Waves A | Sequenced Ambient Patch in VCV Rack 2

A fully sequenced ambient VCV Patch. Instead of going the generative route and letting the modules make the decisions like was done in my previous patches, I wanted to try my hand at fully sequencing (almost) everything myself this time.
Inspired by Track #3 (aka Rhubarb) of the Selected Ambient Works Volume II album by Aphex Twin, the whole song is build around a single chord progression.
The song order is programmed into the Count Modula 12x16 Gate Sequencer. The first six lines enable or disable each of the six voices, while the next 4 rows trigger some of the additional effects that can be applied to them. The last line in the sequencer enables some background noise throughout the whole sequence, except in the very last step.
The notes of the chords are playing through a couple of oscillators (a saw, a triangle and an FM-OP) througout the whole song except for one step near the middle of the sequence. At some points there will be a filter applied to this voice, and a couple of times the drive of the Tap Dancer delay in this voice is opened up, resulting in a background growl as it almost saturates the reverb.
Below this chord voice, the root notes are played as a bass in a large part of the song. Not much special going on here otherwise, just feeding some low notes into the Dark Energy module.
A third voice creates inversions of the chords by limiting them to a single octave, takes the highest and lowest notes of the resulting chordsand playes them through an FM-OP.
Two sequences programmed into the Geodesics Entropia module make up the only voice in this patch where the module gets to play make a decision in which notes are played. An LFO modules the probability of which sequence is used each time a note is to be played. Since one of the sequences contains higher notes and the other sequence has notes in a register that blends together with the other voices in this patch, there is some randomness here, deciding when a higher note is played that will jump out in the overall sound.
The fifth voice in this patch is a Dark Energy module that plays two simple note sequences that are programmed into the Impromptu Foundry module. In some parts, this voice is modulated by playing it up an octave at a lower volume. This makes it stand out more due to the higher pitch, but still keeps it blended with the other voices by reducing the volume.
A final voice arpeggiates the chord notes at a higher rate and feeds that into a separate reverb. Only the wet signal of this reverb is used, resulting in a background haze that follows the tonal quality of the playing chord.
And the glue that blends all these voices together is a lot of reverb, as usually provided by the Valley Plateau 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 fades are added at the beginning and end with Reaper
- OBS video and Reaper audio are merged and cut to length using Shutter Encoder.
__Support__
Want to support me? Check out my Ko-fi page:
ko-fi.com/not_...
__ Copyright __
All rights reserved

[@lloydvasser4889]

Very nice. Mellow and relaxing.

[@not-things]

Thanks, glad you like it.

[@marcboule]

Superbe!

[@not-things]

Merci!

[@alchemist.D]

beautiful patch

[@not-things]

Thank you!

[@sudhanva-bhat]

Wow 😍

[@not-things]

Thanks 😁