A Patch A Day, No. 10

Published on May 18, 2013 hamiltonulmer·10 videos

"Very unsatisfying patch, and an unsatisfying (hilariously silly) take. It's been that kind of day, though.

The premise of this was essentially an attempt to use a bit of what I've learned about using the Quadra percussively, and what I've come to understand about the Make Noise modules, and do something different with them.

The whole enchilada - percussion and pitches - runs into the MMG, which opens, closes, and strikes according to clocks, envelopes, and Maths. That's the premise behind this whole thing. It is conceptually pretty delightful, really, even if this recording doesn't do it justice.

The Wogglebug clocks the Clock Divider, which then goes out to several bits here and there. Took the stepped CV out of the Wogglebug, piped it into Ch. 3 of the Maths, attenuated the signal so it wouldn't be too strong, and put it into the Tame Machine. If the signal into CV IN is too strong, the Tame Machine often switches patches, which is quite annoying. The output of that goes into the DPO, which provides the weak stepped bits I would turn up and down via the mixer (hardly comes out in the recording), using the FINAL out.

The kick sound comes out of the Dixie II, which opens and closes via one of the Quadra channels, using the Dual Index for VCA duty. I use the other channel of the Dual VCA to take in the RING MOD from the Wogglebug, which was fed Ch. 3 of the Maths, oscillating wildly.

The same stepped CV out of the Wogglebug is what is opening and closing the MMG to create the random RING MOD attenuation.

Some of the clicky sounds are just the hard snap of the Quadra. Some of them are STRIKEs into the MMG, which was being struck through the Graphic Sequencer, whose steps were determined by the Clock Divider. Pretty standard idea, overall.

The bit where I am plugging into the two different Maths channels is interesting, at least conceptually. The Maths here does a lot, and is sort of the real star. I had a patch cable going from the MMG MODE IN, and depending on which channel of Maths I plugged in, would do different things to the filter. We know Ch. 1 was going into the RING MOD IN of the Wogglebug, and it was outputting at a pitch frequency. So plugging into that would open up the MMG. Plugging into Ch. 4 would output much more lightly. Between the two, you get a really nice effect, overall.

I also hit the limit of what I can reliably do with one hand, while the camera films. I want to get more performant with the modular synth, and it is impossible to do with only one hand. So this video looks silly.

Good days and bad days. One must roll with them."