#13

this made me think of combining an attenuated copy of a sequence with itself, which seems like it would lead to a scale with exponentially growing spacing between notes as you go up. not sure if that would really count as “repeating” in the traditional sense even though there would be a certain pattern to all the pitch relationships.

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#14

My small discovery is filter resonance! I have genuinely never cared for the sound of “standard” low pass filter resonance. At least in my own music it’s always felt too cheesy and either like acid house or over the top sci-fi laser sounds. I do like how resonance works on my QPAS but that feels like a pretty different thing.

But yesterday I was making some patches on my Minilogue and I realized that I actually need to tune the filter cut off! Tuning the filter cut off so it brings out a specific harmonic related to the note I’m playing and leaving the filter keytracking at 100% has lead me to a ton of cool tones that sound somewhat additive in nature to me.

Still don’t think I’m a fan of acidy sweeps or laser beam sounds (for my own music at least haha) but now I at least finally have a reason to not leave that knob at super low values in all of my patches.

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#15

Thinking of it as something programmable / multi-state as in, accessing different scales depending on the octave of the input. So primary sequencer is running voices, and all the while one (or several) of its outputs is quantized to octaves and fed into a ‘scale selection’ input or something to that effect on the secondary sequencer.

Admittedly this is very straightforward to do with Teletype, but I’d imagine is not so straightforward with other sequencers, and so the thought is in my brain as TT code, and expressing it in English is a challenge.

1 Like
#16

One recent Discovery was combining two trigs through a VCA and then attenuating each trig channel down equally. The result seem to be some sort of trig phasing when both channels fight for dominance. Even mixing two really boring trig sequences this way garners some really cool trig sequences

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#17

I spent an afternoon figuring out how to calculate cent offsets for converting ratio-based tuning specifications to offsets from equal temperament. Came up with a spreadsheet that will let you do the same operation for any ratio-based scale definition you have.

https://pemungkah.com/the-harp-of-new-albions-tuning-for-logic/

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#18

I followed Ciani’s patch diagram and patched white noise into one of my matrix mixer inputs, three outs going into 3 sisters inputs, and one to a LPG then 3 sisters all in, sending noise everywhere adding it a little bit all over, filtered, gated, etc. Special shoutout to @EPTC 's recent podcast for also inspiring exploration of noise. The discovery is, it’s wonderful and I need to use it more :3

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(from the paper shared by @madeofoak over here, highly recommend reading and experimentation)

19 Likes
#19

A good use of resonance that I recently learned about is using a HPF on any sound of which you want the bass frequency accentuated. Use thr cutoff to find the frequency and then use the resonance to make the bass frequency more apparent. Typical use on kicks but it can be done on anything.

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#20

This is probably v/ familiar to many a modular meister, but Klangbau Köln’s fantastic Twin Peak Resonator showed me how fantastic this can be:

Patch the signal you are filtering to also modulate the filter’s cutoff. With a lowpass, this creates ’flutter’ in the upper frequencies, creating fragile, beautiful (to my ear) tones.

27 Likes
#21

I discovered that quadra can actually make remarkably clean subharmonic divisions! I had a square from one of my mangroves multed to the trigger in and patched two quadra outs to a crossfader, fading between the original mangrove signal and the quadra‘s using my doepfer theremin. Couple that with a doepfer ribbon controller‘s pressure increasing audio rate modulation of air and a foot controller controlling the mangrove‘s formant and it starts to feel as if you were in control of a three piece brass band.

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#22

I would love to hear an example of this. Capturing the spirit of horns in synths is one of favorite sounds.

#23

Update on this clock speed idea:

map control of both the coefficient and harmonic multiplier to the ~same fader/knob/whatever. Extremely clean and versatile clock divisions. This also helps with a chronic issue I encounter: limiting control over a piece so that each piece retains an identity (analogous to actually picking a scale instead of just always playing chromatically – making decisions is always a good idea, particularly in such a limitless world). The discontinuities in the linear speed increase actually decrease as a ratio to the overall speed as one slows down, so there’s lots of variability in flavor overall, and a gradual slide down has a dramatic drop at first (in my case a 4:5 ratio), and those drops get less dramatic as the fader moves. Lots of options, one fader, plenty of ‘blind spots’ that are just jumped over, so that slightly different ‘seed’ values give one very different ranges of control. As far as I’m concerned, this is what a clock ~is~ now.

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#24

I’d love to learn more about this clock idea, I’ve read both your posts but I’d appreciate a more explanatory post as I’m having a hard time getting how I can patch this up and try it myself! Sounds interesting to say the least so thanks for sharing your discoveries.

4 Likes
#25

not super music related but after lusting after that Logictech Keyboard With A Knob that’s like 200 dollars i realized i have all of the pieces already to get the monome arc controlling scrubbing, scrolling, zooming in final cut pro!

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had been planning to try to get something working like this for awhile but don’t quite have the knowhow. there’s a fairy popular third party scripting app for FCP called command post (written in lua, which i learned through here!) but i have never had time to dig into how to make the arc talk to the app. but i realized today that they already have midi support implemented and the gears began grinding in my head. using the returns max patch to convert the arc to midi and command post to convert the midi into actions. for such a stupid work around, surprisingly it is totally usable like this. maybe even more convenient?? remains to be seen if i can retrain my muscle memory to stop mashing cmd+/-, but great to find a use for some of the music things i had to put away to make room for working remotely.

10 Likes
#26

One benefit of working for a company that keeps sensitive records is that we have a file room with large metal shelves with metal dividers and metal cranks to move the shelves around.

One benefit of the 21st century is that this file room is pretty much empty (except for a small stash of office supplies on one shelf) as all those sensitive documents were digitized years ago.

One benefit of the pandemic is that everyone is working from home and the office is empty - you can bang on things and generally be a nuisance without bothering anyone else.

I had to go in to do take care of some things in-person earlier this week and spent some time banging and crashing the filing shelves together and recording the resulting noises. It just dawned on me that there are probably a lot of great places to capture some field recordings that would normally be impractical.

EDIT: In the spirit of sharing… (sorry for crappy recording quality, recorded with an iPhone)

Some short clangs in the beginning, some nice ringing/reverberating at the 20s mark. Also, you get the freebie of the building ventilation (or maybe its manufactured noise for privacy?) at the end.

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#27

Setting up the txo for use as envelope gives algorithmic control over level of envelope + attack time + decay time. Might come in handy…

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#28

Somehow this little thing is something that I have to keep on re-discovering rather than just having in my tool belt, but: modulating the modulation is one of the best ways to create structure and expressivity in a patch. My tendency is to do that by just turning things on and off, when there’s a lot more nuance to be found by patching as much CV as possible through attenuators to be played by hand or controlled with yet more CV. Also fun: having many or all of the attenuators controlled by a single multed offset!

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#29

Big motivation behind the design of the Mannequins Cold Mac “Survey” knob. More complex than attenuation if you want it, but it can do attenuation too.

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#30

Have you seen the ADDAC System 306 VC Transitions yet?

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#31

Wow that one was not on my radar, thanks for sharing! I had been thinking about an Emblematic Catalyst, and I would prefer a fader to a slider, but I also don’t really care for button combos or need 8 banks of 8 scenes… Hmm!

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#32

The 306 is as simple as it gets. Plus you can easily flip the direction of each track which is more playable than you can imagine. It was designed with performance and simplicity in mind.
Disclaimer : I co-designed this with ADDAC. Take my opinion with a grain of salt.

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