Strung Along - Jam #50 - Ambient Plaits into Monsoon [Modular]

video upload by Beast of Burden Music

"Fiftieth Jam! I'll celebrate by treating myself to a synth jam.

For this, I wanted to use the string sound in plaits with a random sequence to simulate some varying fingerpicking sounds. In the end the strings sounded more metallic and percussive, almost like a hammered dulcimer.

I programmed one random trigger in temps utile and kept this as the steady picking rhythm. I then programmed a second trigger which is much faster. I then ran both into a sequential switch and had a third random trigger flick between the two. I play around with the multiplication of the second sequence to bring the rapid notes in and out. With more modulation sources, I’d have looked to modulate this element but I like having something to play around with.

Turing machine quantised by O&C to a Japanese scale for pitch.

Shallow LFO modulating the harmonics to bring in the more classic string synth sounds.

To round things out I used Monsoon as a delay and added quite a bit of reverb for ambience."