VOLTLIFE: performance controls and generative effects with Squarp Hermod

video by voltlife

"An annotated jam showing some ways to use Hermod’s MIDI effects, CV inputs and mute buttons to turn a very short sequence into a performable environment for live exploration. There’s also some self-patching and internal modulation that’s not shown here."

Saving Daylight

Published on Apr 4, 2020 voltlife

"Just a rough jam on the last day of daylight saving time. Possibly a dry run for some live-streamed improvisation sessions: if I do that, I’ll double check recording levels, exposure, my stupid lockdown hair, and make sure that my hands are in frame!"

Lokroi

Published on Dec 9, 2019 voltlife

"Exploring the Locrian mode with dark, sweeping techno.

I tried to get around the main problem with the Locrian mode (its root triad is diminished, so it never feels at rest) by swiping a jazz technique and omitting the 5th, using a shell voicing instead. By making the other chords in the progression more dissonant and emphasising the root with other synths, I think it manages to reinforce the Locrian feel while avoiding the feeling that it's about to resolve somewhere else.

Apart from Waldorf Streichfett strings, the main voices are a Mother 32 bassline, plucky AFG arpeggios through a Pittsburgh Filter (not Mangrove through Sinc Bucina as I wrote in the video) and drums using both dedicated percussion modules and the Synthtech E352 for noisy snares than morph into wavetable stabs. I used the triangle suboctave trick from my previous tutorial video ([posted here]) to add heft to the Mother 32 bass, and the rest of the patch is explained in the video."

VOLTLIFE: Suboctaves outside the square

Published on Dec 1, 2019 voltlife

"How to use simple utility modules to add a variety of suboctave waveforms to almost any Eurorack VCO."

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Teuthid Dreaming

Published on Nov 6, 2019 voltlife

"A floaty generative ambient patch, with tentacles! The NLC Squid Axon module replicates and mutates melodies using nonlinear feedback, rhythms are varied with Euclidean clocks, while Pressure Points + Brains is clocked extremely slowly to bring in different 'movements' with varying balance between voices. The voices themselves are mostly wavetable VCOs, with analogue filtering and a lot of reverb and long delays."

VOLTLIFE: How to Hoover

Published on Oct 26, 2019 voltlife

"A tutorial on approximating the infamous 'Hoover' sound in Eurorack, focusing on how to make a PWM Sawtooth wave like the Roland Alpha Juno."

VOLTLIFE: SSF Entity Percussion extreme modulation

Published on Sep 13, 2019 voltlife

"Modulating the bejesus out of the Entity Percussion to get rich, varied, and frankly bonkers modular drum magic.

Other modules used:
Trigger sequencer - Four Bricks Rook
FM source - Tromsø triangle output
Pitch sequencer - Mimetic Digitalis
Harmonic sequencer - Verbos Voltage Multistage
Cycling envelope - Maths
Delay (only used towards the end) - Chronoblob 2
Reverb - 2hp Reverb
Kick - 2hp Play (stock sample)"

Indigo Dusk

Published on Jan 12, 2019 voltlife

"An ambient exploration, mostly self-running, that uses a few tricks to get more interest out of limited sequencing..

Bass swells: AFG alien saws through STG Sea Devils Filter.

HIgh fizzy stereo sweeps: AFG animated pulses through Belgrad in High/Notch mode with Span modulated by a VCLFO. Stereo sweep by WMD Performance Mixer.

Vocoder choir: Fumana, using random speech samples from Radio Music as modulator; carrier is PPG-like wavetables from E352 in Cloud+Morph mode, run through clouds for smearing into quasi-chords. The EF all out from Fumana modulates the speed of an LFO that drives the centre frequency of Fumana, for varying phaser-like sweeps.

Occasional digital synth blips: the other E352 output through Optomix, opened by a Descent envelope. Sequenced by a Moskwa, which could get boring quickly, but Moskwa's clock is driven by a Doepfer A160-5 for varying clock speeds, and the Descent envelopes are triggered by shifting Euclidean rhythms.

Bell/pluck riff: Rings (what else?!) sequenced by Verbos Voltage Multistage through a VCA, with attenuation changing randomly each bar for variety. To make Rings sound marginally less Rings-y, I modulate its frequency with bandpass-filtered noise at varying frequencies, which gives a slightly noisy or warbly edge to the sound. Brightness and Damping modulated every bar for further variation.

Main modulation sources: Doepfer A149-1/2, A143-4, Erica Black Octasource, Triple Sloth.

Mixing and fx: everything into WMD Performance Mixer, with Erebe Verb on Aux 1 and a mix of Demora into Erbe Verb and plain Demora on Aux 2. Erbe Verb's Decay and Demora's feedback are modulated by random gates from A149-2. I use an L-1 Stereo Microcompressor in the final Send/Return, mainly as a limiter to reign in the occasional peak, but I think I'm still getting a bit of clipping, so I need to work on the makeup gain."

Cloud Aquarium

Published on Nov 19, 2018 voltlife

"Deep drones and burbly feedback give an underwater feel to this dark ambient generative patch.

The only sound source is the E352 Cloud Terrarium, in the new detune mode. A Triple Sloth slowly modulates both wavetables, plus the detune for the second output, which is set to octave/4th/5th mode to create shifting intervals. The outputs are mixed into a Verbos Multitap Delay, which runs through a Pittsburgh Filter as a feedback loop. One of the Verbos envelope followers modulates the cutoff of the high pass filter, which gives a quasi-limiting effect as well as shifting tonality. Another Triple Sloth output modulates the filter resonance, pushing it close to self-oscillation for burbles and sci-fi sound fx."

VOLTLIFE: Verbos Multi-Delay self-oscillation

Published on Jul 22, 2018 voltlife

"Shimmering celestial drones; ominous alien swarms; 50s Sci-Fi warbles; waves of digital glitch. These are just some of the sounds you can coax out of the Verbos Multi-Delay Processor without any other modules."

Tropical Sympathy

Published on Jun 24, 2018 voltlife

"Using Tropical Noise by Error Instruments as an external exciter for Rings. There’s also some external modulation of Rings to help get beyond its stereotypical sound."

Materiality

Published on May 28, 2018 voltlife

"A track using Mother 32 as almost the only sound source (other than a kick drum). Various odd techniques were used to get the most out of it."

Laurel vs Yanny: an analogue analysis

Published on May 16, 2018 voltlife

"Using an analogue filterbank/vocoder to identify the frequency ranges that solve this acoustic puzzle."

Pretty funny.

Featuring the Frap Tools Fumana.

Update: Below is the source. What do you hear? voltlife in the video above adjusts the frequencies for you so you can hear what different people hear. Apparently when you lose the ability to hear higher frequencies you hear "Laurel". Welcome to the club.  :)

What do you hear?! Yanny or Laurel pic.twitter.com/jvHhCbMc8I

— Cloe Feldman (@CloeCouture) May 15, 2018

Shooting for the Moon

Published on Apr 23, 2018 voltlife

"Trying out some ideas ahead of a live set with Doctor Voltage this weekend. Sound sources are a Moog Mother 32, Synthesis Technology E352, SSF Entity Percussion Synthesiser and a self-oscillating Xaoc Devices Belgrad."

VOLTLIFE: Motherless Drummer

Published on Mar 18, 2018 voltlife

"It might be a bit cheeky to compare the SSF Entity Percussion Synthesiser to Moog’s DFAM, given that it has a very different architecture, but when driven by an 8x2 stage hands-on sequencer like the Verbos Voltage Multistage it has a similar addictive playability. Here are some excerpts from a jam session where I managed to get rolling techno toms, glitchy clicks, quirky West-coast plucks, retro electro and nasty industrial rhythms, and even something resembling acid squelches, out of just these two modules."

Frap Tools - Fumana - Further LPG/LPF Explorations

Published on Mar 9, 2018 DivKidVideo

"In my second video with Fumana for the #FumanaFridays series YouTube channel 'Voltlife' commented with another tip and expansion on the LPF/LPG style ideas you can apply to Fumana. Frap Tools did an amazing job of this, visually, functionally and most importantly sonically. Check out a live chat with Simone and Antonio discussing the design with me and Chris Meyer" [posted here]

VOLTLIFE: Fumana vocoding...and beyond

Published on Feb 19, 2018 voltlife

"A demonstration of Frap Tools’ Fumana spectral editor working as a 16-band vocoder, then taking it to extremes. The carrier is a mix of Rubicon saw & PWM with a Dixie II saw a fifth above."

A Nostalgic Phase

Published on Jul 17, 2017 voltlife

"I just got myself a Minilogue, which is the first analogue polyphonic keyboard I've had in a long time, so of course the first thing I did was run it through Kaminiec for liquid phasey sweeps that took me right back to my JMJ-idolising childhood. Add a chugging bassline through plenty of delay, some low-fi analogue percussion and some random squelches, and the 70s electronic nostalgia-fest is complete.

It's not all retro analogue styles, though. The Minilogue chords (shamelessly stolen from you-know-who) go through Kamieniec into Clouds, which I use to pitch shift and freeze the output. Clouds is modulated by an Erica Octasource and occasionally trigger by bursts from Drezno, while Demora and Erbe Verb add echoes and space to the bassline and percussion. There are a few missteps with chords and mixing, but it's fun to play!"

Erica Synths Black Octasource: first patch

Published on Jul 10, 2017 voltlife

"My first experiment with Erica's Octasource: using the 8 outputs to control the 8 harmonics of the Verbos Harmonic Oscillator seemed like a natural fit! Indeed, in both multi- and single-wave mode, it created interesting harmonic/melodic rhythms on top of the basic Moskwa sequence that drives the HO.

I also used a slower sequence from a Verbos Voltage Multistage to change around the wave selections in the Octasource, and some clock dividers to sync the LFO rate.

There's some clipping and clicking here and there (I told you it was my first experiment!). The clipping is largely because the Verbos HO can send out a very hot signal when lots of harmonics are on, and the clicks are because the Octasource includes some waves with sharp transitions (like pulses and saws). If you wanted to avoid that, stick to the smoother waves or add a tiny bit of slew. I've also added a bit of reverb and delay to fill out the sound, but it doesn't change the fundamentals of the patch."

VOLTLIFE: Xaoc Devices Drezno first patches

Published on Jun 3, 2017 voltlife

"Some quick experiments using Xoac Devices' new Drezno module to process audio. Animodule's M1xXOR allows manual and voltage control of which bits are passed through, ignored or inverted, but you could do similar things with switch, logic or VCA modules.

Initial patch:
Dixie II sine → Drezno ADC → M1xXOR → Drezno DAC

Second patch:
Dixie II saw → Pittsburgh Filter→ Drezno ADC → M1xXOR → Drezno DAC"

You can find addition posts featuring Drezno here.