Eurorack Improv no3. Chords and ambient builds.

Published on Sep 9, 2017 Richard Lacy

"Hello. Here's an experiment in chord progression. Recorded straight to stereo, No overdubs or remixing. What you see is what you hear...
I wanted to make a simple patch using a two row sequencer, to create a chord progression where each chord contains four notes. How do you do this when your sequencer can only play two notes at once? If you're a seasoned modular-head, the answer may be obvious, but if you're new to this, here's the answer: You can cheat… Here's what's going on: I'm using four Doepfer oscillators for the notes. The Doepfer Dark Time Sequencer is providing the CVs and gates.
Row 1: CV to one oscillator. This is the top note of the chord.
Row 2: CV to two oscillators, the second oscillator is playing one octave lower than the first.
The big cheat is that the fourth oscillator isn't receiving any CV; it's just tuned permanently to C. The other three notes move around the C, making some nice clusters here and there. It's just an eight chord sequence and I could have expanded it further, with additional oscillators tuned to other intervals, but I wanted to show that you can play chords with basic modules (yes, I'd like an ER101!). The rest of the chord patch is roughly like this.
4x Oscs into 4x channels of Veils VCA.
Dark Time gate goes to A143-2 Quad Envelope Generator, which in turn is fed to Veils. I'm switching the envelope lengths from short to long, so the notes go from staccato to legato.
Veils audio output goes to the AM Snowfall filter. This is modulated by three channels of an A143-1 Complex Envelope Generator, helping to give it a brassy sort of filer envelope.

Then it got out of hand and I added a bunch of other stuff and made a little jam. Here are the other patches:
1. The soft-sounding plinky-plonky stuff is the 4MS SMR. Level CVs are controlled by AS EGs, which in turn are randomly triggered by the A149-2 Digital Random Voltages.
2. AS SQ8 playing an extra top line from Rings. This goes into Clouds. Clouds is being randomly (clocked random) frozen by the A149-2.
3. AS SQ8 is playing the MS20 for the first bass line
4. Stepper Acid is playing the Minitaur for the second bass line. Minitaur filter is being modulated by the Doepfer MAQ 16-3.
5. The slow overdriven legato melody comes from an SQ8 into Maths, which I'm using as a dual oscillator here. The pitch CV is slewed. Audio goes to an A116 Waveform Processor, then to the Dave Smith Character, then to the Eowave filter and finally to the 4MS DLD.
6. Next is Radio Music, going into the Shapeshifter for vocoding. Audio output goes to the AQA Dual SVF. This patch is being run by a TipTop Z8000 and a 4MS SISM.
7,8,9. There are three synth sequences.(from about 2'15") One is Metropolis and Atlantis. The other two are Doepfer MAQ 16-3 into two A110s and Doepfer filters and envelopes.
10. Finally, a thuddy bass drum from an AS SY-03 filter and cymbal-type sound from the TipTop One.
Everything goes into the little Mackie mixer and I've got the Z-DSP Valhalla on an aux send.
This is what happens when I have an afternoon off..
Thanks for watching!"