Twelve Fifths | Generative Ambient Patch in VCV Rack 2
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
- Moving in fifths. That was the starting idea for this patch. Instead of playing a nice sounding chord progression in a specific key, play a root note and the fifth above it. After a while, drop the root note, use the previous fifth as the new root note, combined with the fifth above that. Keep repeating this and after a while you'll end up back at the root note you started with. In music theory this note sequence is called the Circle of Fifths, and it takes 12 steps to complete the circle. So with that explanation, the name of this song shouldn't come as a surprise.
The reason I wanted to try this approach is because it means that every time you move to the next step, a part of the previous remains (the fifth keeps playing as it becomes the new root note). The starting point is to program the twelve steps into an Addr-Seq. The next part of the idea turned out to be a bit of a challenge to get right: keep playing the note that remains the same while the "old" root fades out and the "new" fifth fades in. It would be easier to either have a hard cut transition between the notes, or to fade in one version of the note that remains constant, while fading in another version of it. But I wanted the transition to be as smooth as possible. After a bit of tinkering with a shift register, some sample-and-holds and and slope detectors, I was able to get both the notes and the gates for their envelopes into matching polyphonic cables.
The resulting notes are sent through two voices. One is a simple Dark Energy module that is playing in a bass register through a VCA. The second oscillator of this module is set to LFO mode, which (combined with the modulation that is applied to the module inputs) causes it to fade in and out, and sometimes produce a low growl.
The other voice is playing in the middle register and combines a square wave oscillator through a filter with a chain of three FM-OP modules and another Dark Energy module. The result is sent through the Vult Jorus module before ending up on the main mixer.
The other voices of this patch (except for the last voice) are all sent through a quantizer that is configured to quantize to the minor pentatonic scale of the current root note.
The first such voice takes the random output of a Geodesics Branes, sends it through two Plusars modules at a different rate and lets an FM-OP module play these two note sequences into a filter. The result is sent into a Chrono Blob (set to ping-pong delay) and a wide Valley Plateau reverb. The resulting haze of tones complements the previous two voices, providing some more movement and locking in the "pentatonic minor" mood.
A second more melodic voice that uses the pentatonic minor scale is produced by an Opulus module that is set to a "French Horn" preset. The notes for this voice are generated by a Geodesics Ions module. It is triggered by two different clocks (after they have passed through a Bernoulli Gate). The Ions module is configured with ascending and descending notes, but its output is sent through a Fate module to provide some randomness. To avoid overloading the overall sound, this voice is regularly faded in and out of the mix.
An additional dash of variety comes from an occasional random (quantized) 2.5 second sequence of notes that is generated by the MindMeld ShapeMaster Pro. This note sequence is played by a Cloud Generator, and both the Sine and (filtered) Saw outputs are sent into a slow delay.
At this point, I had the feeling that something was missing, especially in the higher register. But adding a lot of movement there with a melodic voice would probably be too much. So instead, it was time to add some longer notes. These notes are triggered by a slow clock. A Music Thing Modular Turing Machine decides which note will be played, and every now again, a second clock will cause the Turing Machine to move to a different note in the middle of the tone duration. By sending this through a Slew module, a dual set of FM-OP modules (the carrier set an octave above the modulator) will slide from one note to the other. The output is sent into a slow Tap Dancer delay, which causes this voice to repeat for a while, slowly fading out.
A final non-quantized addition for some filling in the mix takes the noise output of the Turing Machine and sends it through a filter that is modulated by a Bogaudio Walk module.
__ Setup __
- VCV Rack 2.3.0 on Windows
- All audio generated internally within VCV Rack (no external connections)
- Video is captured by OBS
- Audio output is sent through a VB-Audio Virtual Cable to Ableton Live
- Audio recording synced to OBS, and fade added at the end with Reaper
- OBS video and Reaper audio are merged and cut to length using Shutter Encoder.
__Support__
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__ Copyright __
All rights reserved
Very nice composition! The cherry on top is the excellent documentation of the techniques and the thought process behind them.
Thank you! Glad you like both the song and the description 👍
Very smooth... like a Soundtrack to something epic.
Thank you. You may notice a slight addiction to the Tap Dancer module 😉
Inspiring beautiful sounds!! Could you share the patch??
Glad you like it 🙂 This may change in the future, but for now I'm not planning on releasing the patches themselves. The description of the video does however already contain some details about how the the different voices of the patch came to life.
Great patch and progression! Thanks for the detailed description 👍🏻
Thank you!
This is absolutely gorgeous
Thank you very much :-)
@@not-things Thank you for the detailed description as well. Not enough people do that!
It takes some time to try and make them make sence, but there have indeed been a couple of positive feedbacks about the descriptions so it's worth it to continue to try and put into words whatever I was up to while building the patch 😉
This is very good!!!
Thank you! :-)
ur the goat!!
thanks!
Seriously nice. I really like this.
Glad you like it 🙂
real nice!
Thank you!
sounds cheeky
I'm going to assume that cheeky is a positive? 😉
Great sounds
Thank you!