It started with a simple bass drone. A single tone, modulating on the oscillator and the filter. Producing a low growl that sounds almost alive. It is the only part in the patch that is constantly running. The other parts of the patch fade in and out of the mix.
A quick check on the piano revealed that the bass drone sounded like the root note of the E minor scale to me, so the tone for the rest of the patch was locked in.
To complement the drone, three oscillators are driven by a fixed E minor scale chord sequence. The root note of each chord is doubled in two octaves and combined with the 5th of the chord.
Some experimentation brought the next two voices to life. One produces a classic slow triangle-based moaning tone. For the other voice, the target was to try and create an echo/delay effect, using two volume envelopes. First, the repeating notes of the echo are created, which are then slowly faded out by the second envelope.
Letting these two voices follow the 3rd of the chords that are also driving the previously described three oscillators turned this part of the patch into more of a coherent whole, contrary to the battle for attention that was occurring when initially a randomly generated note input was used.
To bring some additional stability and recognisability to the patch, a 32 step sequence produces a simple repeating background tune with two tones, the second tone running a 3rd above the first one. Both of these tones are fed into an irregularly triggered filter. In the future, I may want to return to this voice and program some additional background tune sequences that can then be switched between at random times. But for now, I'll consider this voice completed.
While looking for the sequencer that I ended up using for the background tune, another "probability" sequence module piqued my interest. This module ended up providing the input for the last two voices that entered the scene. The notes that this sequencer generates follow a repeating 16 step pattern. But by replacing a note with another one every now and again, the sequence will slowly change over time. Just like the rest of the patch, the notes of the D minor scale are used here, but for this sequence, an affinity towards the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the scale is configured. And to bring a bit of rhythmic variation, the step trigger for the sequence is also driven by a probability module.
For the first of the two voices, this sequence is given to an oscillator that will output them as square, saw, triangle and sine waves, which are then mixed together based on an LFO sine wave in four different phases and are played as short notes using a slap envelope.
The second voice will only be triggered very occasionally, and will take these same notes and feed them in a short burst in a higher octave into a wide reverb. When triggered together with the previous voice, the two will complement each other. When this last voice is triggered by itself however, it will deliver a short high-pitched scratch in the background of the other voices.
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__ Setup __
- VCV Rack 2.2.3 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 Reaper, where the raw audio data is captured as a 32bit 44.1kHz wav file. The audio is then synced with the audio captured by OBS, after which a short fade-in and fade-out are introduced on the spots where the video will be cut
- OBS video and Reaper audio are merged and cut to length using Shutter Encoder.
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