Morgasmarings!

Published on Jul 9, 2018 Comparative Irrelevance

"Lately I've been spending some time with my new Morgasmatron! I've been a big fan of the MS-20 filter for a long time, and the Morgasmatron builds on that heritage but takes it to a different level in terms of flexibility and modularity. Still, that wonderful grit and scream is there once you start to push its limits. I think it makes a great pair with Rings' natural, clean timbres. It's almost like plugging a guitar into a crunchy tube amp or analog distortion pedal: all sorts of little gritty artifacts start popping up in the cracks of the sound.

I used this combo in the "Foehn Wind" video I published the other day [below] with just some sparse patch notes, so I figured I'd make another video to take a closer look at Rings+Morgasmatron. Now, this isn't patched up exactly like in Foehn Wind. In that video I used Pam's New Workout and µScale for sequencing Rings' pitch and Structure in the same way that I show in 3 Modules #64 [below]. And I used a sine wave LFO in addition to Sheep to modulate the cutoff, and modulated Sheep's wavetable selection with Mod Tools. I also used Clouds for reverb and additional "lofi-ness".

Here I've simplified a little, and I'm sequencing Rings with my SQ-1 (off screen), which is being clocked by Sheep's 1-bit output. Sheep is also modulating Rings' Position and the filter cutoff for both filters in opposite directions, which can make for a neat stereo effect at more extreme settings.

Rings is in sympathetic strings mode (yellow) and I have Damping set to fully open for most of this recording, which produces almost indefinite sustain. Morgasmatron takes care of the dynamics.

Most of the magic just comes from pushing Morgasmatron's input levels, Q-drive and resonance. Here I'm taking it into pretty overdriven settings.

✌︎

See you around! :)"

Foehn Wind ☁︎ Eurorack generative music

Published on Jul 4, 2018 Comparative Irrelevance

"I hope you'll enjoy this little generative piece I made.

The video is a looped snippet I shot almost exactly one year ago, from Romsdalseggen near Åndalsnes here in Norway. It is hands down the most spectacular view I have ever seen: Off screen to the left is about a 1000 meter drop down to the vivid valley below with the azure blue Rauma river. To the right: only white, foggy nothingness. And while no picture or video can do justice to the real thing, I'm still mesmerized by this little clip of the fog rolling over the edge of the mountain. That edge is the road ahead, by the way...

The music is a fully autonomous piece made with the eurorack modular synthesizer. That is to say I did not interfere with the patch once it started playing (beyond pressing start/stop on PNW at the beginning and the end). I'm quite happy with the level of nuance and variation that happens here. Using Sheep as a very slow LFO creates some nice ebb and flow over time.

Modules used:
Voice: Rings into Morgasmatron into Clouds
Sequence: PNW into µScale
Modulation: Mod Tools to Sheep wavetable selection; Sheep to Morgasmatron filter cutoffs

Track download: https://comparativeirrelevance.bandca...

☁︎

See you around! :)"

3 Modules #64: Pamela's New Workout, Ripples, µScale

Published on Jul 5, 2018 Comparative Irrelevance

"Very short and simple this time. Just a man and his sine wave oscillator.

This may not sound very exciting on its own (slightly better when I add in some reverb, I think). But the sequencing in this patch, with the addition of a more fleshed out sound source, is actually what turned into this recording here: https://youtu.be/0H_IGAgb70o

Patch notes:

I'm using Ripples as the sound source, by turning up the resonance until it self-oscillates. Pam's is generating the pitch sequence and modulation via the first four channels. I'm using the row rotation feature to cycle the settings between these four outputs, clocked by output number 5.

Pam's settings are as follows:
1) Stepped random, X2 tempo, level 30%, offset 20%
2) Stepped random, X1.5 tempo, level 30%, offset 18%
3) Stepped random, X2 tempo, level 19%, offset 21%
4) Stepped random, X1.5 tempo, level 34%, offset 22%
5) Gate/trigger, /5 tempo
8) Sine wave, X4 tempo

The precise values don't matter too much, it's more about setting a suitable range of random notes and playing around with the time division settings to find interesting rhythms. One of the random outputs selects the note (via µScale), one selects the scale and one is used to modulate Ripples' VCA level.

Finally, output 8 is a sine wave LFO, which is used to add some subtle vibrato to the tone.

I actually accentuated the high frequency clicks (that come form abrupt changes in the VCA level) in the mix. Normally these would be an unwanted artifact, but in this case I thought they added a nice percussive element to the otherwise super simplistic sequence.

* * *

Thanks for watching! :)"