https://diode.zone/videos/watch/55f183a6-ac29-4691-a50f-aa8a006414ec More info about the modular: http://chrisbeckstrom.com I've been diving deep into techno, especially the kind of techno with beeps and bloops. Big surprise, I know. Yesterday I found a Galcid video on YouTube and have been extremely inspired by their raw and funky approach. I've been devouring all of their stuff and am absolutely loving it! This video is greatly influenced by that sound, as well as other modular artists like Steevio. If you haven't heard those folks, go check them out! Want to hear more modular techno? I just released a techno album that features the modular quite a bit! https://chrisbeckstrom.bandcamp.com/album/cycle Patch notes This patch consists of 5 voices: a drum machine, a bassline, a wild saw wave, some XOR noise "hihat," and some CMOS noise... Plus a spring reverb and a digital reverb. Bitwig sends midi clock to my iPad running the incredible Patterning app (drum machine). The iPad is plugged into a little mixer which comes into my big mixer, which in turn comes into my computer in stereo. A sampler track in Bitwig is playing a 1 sample-long click I generated in Pure Data (with the handy signal~ object) every 16th note. That audio is routed through a $9 audio interface (!!) into a preamp to boost it to modular level (+-9v). The clock goes into an envelope follower on the modular that spits out gate and envelope; the gate goes into a buffered mult and is used to clock a bunch of stuff: A 10-step sequencer modulates the pitch of an oscillator, while the clock feeds a clock divider. The clock divider's divide-by-3 output goes into an AND logic module along with the original clock source (making sure the output of the AND is always in time with the clock. I wonder if this is even necessary...) The output of the AND goes into a gate to trigger module, then to the CV input of a low pass gate (basically a VCA). That goes into a mixer module, then into a rackmounted mixer, then into my big mixer, then into my computer. Whew! That's a lot of mixers. I really like the rhythmic contrast of the drum machine (swing is turned up to 100) and the modular (it plays everything perfectly straight but a little behind the beat due to some latency in my system). It creates an interesting groove that reminds me of some of the hip-hop I love, especially J Dilla. The clock also goes into another AND module, which compares the it with a free-running clock (square wave oscillator). Whenever both are HIGH, it spits out a signal, which is sent to another gate-to-trigger module and then an envelope generator. This envelope generator (the pink module with the yellow flashing light) controls the level of a VCA, giving some shape to the sound of a XOR module mixing two square waves. The XOR can do a lot of cool things, but I especially like it as a sort of pseudo-ring modulator. Alas, it really only works on square waves... Good thing I have tons of those! This "hihat" sound goes into the rackmount mixer, then into the big mixer, then into the computer. Another voice is the wild saw: A square wave oscillator (see, I do have a lot of those) goes into a module of my own design, a square-to-stepped-saw converter. It takes a square wave and spits out a stepped saw wave a few octaves below. I use this to modulate the frequency of the saw oscillator, the sound of which I love more than words can describe. This saw naturally goes into the rackmount mixer, then the big one, then into Bitwig. The fourth modular voice is my CMOS noise module. Near the end of the video I decide to patch it into the same mixer the bassline is using, and then I play it by tapping the alligator clip to its output. Let's see you do THAT with regular 3.5mm jacks! The CMOS noise module is, guess what? A bunch of square wave oscillators modulating each other. The circuit is loosely based on the Roland TR-808 cymbal circuit. Since this voice is mixed with the bassline in the modular, it heads into the computer through the same path. I absolutely love dub music, and love the idea of using a mixer as an instrument. It wasn't until I started devouring YouTube videos of live techno performances I realized this technique wasn't unique to dub; indeed, it's prevalent throughout electronic music! The first channel in the mixer is the iPad. I have my big mixer setup with two effects sends: one is the built-in spring reverb (that has an annoying ground loop I'll have to fix one of these days) and I'm using the "monitor send" to route sound into my Alesis Microverb digital reverb. The reverb comes back into the mixer in stereo. Throughout the video I manipulate the different reverb sends and returns, mostly the returns. At one point I crank up the Microverb's input and output levels, which makes a really nasty distortion I really love. 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