#28

Noise through the FM input has been said a few times in the thread so I figured it was worth a try. I combined a few other techniques in this patch. The sound source is Morphagene in playing back a choir in stereo.

One of the things I love doing the most with Three Sisters is patching feedback through Cold Mac’s crease function and then trough it’s crossfader, with a dummy cable plugged into the other channel, essentially transforming it into a VCA. (if you have Three Sisters, get Cold Mac. They’re a magic pair) In the audio snippet this is the harsher crackling and some of the overall character of the noise.

Another thing I love a lot is doing stereo processing using the low/high channels hard panned. The stereo image moves a lot around the second half the snippet as I play with Span and Cutoff.

I threw together some sort of vaporwave-spacey-gold-leafy collage for good measure.

Some extra details: the FM noise is coming from Erbe-Verb in infinite decay. Sisters is in formant mode, with Quality all the way into «antiresonance». Morphagene is coming into Sister’s High and Low, with the outputs of High and Low then hard panned, and sprinkled with light convolution reverb. Cold Mac takes part in feedback between the All input and output.

13 Likes
#29

Sounds so wonderful @simondemeule . Thanks for all the ideas everyone! I love Three Sisters, it’s the one module I can never sell. A lot of my patches tend to rely on it as an end mixer of sorts, with some sort of noise Fm’ing it. I have an SSF Quantum Rainbow and I will literally try each colored noise on each input (with attenuation) - I’ve gotten so many awesome results doing so. Also, @dan_derks, I plan on trying out your patch soon- very beautiful.

5 Likes
#30

Yes, quantum rainbow + three sisters is a great combo! Pink noise modulation is my favorite for a worn texture.

6 Likes
#31

When I try to use my Three Sisters as a voice I don’t get very accurate tracking. Any tips to make it stay in tune across the range of ~2 octaves? I am using the Low output.

1 Like
#32

I had to calibrate both of mine to track accurately. There’s a trim procedure in the manual, it’s fairly easy but you need some patience and a light touch.

1 Like
#33

@ThurberMingus

As @kbit recommended, calibration might be a good idea. The procedure is similar to the Mangrove calibration. I was struggling with that a short while ago and I got some tips, one of which should also help with Three Sisters:

3 Likes
#34

Love 3S and I love this thread. I regularly will patch noise into fm - and then crank up the attentuator whenever I want to introduce a bit of madness into my patch.

It’s probablt obvious, but using very rhythmic modulations into span can be fun.

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88306064-D42E-4D68-8702-8F5AA21BC6CF.jpeg2448×3264 2.14 MB

7 Likes
#35

https://soundcloud.com/user-388295829/wind-chime-meditation

here i fed a field recording of some wind chimes into w/, slowed it down, and multed the output into three sisters’ low and center filters. random cv from PNW into SPAN yielded a pretty cool stereo effect.

18 Likes
#36

Here are two sonic snapshots I posted to instagram. Three Sisters center out with noise in the cutoff makes for amazing broken tape sounds, especially with W/.

5 Likes
#37

Here’s a mystery I ran into this weekend. I was experimenting with mixing inverted filter outputs with their dry signals in order to get opposite filter bands going (i.e. mix dry signal with an inverted, low passed signal to create a high pass). Even if you have a multimode filter, you can do this to get a different character from a module than just running a signal straight through.

I was trying this with Sisters in formant mode, hoping to create a triple notch, but I just couldn’t get it to work right. And it seemed to get closer to a notch response by mixing a positive output from the filter, rather than inverting it. Does anybody know why this might be?

#39

Total guess: sounds like you have quality turned all the way counter-clockwise (or at least somewhere CCW of noon), which would create a notch filter without any inverting necessary. For what you want, you probably want quality up around 2 or 3 O Clock?

#40

hmmmm, I tried with various quality settings and didn’t get what I expected at any point. I’ll have to test it out more with some white noise when I get the chance.

But reading the manual again, it looks like inverse quality already does blend an inverse signal into the filter. It doesn’t introduce enough gain on the inverse signal to totally reverse the behavior of the filter–just reintroduce the broadband frequencies, so I’m not exactly sure how that works. Makes sense that it would behave weird in my patch given that it’s already doing odd things with phase inversion internally.

#41

negative quality in formant mode should turn low into a highpass and high into a lowpass iirc. doesn’t answer your question though

#42

Can I use safely a powered buffered mutiple to mix the individual outs (like the passive mult mixing trick)?

#43

Buffered multiples only have one input. Are you talking about passively mixing the outputs of the buff mult, or passively mixing sisters and then buff multing that signal?

1 Like
#44

I mean sending the 3 outs (low/centre/high) to the 3 buff mult OUTS and then taking the sum from the buff mult INPUT (I know this sounds totally wrong, but it’s possible with a passive multiple as stated on the 3S manual).
I’ve tried this with stackcables and works fine but I’m not sure if this will work with a powered module,
anyway it’s just my curiosity, I usually use a regular mixer for this task :grinning:

#45

uhhhhhh… yeah, don’t do that :sweat_smile:

“passive mixing” isn’t a sin when your outputs are all the same impedance; even a buff mult has passive mixing of the outputs. but you’re talking about biasing an op amp in a very strange way. there is feedback so it’s possible you’d get a signal at the input but, like, why? audio signals don’t need to be buffered.

i recommend a cheap-o ninja star headphone splitter for the task of passive mixing.

2 Likes
#46

Thanks for clear this up, I also have those ninja splitters and will give a try!

#47

Had a fun patch going last night. The three gate outputs for Marbles pinging the three inputs on Sisters in formant mode and a sequence from Marbles patched into Sisters freq. I was monitoring the all output with the individual outputs self patched into Sisters FM and Span.

Varying the bias on the Marbles t section would change which combination of inputs were being pinged and consequently which of FM or Span were being FM’ed.

Created a nice sequence with controllable yet random variations of timbre and pitch.

7 Likes
#48

I’ve made the same patch some days ago, it’s really a lovely combo :heart:

1 Like