GRAINS – New Firmwares

The GRAINS module is basically a tiny computer inside your AE Modular that can be programmed to do just about anything sound wise. Because the AE GRAINS is a direct clone of the Eurorack GRAINS you can install the same set of firmwares on it, just as I’ve described on my first video about Getting Started with GRAINS.

Now a very talented software developer from Germany, Mathias aka @visuellemusik, has developed a few new firmwares exclusively for the GRAINS module. These will only work in the AE GRAINS and not on the Eurorack version because the AE has one added input for Audio and one added output for digital signals and some of the new firmwares use one or both of these.

You can find those programs on Github here: https://github.com/aemodular/GRAINS

Below are my first three tutorial videos.

What are you going to do with the GRAINS module? Please post your creations or code on the forum!

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.

Wubb Wubb

I started practicing for a video about the “first basic patch” and then it got out of hand quickly 😉 The Electribe adds the nice driving wubb wubb bassline, everything else is the AE Modular. Usually I record video and sound straight into my phone, but since the latest Android update that function is not working anymore. So I’ve recorded the audio into Reaper and the video on my phone and then had to stitch it together. It works, but is way more hassle than I liked.