Composing on modular

DeGoyen · 2020-10-28T21:14:02.987Z

Hey! first post here.

Cool topic.

I have a 0-Coast and an 104 HP x 6U Eurorack. I use the synths to experiment and try to find the hidden things that the circuits can provide. It was build under the concept of functional promiscuity. So for me it’s a playground for ideas and patching techniques.
From this experiments I start developing musical ideas.
Last year I started experimenting under the concept of making a patch versatile enough to be able to perform 20-25 minutes with it. I started with an idea and over the course of days or weeks I developed it, making it more complex, practicing the performance, mixing it on the modular, etc. then I recorded using my stereo output module into ableton live as a tape recorded. This ended up as my debut album.

I try make full use of the resources, for example using two hex VCAs as a stereo mixer, processing telHarmonic H an P outputs as well as Ring Even and Odd outputs separately and planing them, etc.

Depending on how I feel I use Marbles, Game System or the KB-1 for pitch, and gates.

Just recently I started to experiment sending MIDI to the 0-Coast, which is interesting but not my cup of tea.

So, to end up, I like to have limitations but also flexibility to compose, experiment, play and have fun overall.

mploj · 2020-10-28T22:23:13.733Z

Interesting discussion going on… I basically split the process of modular composition into three phases:

1.) Building the Instrument - most often I start a project by patching a playable instrument, defined by up to 208hp of modules, couple of tactile inputs (grid or keys or sensors…) and a selection of effect pedals. I then patch all main connections and don‘t change this until I finish the project.

2.) Playing the Instrument - once patched, I try to keep the structure of the main patch and create variations by changing values and playing notes. The range of diversity one can achieve without repatching a single cord is amazing and restricting the level of access to the patch helps me in being consistent throughout a project.

3.) Recording - I have a Zoom running whenever I play on the modular, and I maintain a single ‚instrument’ patch for weeks. I then go further by processing the recordings on tape or building tracks in Ableton

hermbot · 2020-10-29T13:06:56.392Z

mploj:

2.) Playing the Instrument - once patched, I try to keep the structure of the main patch and create variations by changing values and playing notes. The range of diversity one can achieve without repatching a single cord is amazing and restricting the level of access to the patch helps me in being consistent throughout a project.

I do this too! It’s a great mental challenge because it prompts some planning and helps breed creativity through restrictions.

a773 · 2020-10-30T11:49:30.927Z

This is posted in the hope that it is somewhat interesting to someone🤔

In a modular context my music is rather conventional in that I work with harmony, melody, song-like structures and most of the time has (something resembling) kick, snare, hihat and bass.

I normally start out with a general feeling I want to achieve or a rhythmic or harmonic idea.

First I patch the most important elements from the initial idea, both sound and on the teletype. When I have something that I feel captures what I intended, I work out a form, with contrasting or supporting parts. Then I work out melody, either played by hand into hermod or a generative idea on the teletype, or both.

Then I play the thing through a couple of times, looking for places to take the patch. Often I add more hands on control, more generative and dependencies on teletype and kill a few darlings here.

Finally I multi track the patch in one pass with cameras rolling, sometimes it needs a few takes before it works, sometimes the first take is enough. Then mix (no or minimal fixes), edit the video and put it in queue to go public on youtube.

andrewhuang · 2020-10-30T15:18:24.373Z

Then I play the thing through a couple of times, looking for places to take the patch.

This is something I know I’m timid about, for fear of losing the sweet spot I originally had in my patch. Any strategies for finding your way back to home base, or to a few different waypoints?

I’ve approached it more by multitracking smaller and more “recallable” variations, and once I know I’m happy with what I’ve captured I’ll do a pass where I’ll explore a lot more wildly but this usually brings the patch to a place I can’t come back from.

Also cool to know that your performances are one-takes. Love what you create!

Gexex · 2020-10-30T15:25:14.894Z

andrewhuang:

This is something I know I’m timid about, for fear of losing the sweet spot I originally had in my patch. Any strategies for finding your way back to home base, or to a few different waypoints?

I definitely feel this quite a bit. Both Cold Mac and ADDAC306 (transition controller) can help achieve changes without losing sweet spots. If you have neither and aren’t looking to add a module, you could also use an unpatched attenuator as a ‘prosthetic knob’ without fear of losing your patch.

a773 · 2020-10-30T15:51:02.715Z

andrewhuang:

This is something I know I’m timid about, for fear of losing the sweet spot I originally had in my patch. Any strategies for finding your way back to home base, or to a few different waypoints?

When I realized how much more alive everything became when I wasn’t afraid to touch it, it was a bit easier.

Also, the 301 is doing ‘signature sounds’, which means it’s easier to apply a more casual approach to the rest of the system.

That said, I too have a lot to learn here, I fall in the same trap as well…

andrewhuang:

Also cool to know that your performances are one-takes. Love what you create!

Thanks so much, highly appreciated! Thanks for listening!

And congrats on the wonderful news😀

Aomatos · 2020-10-30T16:27:45.304Z

This is a huge issue with modular indeed! The solution that I found that works for me is recording the basic sound of a patch into a sampler and use that as a basis where i can always land back on.

Catchthehare · 2020-10-30T16:33:24.019Z

These past 3 years composing on modular has been a baptism of fire, that’s for sure. As I am partial to ambient / generative music, I was happily impressed with the improvisation my system allowed me, but as I am a sucker for melody and song structure too I felt duly constrained by its limitations - or rather anxious with the necessity to purchase a ton of additional modules to achieve what would be otherwise quite basic tasks (this isn’t a complaint, I fully enjoy acquiring the building blocks). I must say though, this has all changed when I bought the ACL Sinfonion. I can’t express how much it has opened up my system in terms of harmony, scales, modes and composition. I was almost there with Harmonaig, but the Sinfonion on another level entirely and has my 100% endorsement for anyone on the fence about getting one (provided you have 7 or 8 voices to make it sing)

simonvanderveldt · 2020-10-30T19:23:14.374Z

Have you ever made a video or considered making a video documenting this process? Would be very interesting to watch and learn.

mystasea · 2020-10-30T19:27:50.164Z

andrewhuang:

Any strategies for finding your way back to home base, or to a few different waypoints?

This depends on your system but if you have parameters that use switches or stepped controls then it could be a good place to start to explore possibilities without too much risk of loosing it.

mount.stupid · 2020-11-21T04:52:06.286Z

I generally use my modular for sound design, multi-tracking the voices and then later I edit the good bits down to usable pieces. Often I will further load them into samplers, or process them with offline DSP in Metasynth or CSound or similar tools. I rarely successfully compose, or perform an entire song on the modular. That said I do rely on a programmer module, as well as some joysticks that I use to be able to have a baseline starting point, with the ability to radically depart from there but am able to work my way back into that zone. I also have a vector mixer with it’s own joystick that I use to dynamically fade between dueling voices.

eblomquist · 2020-11-21T11:12:41.445Z

By “flip/flop” do you mean a switch?

What modules do you like for this functionality?

Thanks.

eblomquist · 2020-11-21T17:44:54.942Z

That makes sense, thanks! I hadn’t heard the term before.

xcc · 2020-11-23T04:56:59.059Z

The Acid Rain Switchblade does this with three channels, and I think the Klavis Mixswitch does as well (haven’t used the Klavis).

soggybag · 2021-10-03T21:42:15.409Z

How are you making arpeggios? I was thinking about setting up the modular to play through an arpeggio chord sequence.

Thirst idea I had was Rene v1. Programming chord notes in rows. This would give fours chords. CV control of the x axis would provide for playing patterns forward, backward, ping pong etc.

With careful choice of notes you would also have other possible chord notes on the y axis.

The limit seems to be four note patterns.

The second idea I had was to use Ornament and Crime. It’s not as obvious how this would work. There are lots of options.

I picture using Sequins with it’s four patterns. Mapping the CV to the pattern number and pattern length. The Multiplier/Divider option might useful.

phaseshiftingpulse · 2023-04-20T21:07:03.358Z

I’ve been intrigued by the “record a long jam, then edit it” type workflow that a few people have referred to on this thread, but I have a couple of questions:

The boring, technical one: what do you use to cut the recording up? I haven’t found anything that works the way I would like it to work for something like this (easily jump around in the file, play a piece isolated or looped, export it with a minimum of fuss)
The creative one: how do you make something from disjoint clips that sounds cohesive and not collage-like?

orbit_f · 2023-04-20T21:44:32.252Z

phaseshiftingpulse:

The boring, technical one: what do you use to cut the recording up? I haven’t found anything that works the way I would like it to work for something like this (easily jump around in the file, play a piece isolated or looped, export it with a minimum of fuss)

I usually do everything within Ableton Live, so I can easily add effects.
I’ve been also trying Reaper which I found pretty intuitive considering the fact that I’ve never read its manual and haven’t been a long time and/or frequent user.
I also use Audacity when I don’t need to add effects. It’s pretty simple and gets the job done.
I just downloaded Ocenaudio with which I’m exporting reels to my Morphagene with markers. It looks like Audacity but I like it more, feels more intuitive even with little experience (maybe I’ll change idea).

phaseshiftingpulse:

The creative one: how do you make something from disjoint clips that sounds cohesive and not collage-like?

I love collages so maybe I’m not the right person to answer but here’s my two cents.
I think cohesion is a compositional perspective, so a pretty wide range of strategies can be used, depending on what your aim is, what your starting material is, what are the “boundaries” of the genre you might be exploring and, not least, what cohesion means to you and/or inside the context of the music you make. Cohesion to me is always about relationship: in order to perceive something as cohesive or incohesive there must be a comparison based on an underlying implied model of cohesion, thus a relationship between elements both inside the composition and both outside.
Usually melodic content can help bring a sense of cohesion (i.e. a call and response pattern, a different melodic outline arising from the same scale or transposition of materials etc.)
You can also bring cohesion with dynamics: softer goes with softer and louder with louder (but also the opposite can be true if you want to bring contrast).
Generally it’s mainly linked to the question of form. What is the “general shape/trajectory” of the piece? You can have climatic forms where the piece reaches a peak and then decreases or even goes ever further to reach a higher peak, you can use forms which use repetition to establish a strong idea during the course of time or even try to weave a form that doesn’t use repetition and is constantly changing.
It really depends on what you’re doing, what you’re working with and what are your needs.
To me it’s a wide subject and it’s difficult to answer your question in a more specific way.
Hope I can help and not leave you more confused than before.

yabuike · 2023-04-22T09:12:02.002Z

phaseshiftingpulse:

how do you make something from disjoint clips that sounds cohesive and not collage-like

I don’t know if these things are mutually exclusive – as orbit_f says, “cohesion” is about relationships, and those relationships are in the end always constructed only in the act of listening, regardless of what the composer might think they’re putting into the piece (and this holds true even for ostensibly straightforward melodic or rhythmic material: there’s never any guarantee that the listener will hear things the way the composer intended them)… even if you simply throw a bunch of stuff together in a completely random fashion and then listen to the results repeatedly, more often than not you’ll start noticing “meaningful” relationships, i.e. a degree of cohesion (unless we take “cohesion” to mean exclusively a certain amount of predictability, for example the aforementioned structures of call-and-response, build-up, repetition etc.). I’d encourage to experiment and look for cohesion where it doesn’t immediately seem to exist – and maybe as a practical tip, I’d try to keep the source material within some kind of pretty strict limits so that the results will edit more easily together. (I also hope this doesn’t confuse matters further!)

WendyVeen · 2023-05-29T14:28:45.826Z

Late to the party, but wanted to add a slightly different perspective. I’ve subscribed to this method for a few years now, but the value for me is not necessarily about the ability to chop and reassemble, it’s more about taking the pressure off of recording and just giving yourself the space to find something magical in the performance, a hinge or pattern that really works and then improvise around that.

I recorded my last album this way – free recording/improvising for 30-40 minutes at a time, listening back a few days later with fresh ears, and maybe just grabbing 3-4 sustained minutes that work on their own and calling it (mostly) done. That way you get the cohesion of a “composed” piece, without having to worry about making the disparate bits sound like they were always meant to sit next to each other.