Dark Ambient Drone with Eurorack

Today I assembled the AE Modular Eurorack adapter frame together with the Behringer Neutron into a case that I built many years ago when I started my Journey with modular synths. I believe that AE can play along with Eurorack very well and that the Neutron can benefit from a few extra modulation options and the sweet FX that the AE can bring to the table.

World Drone Day 2020

This Saturday the 30th May 2020 is World Drone Day and I will be streaming live from my little studio in Bega, Australia!

This will be my first ever attempt at streaming, so let’s see how it will all work out!

More information about World Drone Day here: https://droneday.org

Hopefully there will be other people from the AE Modular Forum that will participate, see the post below for more info:

https://forum.aemodular.com/thread/787/world-drone-day-saturday-30th

Count GRAINS

This is my first experiment with the new GRAINS module from tangible waves. It arrived yesterday with the TALKING firmware installed which is a cool robot voice that just counts. P2 adjusts the pitch and P3 the speed of the voice. I’ve patched the voice into the MS20 filter which allows for some haunting atmosphere combined with the Deep Space reverb of the MULTIFX. The ALGODRONE is providing the clock for this patch with the cycle out going into the TRIQ164 which triggers a KICK, LOPAG and the GRAINS voice. The ALGODRONE also provides the atmospheric background. I’m playing the algorithm at different speeds via the MIDI keyboard. Higher notes cause the algorithm to speed up which affects everything. The audio out from the ALGODRONE goes into the WASP filter for effect.

Ambient 02 – The Soul of the MS 20 Filter

This is an ambient track made mostly with the new MS 20 filter, Algodrone and Solina Strings modules. All of this then goes through the Shimmer effect of the MutliFX. When I first tried out the MS 20 filter I was immediately amazed by its beautiful sound. It is even more sonorous than the Wasp filter. Here you can hear the MS 20 filter sing with only a constant pitched sawtooth wave from the OSC/d and the resonance less than half way up. All I’m doing is adjusting the cutoff frequency ever so slightly. The Algodrone and Solina are truly made for each other. Before I had the Algodrone I thought it would be a very aggressive noise module, but it is actually not that hard to “tame” it. Here it is patched with algorithm number 47 into the Nyle filter which adds some resonance in the low pass channel. The Solina works by selecting a base frequency and then selecting a row of matching chords using the Chord knob. Here I’ve chosen minor chords and I’m really only playing the first two.

Beauty and the Beast – Algodrone and Solina

My first steps in getting to know the new modules ALGODRONE and SOLINA from tangible waves. ALGODRONE is a Bytebeat processor which is filled with an endless variety of sounds that emerge from noise to structure to melodic to bizarre textures … There are 97 different Algorithms each with 3 parameters and they can be looped and granularized … it’s mindboggling and vast and will take years to map the sonic landscape of this thing! In contrast the Solina produces a lush lofi string ensemble of major or minor chords that work best as an underying soothing drone. It complements the sharp edged Algodrone and therefore I think they are two sides of one coin! Each module has just recently been released and I’m still not sure what each of the controls do. So this is my first fumblings.

Rhythms 01

This time an experiment in rhythm after all the ambient tracks of the last few weeks.

Patch Diagram

One LFO is the central clock which feeds the TRIQ164 and SEQ16. Channel 4 on TRIQ164 sends a clock to TOPOGRAF which in turn drives the KICK and DRUM 010. TRIQ164 Channels 1 sends triggers to LOPAG for another percussion voice and channels 2 and 3 go to envelopes that modulate the bass and lead sounds.

The WASP filter’s cutoff CV is modulated by the CV out from the SEQ16. This gives the lead sound some rhythmic variation even though it’s playing the same note for 4 bars.

The bass line is just the OSC1’s sub oscillator going through the NYLE filter.