It started with an idea for something to build a tutorial around. After fiddling in VCV Rack during a lunch break one day, the result was a voice that sounded interesting enough that I ended up listening to it for the rest of the day. So then I knew that I not only had a working idea for the tutorial, I also a starting point for a full patch.
The core of this patch is the voice that will also end up as a tutorial: chord sequences are turned into arpeggiated chords notes that are played by the Dark Energy module and are subsequently sent into Prince of Perception delay. To bring some randomization and interest into the arpeggiation, the Geodesics Fate module will occasionally apply an offset to the note that is played, causing it to move up or down. Compared to the tutorial, I've added a Bernoulli Gate (that is modulated by the Ochd module) to the arpeggiated chord notes so that not all of them are played. This result is some more rhytmic variation. There is also an additional oscillator added to the voice that will mix in a sine wave with the Dark Energy output, providing a more round sound in the result.
For the bass voice, next to the Basal modules playing the root of the active chord, the a Prodigal Son module is playing quick alternations between the root and the fifth of the chord as a supersaw that gets muted a bit by a filter. The resulting sound is sent into a wet-only reverb. This is the same technique I used in my ambient background voice tutorial ( • Creating a slowly evol... ), giving in a wider sounding pad voice.
To provide a counterbalance to the more energetic arpeggiated voice, a pair of FM-OP modules are set up to play long notes. Each time this voice is triggered, one of the notes of the active chord will be picked at random by a Geodesics Pulsars module. This note is moved at random into either a lower octave (to blend in more in the background with the other padding sounds) or in a higher octave (where it will be heard a bit more prominently). A combination of an ADSR envelope and a VCA will cause these notes to bend downwards after a couple of seconds by dropping their frequency. All of this is then sent into a Tap Dancer delay that is set to a bit of a slower rate then usual. This will result in a kind of an echo effect being added to the frequency drops.
A final addition to the patch contains a Macro Oscillator that is playing the root of the current chord on every beat using the "Inharmonic string" model of the module. Although this is considered to be a more percussive model, a bit of playing around with the frequency and harmonics dials resulted in a sound that started moving from percussive into more tonal. To bring some variation into this voice, a Bogaudio Walk2 module is modulating the timbre and morph settings of the Macro Oscillator. The output is patched into a Chronoblob delay that is set to the "Cascade with send/return" mode. In the send/return loop, a filter module is placed so that the delays get a bit more muffled as they repeat. This voice usually stays anonymously in the background, expect when the modulations on the Macro Oscillator and on the filter occasionally causes it to become more pronounced.
As for the name of this patch: when the core voice consists of Randomized Arpeggiation, it seems logical to combine those two words into a title 😉
__ Setup __
- VCV Rack 2.4.1 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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