#38

I made one of those multitrack cassettes where each track is one long tone, the length of the cassette, which transforms the deck into a sort of fixed oscillator bank that can be played with mute/group switches and/or faders.

I learned that this is a whole lot easier if you make the tones longer than you think you need from the get-go. Not unrelatedly, I also learned a ton about making relatively seamless splices digitally in Logic Pro.

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#39

Also fascinated by the idea of macro control over multiple modulation sources. Catalyst and VC Transitions modules look great as the others mentioned.

Future Sound Systems Makrow caught my attention as well—one knob that attenuates 6 independently dialed offset voltages.

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#40

You might be already familiar with this video, but your idea reminded me of it:


Basically Tascam 4 track used as drone machine where separate tracks are different voices which then you can EQ, send to effects etc.
I once used similar approach inside Ableton where each track had same synthesizer playing constant drone over different chords and then when playing live I would play with different volumes of separate tracks.
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#41

Yep exactly this thing!

#42

I shared this on this thread in MW, it might be useful for folks interested in ‘tape loop’ style drones in Eurorack setups.

I’ve been creating a library of seamless ‘tape loops’ to use with Wav player modules.

Twisted Wave sample editor for Mac OS has a ‘Loop Crossfade’ function that easily makes seamless loops out of whatever audio is selected. (Time saving tip: Command + E to export directly to a Wav without having to create a new file.)

From there I’ll then make the ‘tape loops’ from stuff recorded off the modular and field recordings, beds of noise from nature, pads out of instrument tails, chords, etc. These are loaded onto SD cards for wav players like the TipTop one and Disting. TipTop One is particularly well suited for simple looping like this, it can be triggered with a button press and loop forever.

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#43

…thinking of diminished chords as being the same as a dominant 7th chord down a maj 3rd and vice versa. I’m having fun lots of with it…possibly to the point of excess. I’m sure its old hat to a lot of you but I was misled as a youth by metal guitar magazines and have always thought of diminshed chords as being all about symetrical noodly licks.

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#44

I had an EHX 2880 looper set up like this, with four tracks of different SH-1 drones that I could mix in and out, repitch, reverse and effect (unfortunately not individually due to the 2880’s limitations), plus the stereo mixdown track too. I might pull out the CF card with those drones now that I’ve put the 2880 in a different place, and perhaps it’s time to make some more. Thanks for the reminder!

#45

I just picked up a Field Kit FX off craigslist, and was playing around with ways to get it to make sound without external inputs. One of the things I discovered was that if you sequence the delay time with the CV sequencer, you get these lovely chirping sounds out of it. I don’t have any other sequencable delays to try this with, so it might be quirk of the specific delay chip (PT2399) - but it’s very enjoyable to play with.

Video here:

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#46

Would you share any highlights from the 20 minutes of Metropolis tips before that? :). Thanks!

#47

@jasonw22 @ParanormalPatroler @Aaron_Taylor-Waldman

Following up on the macro control talk, got my hands on both a VC Transitions and a Catalyst to try, and I might have to keep both! Overall I prefer the Transitions because it’s no-fuss, knob-per-function, and switching the directions of the channels is neat, but I’ve also discovered that the multiple scenes of the catalyst are great to have because you can hit them at any time to momentarily interrupt your CV with an entirely different set of voltages. I don’t see myself using the “physics” aspect of it often but it might be cool occasionally.

Definitely a game changer for me compared to patching similar setups with VCAs and offsets and mults. They both serve as great “interesting spot finders” for any patch.

Also since it’s just about setting a low and high value for each parameter you’re controlling, I find it much less opaque than using Cold Mac for similar purposes. Though of course there are so many other things that Cold Mac does.

3 Likes
#48

I was actually impressed when people compared the ADDAC306 to Cold Mac the first time I mentioned it here. Apart from the obvious central macro control, I didn’t see much commonality between the two. Cold Mac had a very different use-case in my mind, especially since the main inspiration for the Transitions design came years ago, was put on ice, and was re-kindled back when Frames came out, which made me realize that what I really really wanted was a version of Frames that would be dead simple to use and fuss-free (with a slider instead :laughing:).

Glad you’re enjoying the ADDAC306! I have a small companion module in mind which might some day see the light of day.

#49

Aha yes Frames is a much closer comparison! In any case, great work on Transitions, I’ll look out for that companion module :smiley:

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#50

So lately I have been using my QPAS as a voice by pinging the input at high resonance. It tracks quite well and sounds lovely and it’s usually on in the background with a semi-random sequence running into it while I do something else. Now I’ve never really used the VCA at the input save for the usual attenuating and such but today I figured I’d try amplitude modulaton of the exciter signal (which was a short Quadra envelope). It made a huge difference and almost goes into physical modeling territory! I decided to record a short clip, which you can find below. I used my Brenso to AM the exciter and multed the sequence into it.

There’s plenty of reverb and delay on there at first, but after trying different waveforms at the 1:00 mark, I take off all effects and you can hear what I mean. I’m sure there’s a lot more in this patch and I’ll see what I can come up with.

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#51

Whoa really nice glassy but distorted bells, and from a “filter”. Nice.

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#52

Very cool, thanks for the tip!

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#53

Today my small discovery was that when you do the first live recording with the new eight-more-channels setup you shouldn’t start from the old template in your DAW :crazy_face:

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#54

My recent discovery has also been that if you only want to record a simple Octatrack jam maybe you should not open the main template with 16 tracks all preloaded with console plugins plus buses and effects sends and all that jazz 8)

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#55

I hear you! I always record all tracks to be absolutely sure everything gets tracked. Then I later delete empty tracks.

#56

Interesting - are the voices in your case quite preconfigured then? Or is it more so you can freely plug things into whatever channel and not have to worry about it?

#57

Idk if this is a discovery as much as a distillation of a recurring thought but: most genres have analogous sub genres to each other.

Hip hop has gangsta rap, country has outlaw country, metal has grindcore.

Rock has noise rock, jazz has free jazz, electronic music has harsh noise.

Etc, etc.

This isn’t surprising given that genre is just categorization and music is music, but where many people hinge their identity on staking claim to one realm of music it feels profound in a “so obvious it’s interesting” kind of way.

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