It is common knowledge that a great number of modular users suffer from Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Sometimes it is about finding the modules that work for you but often it is driven by a need for the newest, coolest most baddass feature set available. With the holidays fast approaching, it is a fine time to pause and remember what you have. Sure, there are plenty of Black Friday deals out there, but what if that neglected simple VCO you have could do more?
The Challenge
Get the most from a simple VCO possible. Create a patch using only a single VCO as the only sound source and create as many voices as you can without multi-tracking.
Many simple VCOs offer multiple simultaneous wave outputs. In this Patchable, you are encouraged to take full advantage of these. Create bass, melody, percussion, and/or noise. Gate it all differently. Mix waves, divide or multiply, filter, delay, frequency shift, chop them up or make them drone. What you do with the waves after the VCO is entirely up to you and whatever you want to use. The VCO you use should really only have a single oscillator. For example, STO, Spectrum, Dixie, VCOb
Some restrictions apply to this challenge:
- The VCO you use should only have a single oscillator.
- Do not use complex VCOs, this includes but is not limited to:
- Modeling VCO (Plaits, Braids, Rings, etc)
- Wavetable VCO (E352, Piston Honda, SWN, etc)
- Dual, triple, quad or oct VCOs (DPO, Cs-L, Antiphon, etc)
- Harmonic oscillators (Verbos HO, Stages, Odessa, etc)
- Drum modules (no trig inputs, BIA, Fracture, etc)
- Full voice VCOs are discouraged, but if you must, try to only use it in the manner of a single, simple VCO. M32, 0-Coast are acceptable examples because there are single VCO.
Keep in mind, this is about getting the most from a simple VCO. It is not meant to exclude those that do not have a simple VCO. If you would like to participate but do not have a simple VCO, try your best to stick to the rules. For example, if all you have is a DPO, use only one side of the DPO.
HOW TO PLAY
THIS PATCHABLE RUNS FROM NOV 23rd – Dec 6TH
- Create an original piece of music following the above challenge.
- Include the suffix PATCHABLE-0007 in the track title. A completed track title would look like this: Spiral Vortex PATCHABLE-0007 (where “Spiral Vortex” is your song name).
- Upload your track to soundcloud by end of day, Friday December 6th.
- Include a link to your track and patch notes in the comments below.
It isn’t my best work, but its done lol
https://soundcloud.com/w-y-543363470/w-y-unnoticeable-patchable-0007
Live, one take, no overdubs… all from a single simple oscillator.
For this I used one simple oscillator on the Pittsburgh SV1.
For the lead I’m playing the Pittsburgh KB1 and I’m going through the SV1’s normaled connections- various waveforms through the mixer, filter, ADSR’ed VCA through a Mutable Clouds clone to give it some more body then into a mixer module. Various things here and there were modulating stuff on the Clouds. (LFO, Pressure Points, etc)
For the “meat ‘n badedas” of the challenge, I took the sine wave out of the SV1’s oscillator and put it into the trigger in of channel 1 of Maths to use it as a subharmonic generator. I’m controling the Rise of channel 1 with the top row CVs of Pressure Points. I’m taking the unity out of channel 1 with a stackable cable, one is going to straight to a mixer module to do its thing.
The other split from the stackable is going to the trigger in of channel 4 of Maths for further subharmonic dividing. This one was used pretty sparingly with preset voltage out from the Pittsburgh KB1 controlling the rise of channel 4. This is going into the LxD then into the Mimeophon to give it some movement. Various things (LFOs, pressure points etc) were modulating various things on the Mimeophon.
I had gate of Rene on the strike of the LxD and CV out of Rene to the CV in on the LxD to give it some more movement.
(its pretty simple. but bonus points if you can guess the time signature)
https://soundcloud.com/beaver-crossing/electro-patchable
This track uses only the STO as a voice. The STO is sequenced by the Rene with both the shape out and sub octave out sent to the QPAS. The high pass of the qpas was sent to the Morphagene and the loop is played one octave down. The MATHs is has a slow rise and fall controlling the filter cutoff of the band pass filter on the QPAS. This is then run through the Mimeophon.
The sine out and sub out are also run through the 12db and 6db channels of the lxd respectively. The top channel is triggerd by TEMPI and the bottom by set x gates on the rene.
https://soundcloud.com/beaver-crossing/saint-tancreds-october I HAD TO DO 2 😛
This piece is using only the STO as a voice. The pitch is being controlled manually by the keystep. It is run through the Morphagene with time lag accumulation varying between pitched up and octave and no pitch change. It is then run through mimeophon to create additional layers of the sound.
TEMPI is running with two channels shifting to the level of the QPAS which is receiving the sub octave out on the STO.
BOGO https://soundcloud.com/dysonant/bogo-patchable-0007
one Bubblesound VCOb as a single sound source. From this VCO I have created 6 voices.
For pitch I control the VCOb with the Stilson Hammer MKII.
The pad is a square wave divided by the Doepfer A-160-2 into 3 pitches that creates a chord. This is further distorted by the trogotronic m/679.
The Kick is another lower division from the A-160-2 and divided again by the Animodule STD then sent to the Makenoise Optomix.
The kick is multed and also goes to the Harvestman Tyme Sefari to create the higher pitched digital percussive textures.
The Snare is the Saw wave from the VCOb sent to the Zorlon Cannon to create asynchronous divisions and then sent to the SSF MMF band pass filter.
The higher pitch note is a VCOb sine wave ringmoded with the XOR out of the STD.
The bass is a lower division from the A-160-2 further divided by the DU-Seq. From this I got additional pitch variation by sending gates to the divider on the DU-Seq. This sequencer was simply being used as another clock divider.
modular synthelectronicnymspatchable
Way out of my normal sound, but here goes (https://soundcloud.com/vcloki/single-pump-analysis-patchable-0007)
Patch Notes:
envelope as clock
envelope trigger out to pamela’s workout
pamela’s workout out 1 x 12 out to arpitecht step
arpitecht note out to 1v/oct on spectrum
arpitecht gate out to adsrvca
spectrum pulse out to adsrvca in
adsrvca out to warps input 1
spectrum triangle out to warps input 2
spectrum sine out to sara vcf frequence cv
sara vcf high pass out to sara vcf secondary input
sara vcf secondary high pass out to sara vcf initial input
sara low pass out to dual vca in
envelope out to dual vca cv
dual vca out to fm modulation on spectrum
eon 2 out to oa/x2 top input
eon 2 out to envelope rise cv
eon 2 out to warps level 1
eon 2 out to dub jr 2 feedback cv
oa/x2 top output to eon 1 cv
eon 1 out to oa/x2 bottom input
oa/x2 bottom output to eon 2 cv
oa/x2 bottom output to jove cv 2
oa/x2 bottom output to dubjr 2 time cv
oa/x2 bottom output to warps level 2
oa/x2 bottom output to envelope fall cv
warps output to dubjr 2 input
jove output to dubjr 2 feedback input
dubjr 2 feedback output jove input 1
dubjr 2 output to audio output
Singular Madness – G.A.S. – Patchable-0007 – https://soundcloud.com/user-838569136/nyms-12-19-v2-90bpm
Only a single VCO was used to create this track – the AJH Vintage VCO. All layers recorded simultaneously in real time.
The bass is a subharmonic of the triangle waveform, generated via Joranalogue Contour 1 and a voltage controlled switch, routed through an AJH V-Shape to round then distort the resulting subdivided wave, then through the MiniMod VCF & VCA, then mangled by Clouds and Mimeophon both with modulation by Voltage Block and Marbles. Pamela’s New Workout fired this voice’s envelopes via a slow probabilistic Euclidean sequence triggering half of Intellijel Dual ADSR. This voice is fairly deep and somewhat subtle, so may not be audible on small speakers.
The main melody is the sawtooth and square waves of the Vintage VCO, mixed via Manhattan Analog CP3, routed through a Super Sawtor, E440 VCF then Tallin VCA, enveloped by Doepfer A-171-2 and verbed by BigSky. I manually modulated various aspects of this voice’s chain while the track was recording.
The warbly voice is the “sharkfin” waveform output of the Vintage VCO, folded and multiplied through Doepfer A-137, run through its own CP3, filtered through Three Sisters, ring modulated by Blinds then phased by Kaminiec, and with Batumi, WMD ModBox, & the other half of Intellijel Dual ADSR applying intertwined modulation all across that chain, including modulating each other, and then finished off with reverb from Pico DSP.
Melody line sequenced as MIDI via Squarp Pyramid through ES FH-2.
It’s a little long but the last two minutes are pretty fun, so skipping to the end is better than bailing completely 😉
After I did the first satellite patch for the STO I decide to do a couple more variations of this. Think of it like in movies or shows where you have a general theme sound and then you hear it done multiple different ways.
I made the set https://soundcloud.com/beaver-crossing/sets/sto-patchable-0007 which includes
https://soundcloud.com/beaver-crossing/satellite-transmission-objective
https://soundcloud.com/beaver-crossing/satellite-transmission-omitted
https://soundcloud.com/beaver-crossing/satellite-transmission-over
They all have the same general sounds within them created by the STO but as each track progresses it becomes more distorted and broken which gives the different tracks totally different feelings and brings out different characteristics of the sounds.
*bugchaser* I used the Instruo Ts-L as the main voice (pulse, fold, & square). The sin went to the FM (linear). Envelops were generated from O_c piques (triggers came from Pamels New Workout). Intellijel quad VCA was used on the pulse and fold, the Pittsburgh modular dynamic impulse filter was used on the square. The output of the quad vca was fed into the 4ms DLD, which the feedback loop was sent to the QPAS. The dynamic impluse filter went to clouds. Rene was triggered by PNW, and the unquantized cv was sent to the v/oct in the Ts-L. LFOs came from Batumi, Wogglebug, and Maths.
https://soundcloud.com/brain-basement/searching-patchable-0020-0007
This was all done live and in one take with no looping or overdubs.
I chose to use the Random Source Serge NTO (which is the simplest oscillator I have) being sequenced by the Stillson Hammer. A lot of control is provided by Tempi sending different clocks to different VCAs, and Tempi makes it very easy to change the clock division.
Patch Notes:
There are 5 streams of sound running out of the NTO.
Stream 1:
Variable wave folder output to a Make Noise Optomix. The Strike is being controlled by Maths channel 1 in Cycle Mode. This stream runs through an Eventide H9 pedal.
Stream 2:
Pulse wave output to a QPAS filter being sequenced by 0-ctrl to the filter cutoff and resonance. All four QPAS outputs (low, high, band, smile) are output to a 2HP Switch. A Stillson Hammer sequencer channel is sequencing which filter is being heard through the Switch. This output goes to an Erbeverb, with the depth and tilt being randomized by fluctuating voltages.
Stream 3:
Sawtooth wave out to a Serge Variable Q VCF, with the filter cutoff sequenced by 0-ctrl. Lowpass of the filter goes to a Tangle Quartet controlled by a channel of Quadrax being clocked by Tempi.
Stream 4:
Triangle wave to Optomix triggered by another channel of Tempi, then to an Echophon which has its pitch sequenced by channel 3 of the Stillson Hammer.
Stream 5:
Sine wave to Befaco A*B+C. AM is produced by a Quadrax channel in unipolar cycle mode. Amplitude output is controlled from Maths channel 4 in cycle mode.
https://soundcloud.com/forestine1/desire-patchable-0007