjoyed this one.

This time, I'm using both the DPO and the Maths as my sound source. I am a creature of harmony - most of my writing concerns utilizing / bending Western harmony until it snaps. So I decided to attempt something a little more drone-like, a little more secundal (built on seconds instead of thirds).

Boy, did that sort of break down quickly. Not the concept - I still tuned the DPO & Maths to output two clusters of seconds - but I ended up utilizing a few other ideas as well. For one thing, I used the Graphic Sequencer to set the FM on the DPO, so the seconds broke down as one channel modulated the other. It ended up sounding like a swarm of bees.

For the Maths, it seemed advantageous to have both channels 1 & 4 run through my MMG, and slowly open the MMG with a cycle from the Quadra. So we have this slow sweep of seconds, while the DPO continues to gently buzz. To round things off, the Graphic Sequencer had been stepped by the random gate from the Wogglebug, and I used the same random gate to hit the resonance input on the MMG.

Good little patch.

It is apparent to me that I need to move the Maths out West on my rack. Most of the patch cable density is on the right side, and can be substantially thinned by shuffling a few modules. Previously I had been putting modules that might be used together near each other. That's silly. Higher cable density is unavoidable if I keep my one VCA next to my mixer. So I may move the VCA down South as well, and maybe out West too.

Signal is dry, right out to my Weber custom amp - clean channel."

A Patch A Day, No. 1

Published on May 9, 2013

"First patch of the series. Simple sequence with the Tame Machine and the Graphic Sequencer.

I am very new to modular synthesis, as of this writing, and have been building this system over the course of three months.

DPO as the main sound source.
Playing with the built-in fm bus, which fm's VCO a & b.
Maths provides the step to the graphic sequencer, which then outputs to the tame machine, which does 1v/oct to VCO b.
VCO a is sync'd to b, and I play with the follow knob a bit.
The main clock source, Maths, also outputs to the Quadra, gives an envelope to a VCA. Nothing fancy here.
Maths also provides a little vibrato to VCO b, and the Maths rise is modulated by a cycle from one of the Quadra's slopes.
VCO a goes into the mmg, which opens and closes according to a Doepfer clock divider.
The Tame Machine is playing a silly little sequence. I'm currently unhappy with the programming side of this module. It seems very limited, but then again so am I. Best not to pass judgment on it.

So VCO b is always running, and VCO a opens and closes according to the clock divider. I start with VCO b faded out on the mixer, and VCO a running with no FM.

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Aside from that, I accidentally left on the El Capistan (tape delay pedal, though it also has spring reverb, which is most of what you're hearing) and my Hexe Revolver microstutter. I should have turned these both off, but I'm out of time, and I have to arrange some saxophone parts for a recording day on Saturday.

Output is through the clean channel on a Weber custom amp."