Jam session - Eurorack and Hydrasynth, patches from scratch and improvisation. 

The most interesting aspect of this patch is the filtering: I have 2hp vowel going into the mod input of Frap tools Fumana, which results in something similar to a vocoder. The vowel's output is being modulated by ALM dice (a mutable instruments marbles clone), which is switched on along with the percussion in the performance. (Main audio input for Fumana is Behringer Brains.)

The percussion is an Erica Synths LXR drum module controlled by NLC Cellular Automata. No filtering or post-processing applied. The Cellular Automata and the Dice are both clocked by Endorphin.es Ground Control, which is also performing the loop. 

The hydrasynth is programmed with a fairly straightforward supersaw lead -- sawtooth on osc1 with wavestack, lowpass gate filtering, and relatively quick envelope. Once the pattern is established the rest is primarily improvised; I played through a few times with only a vague plan in mind, over D dorian.

[Jam] 2024 02 25 - Vowels And Friends

The concept behind this patch is that modulation of musical phrasing is largely controlled by an NLC Triple Sloths module. I'm also doing some performance control primarily over the sequencing and particularly at the intro and outro, but it isn't substantive toward modulation -- my timing on that is driven by watching Sloths on an oscilloscope and queueing myself up for changes at zero crossings and when they seem right. 

 Modulation patterns demonstrated here:
- Key changes are handled by sending Sloth through a quantizer, that output is summed with each of the 3 pitched voices to allow the sequencing to maintain relative harmonic structure despite semi-random key changes.
- Each of the pitched voices has one or more parameters controlled by sloths, which causes them to come and go.  (Respectively this is a fixed filter level on Fumana, a wavefolder depth, and a filter cutoff.) 

The human-played performative aspects include:
- fading in at the start
- using an attenuator to hand off control of key changes to Sloths after introductory phrasing
- On Ground Control, hitting play and muting or unmuting sequencer tracks, and swapping out the drum track at opportune moments.

Chant Of The Sloths

An unsettling atmospheric drone with a massive amount of modulation both fast and slow.

The core of this patch is a bank of 4 square waves being frequency modulated by sloths, fed into 2 OR gates and then an AND gate. Some drum and sawtooth is mixed in based on that and other modulation before being doubly filtered - once for a highly resonant glitch effect, and again for low-pass noise reduction. That's fed into Strymon Starlab reverb and finally ALA Cumulus (a Mutable Clouds clone). 

Almost every parameter of the above is modulated by ALA Dice (a Mutable Marbles clone), NLC Triple Sloths, Maths, or an LFO or two, resulting in a chaotic and evolving sequence.

The net effect definitely is not relaxing. :)

Something Under The Bed

Demonstrating tweaking various parameters on https://www.etsy.com/listing/1669822421/vmmf-quirky-eurorack-state-variable?ref=yr_purchases.

Inputs are a sawtooth wave (from Jupiter Spirits) which is pitch modulated by a sequencer but is not VCA'd. And the attenuated CV input is coming from maths across a voltage gate controlled by a rhythm sequencer. 

There are no VCAs or other modulations in this besides manually tweaking knobs.

[DEMO] 2024 03 16 eurorack - vmmf filter demo EDITED

Bass: Erica Synths bassline module (DIY), with self-feedback to FM. 
Percussion: Plonk x2 and also the bassline Accent input.
Lead: four unison sawtooth waves through Frap Cunsa, with the final filter in bandpass mode, resonance driven to self-oscillation by foot pedal, and cutoff driven by quantized mod wheel from niftykeyz.

[Jam] 2024 03 16 Eurorack - Acid Jam

Bass motif: Erica Synths bassline DIY through motomouth vocal formant filter into Xaoc Koszalin frequency shifter. 
Treble ornaments: Jupiter Spirits with quick pitch envelope pinging a filter, into Starlab reverb. 
Lead: ASM Hydrasynth, tri/saw based with phaser and reverb keytracked carefully.

Stomp

Exploring some of the sonic opportunities in my prototyped bitcrusher module, codenamed "Nyquist" (subject to change :P ). 

First sound is the unaltered oscillator for reference. The remainder is messing with it through the bitcrusher. Some of the techniques applied:
- Lowering the bit depth by attenuating the incoming signal to low vpp sizes
- Clipping by amplifying the signal to high vpp
- Lowering the sample rate, and raising it. This bitcrusher can range from something like 0.1Hz to 250kHz, and the entire range is explored here.

I'm using Maths to do some CV on the sample rate.

Toward the end, I lower the sample rate so much that it becomes more like a sample and hold, and use it to control 1v/oct input on the oscillator.

[DEMO] 2024 04 27 Eurorack - Prototype Nyquist Bitcrusher Demo.WAV

The "Atomic Mixer" (name subject to change :P) is an extreme take on granular synthesis, based on high-precision audio-rate switching. Every time the rising zero crossing of the current wave is detected, it switches to the next, looping around 4 inputs.

Demos:
1. Doepfer A-111-4, ALM Pixie, and Behringer Brains with all sorts of weird waves. I can't describe precisely the inputs because I was just toying around until I found a stable configuration.

2. Doepfer A-111-4 using all 3 outputs from the first oscillator, and the second tuned an octave lower as closely as possible using triangle output. 

3. 4 sine waves tuned in octaves, served by the same v/oct source.

[Demo] 2024-05-03 "Atomic Mixer" module prototype demo

Eurorack + Arturia Polybrute.

The bass voice was created using my own prototype module, currently calling it "Atomic Mixer", which is essentially an extremely fast sequential switch triggered on rising zero crossings so that each waveform is split into individual cycles to be hard-synced into the mix. The effect can be glitchy and harsh, or softer. In this case, I got an intense glitchy bass out of three triangle waves and a square wave that changes pitch by LFO. 

The lead is an Arturia Polybrute with a barely-edited default init patch, actually worked well with the mix so don't fix what ain't broke. :)

Drums are white noise and LPF based.

[Jam] Crunch

First attempt at using VCV Rack and Ableton

[Jam] Crunch

Jack Mudge

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