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Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it. I'm lucky enough that I lived in Brazil for many years and visited these places a number of times. But hadn't really thought of making videos there. Although that only really became possible with the Volca and the Roland Mixer which lets me record straight to the phone. Enjoy your Volca Modular. It's certainly a very powerful and fun instrument for the size and price.

It's a great waterfall. Do you know it?

That's in Brasilia. Capybaras are native there. Sorry about the ears. :-) Is that the very Steve Reichian repetitive "arpeggio" from the NTS-1? Or the actual Volca drone? I confess, I take a bit of time to find something listenable and interesting with these outside jams. They're fun to do and it's a chance to force me to learn more about the Volca Modular to try to find something interesting there. (While getting out of the house) But they definitely start minimal Also, that footage of Capys at sunset was actually something I filmed earlier (and slowed down) and just cut in over the end of this jam (because the video itself isn't that interesting). But they look fantastic don't they?

@@synaesmediaThanks for the reply. I was referring to the repetatative single note at the beginning of the piece mainly but that's just me (aka Western Sub). I thought the live performance went really well.

@@JellyMonster1 That's definitely the NTS1's arpeggio then.

Is that because of bad presentation? (I was aiming for "breezy" rather than "plodding", which I fear is my default mode). But it might just be too rushed. Or is it just not your thing?

@@synaesmedia No, nothing wrong with the presentaion. Just that I'm understanding less and less these days.

Let's hope this gives me the momentum again.

Thanks. I believe there is a lot to explore here. But I need to get to the actual Volca Modular / VCase jamming / video soon. My hunch is that that's going to work better if I swap the Modulators for a filter. It's a shame to lose modulation, but the VM has its spare function generator, and if I do that, I can put the Kaestle Drums through the filter, while freeing the Cirrus for the VM itself. Anyway will see how that turns out and document it soon.

Thanks. I really like the rhythms that come out of playing with the Volca Drum. At the same time, I really need to sit down and learn some sound design on it. (It's a relatively new acquisition). Because these drum sounds are way too hard and bright for the vibe I was exploring. I need to figure out how to make the kick lower and mellower. And tone down the other instruments too. Also, listening to the video, the Kaestle / Cirrus needs to be louder in the mix. But it's an enjoyable combo to jam with.

@@synaesmediaI find it's quite hard to make the cirrus/kastle louder unless putting it through the 2Signalamp or quadboost. Would really like to play with the drum as I've heard complicated sounds and rhythms coming from it. Enjoy!

@@maydonpoliris Yeah . Kaestle Drum definitely feels quieter than my normal Bastl Kaestle. Don't know if that's the algorithm in the Drum, or the way the AE version is built. I hear other people making some beefier drums with it than I managed so far. So need to experiment more. Or it could be the Cirrus making everything quiet.

@@synaesmedia and every patch is different so we may never find out why but I guess that's the fun we have while experimenting 🙂

Thanks Yes. Sam has definitely given us something fantastic.

Hurts m my fingers too much. 😀 But I ought to try learning the keyboard properly.

That sounds pretty awesome. I have no idea how to persist values. I guess PD has the ability to write files. But is there a way to discover what the current setting of all the sliders is? Or do you have to explicitly set up routing their outputs to another recording component?

@@synaesmedia you got to build a circuit for it. You'll see you when I get my video together.

Indeed it was. I really need to make some more videos documenting where I'm at with this stuff. There have been developments. Some pretty crazy.

Thanks.

Hmmm ... I'll take a look at that. Maybe it's FL 21.1 or something that it became available. Are you on the latest FL?

@@synaesmedia v21.1.1 [build 3750] I stayed on this version because it flies faster and I am satisfied with its stability

you have to import/install the module pip install 'insert the module name '

Thanks. That main track 3 riff was made with a self-written Pure Data patch explored here : th-cam.com/video/ICw4gL2QKWg/w-d-xo.html

1) The timing is "OK". It's obviously not like writing C where you are compiling to machine code and have to manage your own memory. It's a scripting language running on a virtual machine that does its own garbage collection. Which adds a certain overhead. And perhaps there are delays from the garbage collection. But it's fast enough to do some basic sound synthesis (which means running a loop to calculate audio samples 44,100 times a second. And I'd say it's probably OK for generating MIDI data in real time, if that's your main interest. If you want to generate a LOT of MIDI data it might choke. But computers are fast these days. ALSO, being a VST plugin, I *think* it gets its clock from the DAW. So keeping it in sync with the DAW should be OK. I've not tried anything like that, though. 2) The real issue with running a "sequencer" as a VST plugin, is that the VST standard doesn't, AFAICT, specify anything about routing MIDI. What that means is that in each DAW you'll have to figure out if and how you can do it. You'll see me explain this in the context of FL Studio at about 3 - 5 minutes into the video. It will probably be different in Ableton. I don't know if it's possible to send MIDI data out of the plugin on multiple MIDI channels and have them routed to different instruments within the DAW. But even if it is possible, what I'm certain of is that the plugin won't be able to set this up for the user. Every user is going to have to figure out how to configure that routing by themselves; before they can use the plugin. Which is a pain. In terms of robustness. It's probably robust enough that if you write code that doesn't crash, the plugin itself won't crash. 3) I've run 2 or 3 copies of Protoplug at once, and didn't seem to have any problems. I think the VST standard does encapsulate plugins OK. I'm not sure if there is a way multiple copies of the same VST leak into or interfere with each other. I'd guess not, normally. And haven't seen anything like that in Protoplug. 4) There are some calls in the API for saving and loading data. I guess to files somewhere. See www.osar.fr/protoplug/api/modules/script.html#saveData I've not experimented with this myself. VSTs obviously do save their state in some way when the track that holds them is saved. By default in Protoplug the current script is saved. If you wanted to save actual sequence data, my hunch is that it's probably possible, using the API. But I've not looked into it. In general, depending on what you are doing, Protoplug MIGHT be the solution for you. If it's some kind of algorithmic generation, and you are happy setting up MIDI routing yourself, then it might be a very good solution. OTOH, if you are trying to write an alternative sequencer and just want to use the DAW to host VST instruments, my hunch is that it's not necessarily right for you. One alternative is to run a program completely outside the DAW, and just send MIDI from it as though it were a MIDI controller. That's what I do from Gbloink! (See th-cam.com/video/Q7PD00jvCy0/w-d-xo.html and th-cam.com/video/PG3UhG_PWT8/w-d-xo.html ) I found a Midi Mapper for Windows, and used it to route 3 channels of MIDI into FL Studio. I also route MIDI From Sonic Pi to FL Studio by the same mechanism. The irony with FL Studio, is that it seems easier to route multiple MIDI channels coming from *outside* the DAW, to different instruments, than it is to route multiple MIDI channels generated by a plugin *inside* the DAW. But Ableton might be different. Of course, an external program won't get a MIDI clock or be able to sync. Unless you use Ableton Link which I've not tried, but I believe Sonic Pi uses it and can sync to Ableton via it. A final option if you're not scared of C++ / JUCE is that I believe JUCE now supports JS scripts. So it might well be possible / or soon be possible, to write your own sequencer / DAW, largely in Javascript, sitting on a small core of JUCE C++. This is something I'm meaning to try out. Perhaps later this year, when I get some time. If I do, I'll certainly be making videos about it.

Thank you very much@@synaesmedia for such a lengthy response. I have subscribed to your channel. Please continue to make videos. You're great at explaining things. Please consider making a video about a simple midi sequencer. Thanks in adv.

It shouldn't be very hard. If you know how to install a VST plugin, you can install Protoplug. Get it : www.osar.fr/protoplug/ I have a series on using it here : th-cam.com/video/zkgYBoiQPek/w-d-xo.html But basically you open it like any other VST, except there's a whole programming language environment inside it. My code for the long delay is here : gist.github.com/interstar/7cc4b8cb99dcd2bccffca21a4d2459ef So you can just copy and paste that into the Protoplug window and press compile. If you have the right version of FL Studio you have Patcher too. So you can assemble Protoplug within any larger patcher collection of plugins (eg. filters, reverbs etc) you like. The secret of the "Parallel delay" is just to make a second patcher, that has two copies of the first patcher in it, in parallel, and set them to different delay times, so they phase against each other. Or make something MORE complex if you want to hear how that turns out :-) Good luck. Have fun!

What would you like to see next, following on from this?

@@synaesmedia Yeah i suppose following on from this, or any other interesting decaying loops/ambient techniques you have picked up for FL studio.

@@zero111zero I don't know if you saw this recent video : th-cam.com/video/PEUZZCpzkWo/w-d-xo.html where I built a long parallel delay with a little bit of coding in Protoplug and Patcher. Now that there's a basic framework for building that delay fx in code, there's no reason we couldn't do more things to the sound in the buffer. For example, add some kind of custom noise or degradation to it. I'll play around and see if I can find some interesting algorithms that are fairly simple to implement but have useful / unusual effects.

You mean the glitch from tweaking the delay length? Which then gets captured and repeated? Yeah, that's interesting. In some ways it would be nice to eliminate it. But actually I don't know how. And even "professional" delays (at least the delay3 in FL Studio) have some amazing glitch effects when you mess with the delay while they are running. I think we have to assume that this is "character". And, yeah, can add some nice textures. As I deliberately do with the delay3 at about 30:00)

I've had a quick look on the images I have from my old BBC disks (I managed to rescue some files from them back in about 2012). But I'm afraid I can't see anything that looks like these example files. To be honest, as they are examples that came with the software, I probably would have deleted them at some point to make room on the disk for one of my own compositions. Disk space was always tight back then.

Thanks for trying!

@@virtuafighter3 No probs. Interesting to hear from anyone who remembers it. This was my first "DAW" back in the 1980s 🙂

He he ... thanks for noticing. (And sorry, I only just saw your response now. Been somewhat distracted from this channel recently). Yeah, that was a direction I was going in because I wanted a more sophisticated vocabulary for specifying the chord sequences. But after using it a bit I decided I really didn't like using the associative array notation. I found it verbose to write, and not easy to read. So I've pulled back from it. The more sensible way in Sonic Pi is to add custom :symbols. Just as Sonic Pi already does. It might be more of a faff to process and decode symbols, but I think using them will make the chord language much better. So that's on the todo list, and when I finish it, I'll definitely be making a new video on it.

Thanks. Have fun. BTW: I add some more chord types in the next videos in this series. And if you think of some others then I'll be interested to see them.