Planet Rungler (VCV Rack, Generative Ambient)

This is a long-form piece of generative ambient music made with VCV Rack.
Technically, it's focussing on the new expanders of the Venom Benjolin Oscillator ( library.vcvrac... ), the Benjolin Volts Expander ( library.vcvrac... ) and the Benjolin Gates Expander ( library.vcvrac... ). Both expanders are using the internal Rungler shift register of the Benjolin Oscillator to generate random voltage and random gates or triggers. The output can be controlled separately for each bit of the 8-bit Rungler register. In addition, the offset and range of the voltage and the combination of bits with various logical operators can be set. Considering that the frequencies and other settings of the two oscillators and the internal clock of the Benjolin impact the way how the bits in the Rungler register are changed (and in turn, the Rungler impacts the oscillator frequencies) the final result is an endless rabbit hole of opportunities to generate randomness for pitch, modulation, and gates.
This randomness is different to the more common "clocked" random output selection of, for instance, Bernoulli Gates or Sequencer step chance settings which is still somewhat predictable in the sense that at every clock tick one of two or one of N possible outputs is expected. The Benjolin and Rungler are unpredictable! Between total chaos and suddenly shorter or longer repeated patterns everything can happen. The Benjolin is known and made for its huge range of possible and random audio outputs.
However, this patch doesn't use the audio output of the Benjolin Oscillator at all. The intention was to create something that is kind of "musical" but still leverages the Rungler register's unique capability of randomness. The two new Benjolin Expanders are a perfect support for this plan!
(More details about the patch architecture are in the first comment below.)
I really like the result. The other form of randomness that the Benjolin and Rungler provide makes a difference, in my opinion. Even though there's for sure plenty of room for improvement in the patch, I had to force myself and say "stop and done" at some point, and not fiddle, tweak and experiment over days and weeks with all the possibilities the Benjolin and its expanders give. Well, that's somehow true for all kinds of VCV Racking, but I had the feeling those expanders add another level on top of that.
The patch is available here: patchstorage.c...
(Thumbnail image composed with original photos of Jupiter moons Europa and Io (Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech))

[@MinorRandomNoise]

A few notes about the overall patch architecture:
- The patch has no (conventional) clock. The "clock" is the first Benjolin Oscillator in the patch:
--- Oscillator 1 is really a strict clock (no frequency modulation by the Rungler), but is less important and only used for two delay effects in the patch and as external clock input for one other Benjolin
--- More important is Oscillator 2 that intentionally acts as a "bad clock": Its frequency is modulated slightly by the Rungler so that the clock ticks don't alyways have the same time distance. This clock is very slow, ticks between about 30 and 60 seconds, and controls when a new selection of voices is made.
- The patch has 16 voices whose audio signals are created with various oscillators from Surge XT, Instruo and Befaco. Some of them generate tonal phrases, some are in the more noisy domain, or they are a mix of both.
- Each of the 16 voices has its own Benjolin Oscillator with mostly multiple Volts Expanders and a Gates Expander. The Benjolin oscillator frequencies are mostly in the LFO domain (to avoid too much craziness and preserve the intended ambient atmosphere). How are the expanders used? That's exactly the point where the opportunities are truly overwhelming! Some expanders are used to generate monophonic or polyphonic pitch information, and some are used to provide modulation for all kinds of purposes, like wave table movement, feedback modulation, filter cut-off frequencies, noise modulation, envelope shapes, and so on. The gate expander triggers monophonic or polyphonic envelopes, or some of the audio oscillator directly, or it triggers the chaos or double clock flag of another Benjolin Oscillator, and more.
- With each tick of the slow "Rungler clock" a new random selection of voices out of 15 voices is made. The chance of a voice to be selected is modulated very slowly over time. It ranges between 8% and 50%, with a modulation shape that prefers to stay longer in the low-chance region and goes quicker through the high-chance region. That might be very much a matter of taste. I liked it more for the ambient mood to have few but varying voices playing at the same time, and only sometimes have an increase in the number of voices. The overall impression of this setting is that the whole recording goes through a few slow waves of quiet music with only one or very few voices, sometimes even a few seconds of total silence, and more vivid and nervous interaction of many voices.
- Voice 16 is special in that it's only playing if none of the other 15 voices is selected. It's purpose is mainly to change the harmony by playing one wave with the old harmony and then a second wave with the new harmony. In between, when it's silent for a second the harmony is changed.
- Speaking of harmonies: Pitch information comes out unquantized from the Benjolins - the Benjolin Oscillator intentionally doesn't even have a Volts per Octave input or output -, so to create harmonic phrases it must be quantized. Quantization happens based on simple chords of four notes. There are 16 chords provided (minor, seventh and nineth chords), and the patch iterates repeatedly through all of them in a random order that is chosen when the patch is reset. (The recording is exactly one full iteration through all 16 chords.) There's no music-theoretical chord progression involved. Like mentioned before, the chord only changes if voice 16 and no other voice is playing, and only in the moment when it's silent for a second, so it's possible to have large random harmonic jumps without getting dissonant clashes.

[@CosineKitty]

I'm leaving this playing while writing code. It is awesome music to help me focus!

[@MinorRandomNoise]

Thank you! Cool that the patch is useful for this!