Designing the Perfect Euclidean Rhythm Sequencer - Part 1: The Dream

A lot has been said about Euclidean rhythms in the 20+ years since they were first described by Godfried Toussaint, whose brilliant insight further pulled back the curtain separating music from mathematics. When I learned about Euclidean rhythms, it felt like I was uncovering some secret of the universe—that just a few variables can be tweaked and fed into the algorithm to create rhythms underpinning anything from Bulgarian folk songs to Caribbean beats to traditional West African dances (and on and on). It seems simply magical—the perfect fodder for ethnographers, mathematicians, cosmic spiritualists, numerologists, and musicians alike.

That certain “magical” characteristic probably explains the popular emphasis on the ethnographic aspect of Euclidean rhythms, as though there is some unseen adhesive binding all human cultures. Maybe in a narrow sense there is, but it’s not magic (there’s no such thing as magic), and rhythms found in rock, classical, et al., can be recreated with the same algorithm. It’s better to think of math not as an ethereal force that lurks beneath the surface of our cosmic reality, but rather as description of it. And thus, patterns and relationships in nature coincide with geometry and math precisely because these patterns and relationships are what math was conceived of in order to show.

Magical or not, there is something supremely special about Euclidean rhythms. As with any means of automation towards musical ends, a module with voltage control over the three parameters from which Euclidean rhythms are derived (length, steps, and offset) is highly attractive. Manually sequencing patterns is a dull exercise and cumbersome to do on the fly (and usually only so accomplished with lackluster results). Probabilistic pattern generators (derivations of the so-called “Turing Machine” modules) produce more interesting results and with immediacy, but can frequently produce patterns that are, eh… challenging to integrate into musical contexts. To me, Euclidean rhythm generators hit the perfect sweet spot of immediacy and quality of results.

And further, in regards to the appeal of Euclidean rhythms, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that modular synthesists are attracted to novel approaches to musical composition. And, well, Euclidean rhythms are maybe the easiest way to experiment with polyrhythms, juxtaposing rhythms forged from distinct time signature to create complex sequences that seldom repeat. It’s simply glorious to behold!

Consider the following sequence of three Euclidean patterns of 8:2, 6:2, 7:2:

1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
1 0 0 1 0 0    
0 0 1 0 0 1 0  

When each pattern is played back-to-back, the sequence as a whole does not repeat for 168 steps (i.e., the lowest common multiple of 8, 6, and 7 but I didn’t check this beyond the most basic math). So if you are structuring a work of music around intervals of 16 steps in 4/4 time (the default of damn near every single drum machine and sequencer I’ve ever seen), you’re looking at a percussion loop ten and half measures long. And that’s before you factor in modulation of the Euclidean parameters.

But let’s be clear: this is not to say that a lack of repetition—or rhythmic complexity, more broadly—is a primary virtue in music (after all, a near-universal characteristic of music is a tendency to repeat to some extent), but these layers of complementary rhythms and their resulting rhythmic complexity opens a few doors to the composer:

1. It’s just way more interesting to not be rooted to the near-ubiquitous “four-on-the-floor” sorts of rhythms where the entirety of the percussive elements repeat after just a handful of measures. There are some good arguments for anchoring a work of music with simplistic percussion (particularly in genres of dance music), but I hold a conviction that music can be more expressive and varied when untethered from these sorts of patterns. My thoughts on this are still coalescing and I hope to have some more cogent things to say about it in the future.

2. While we often associate Euclidean rhythms with percussion (especially as nifty phrases inspired by hand drums and similar) I think if we slow it down (way, way down), we’ll see that they can serve brilliantly in, for example, ambient music. Tune a few oscillators to a chord and then gate them each with a Euclidean rhythm and you’ll observe some rather interesting melodic passages emerge. Unlocking Euclidean rhythms’ potential as a tool in a melodic toolkit is an area in which I intend to invest.

3. Somewhat more practically, layering complementary polyrhythms like those above sets the stage for shifts in time signature—a track might start in 4/4 time, but shift to 3/4 or similar as the emphasis shifts from the first pattern to the second (using the above example). While I don’t think this is an easy trick to pull off, I think layers of Euclidean rhythms can aid such transitions.

So, anyway, Euclidean rhythms are great. What next?

Considering the large assortment of modules dedicated them (and there are many more multifunctional modules, like Ornament and Crime, that support Euclidean rhythms), I suspect I’m not alone in my enthusiasm. Now these various options are chalk-full of attractive features—multiple tracks, CV control over the various parameters, and some even have pattern storage and recall. But they all lack a particular feature (the most enticing one): that I built it myself! And, of course, they all make certain trade-offs that I might not have made, particularly in respect to their size and display.

But before I get into trade-offs, let’s enumerate a wish-list of what I might think of as the perfect Euclidean rhythm sequencer (and I want to stress that “perfect” is contextual; synthesists with different needs might have a complete different list comprising perfection):

• Multiple channels. Most Euclidean rhythm sequencers available today have a few tracks. The more the better. One pattern by itself is nice, sure, but for the reasons described above it’s the relationship between stacked patterns that really excites me.

• Manual and CV control over each track’s Euclidean parameters. Few, if any, Euclidean sequencers have this, and I think this is a travesty. The aspect of Euclidean rhythms in a musical context is their potential to create new patterns instantaneously at the drop of a hat. With CV control, a chain of patterns can be sequenced and evolve gradually. With CV control, different Euclidean patterns can alter the parameters of others—a great foundation for generative music perhaps.

• An easy to interpret display of the patterns. I have a lot of thoughts on this that I’ll save for a future entry. In short, I contend that few (maybe none) of the available Euclidean rhythm sequencers available today display their multiple tracks in a way that highlights the relationship between the generated patterns. This is perhaps in service to keeping modules small (a primary virtue among most Eurorack manufacturers).

• Manual and CV over gate length. Just because this is really useful, probably easy to implement, and short-circuits the need for trigger-to-gate conversion.

• Reset trigger. Resetting all patterns to the beginning with a single trigger might provide for another layer of rhythmic complexity, but also makes it easy to synchronize with external sequencers.

• Probabilistic gates with manual and CV. This might fall into the “nice-to-have” bucket, but speaking as a fan of aleatoric music, I think this makes some sense to include. As with the gate length, this is another feature that can be handled externally with something like Mutable Instruments’ Branches.

• Both an internal clock and the ability to sync with an external one. This seems like a pretty obvious feature to have.

• MIDI out. I don’t think this would be especially hard to implement in its simplest form, so why not have it? I don’t use very much MIDI in my modular setup, however as I start to expand my horizons, I’ve found MIDI to be something rather nice to have about. A simple TRS MIDI jack should be fine.

• Eurorack form factor. Another one I’m a bit on the fence about. It’s not strictly speaking essential to have this, as I sort of envision this as being basically a stand-alone device. But I have extra powered Eurorack cases of what I expect to be an appropriate size and so it would be convenient not to have to build another enclosure.

Again, these are just the things that initially come to mind to satisfy all my needs. I deliberately omitted any size constraints (besides the Eurorack form factor) as I’d rather focus on the functionality. If I only ever build one of these, it’s going to be as big as it needs to be in order to provide the right sort of experience.

Plenty more can be said about the particulars. For example, I have many thoughts about how device’s display ought to look. I shall elaborate in a future post and perhaps talk a bit about the prototype I’ve developed so far. I think this would make a pretty good intermediate electronics project, so if I can get my act together I’ll see if I can get it up on GitHub.

The Handmaiden v2 Prototype

Behold! The Handmaiden v2, a control surface for my modular synthesizer driven by gamepad thumbsticks and arcade buttons.

The Handmaiden v2, in all her glory

Each joystick produces a pair of CV outputs of ~4-8V +/- along the X and Y axes. The range and polarity is customizable with the knob and switch on the bottom right. The arcade buttons allow for momentary gates and each have a corresponding toggle switch. Springs on most of the joysticks have been removed such that they don't spring back to 0 when not being touched.

The Handmaiden v2 in action

The enclosure is made of canary wood and pau rosa; the palm rest is made of walnut, carved specifically for my hand—which becomes pretty clear when my wife tested it out and could scarcely get the tips of her fingers on the joysticks. If this were destined to become a viable product, this palm rest would have to be more easily replaceable (or ideally hot-swappable.)

And now, schematics! It’s in fact a very simple circuit. At the core is a fairly simple pair of power rails, positive and negative produced by a dual potentiometer that divides the +/-12V input into ~+/-4-8V and then is buffered by the TL072. When SW1 is in the ON position, the negative rail goes to ground.

These rails are connected to each potentiometer on the thumbsticks and the divided voltage is buffered—once for the output voltage and again for the LEDs. The buttons and toggles output a buffered signal from the positive rail when on. It’s all fairly straightforward.

I’ll be experimenting with this in the coming weeks and seeing how well it works. The goal, of course is the increase the number of control voltages that can be independently controlled with one hand—and with hopefully some level of comfort.

Breadboard Synthesizer

About the only thing more fun than fiddling with synthesizers is building them. Or at least taking a flying stab at it. Now, I’ve certainly built my share of fairly basic synth parts… mults, an AS3340 VCO, amps, and so on. I’ve even recently made a perfectly adequate Eurorack-compatible power supply. But I decided to kick it up a notch a couple months ago when I built this:

Maybe “decided to” is a bit strong. It just sort of happened, after having watched Moritz Klein’s superb DIY VCO series, his filter, his arpeggiator, and so on. Would you be surprised to learn that synths on a breadboard connect just as easily as synth modules? Derp.

By the time I puzzled out a CD4017-based 16-step sequencer I realized I had something pretty nifty on my hands. Add an envelope generator and a simple clock and you have more or less all you need for a fun little groove-box—all crammed into a series of breadboard knit together by hot glue and tangle of wires. I will be spending some time trying to turn it into a standalone semi-modular sort of deal, and perhaps even a synth module. It might lose some of the rustic charm in the transition, but ought to be a bit sturdier and easier to control—at minimum.

I’ll see if I can’t post a few more things about this thing. Certainly some schematics are in order. You’ll notice perhaps that while the quantizer bears some resemblance to Moritz Klein’s it is also a great deal different. It is perhaps my only true innovation (for lack of a better word), as much of what you see here is cobbled together from datasheets and various schematics floating around.

Certainly I’ll be documenting the journey from breadboard to enclosure in the coming weeks/months/years. It’s something that’s occupied my thoughts a lot lately, and will demand a willingness to launch myself pretty damn far outside my comfort zone’s tight radius. Stay tuned, and carpe diem!

Thoughts on the Tasty Chips GR-1

Before I begin: This is not sponsored content and I am definitely not being paid for this post (lol — someday, maybe). It is only my opinion and I just had to get it out of my system.

Over the past six months I’ve been elbows-deep in what is easily the most engrossing synthesizer I have ever touched, the Tasty Chips GR-1 granular synthesizer. In start contrast to my other granular hardware (Mutable Instruments’ Clouds, and Make Noise Music’s Morphagene) the GR-1 boasts a 7” screen that displays the sample, the active grains, and their shape. While this might sound like a gimmick (or merely a convenience), having that immediate visual feedback makes all the difference in crafting textures, soundscapes, and pads—and doing so on the fly. A series of pots, faders, and built-in LFOs affect a variety of parameters—position, grain size, density, shape, ADSR parameters, filter cutoff, resonance, and so on. You know… all the things.

Oh, here I am demonstrating the GR-1’s immediacy and live-sampling capabilities.

The immediacy and the visual feedback has been making fall in love all over again with the more exploratory phase of music creation, which has lately been a means to an end (i.e., crafting a track). Now a completed track is merely an optional byproduct of this process of experimentation, scanning over samples and tweaking knobs and slides. Put another way: I’m having a lot of fun just playing with the device. It is the same feeling I experience when first diving deep into the Morphagene.

I guess that comment warrants some notes on the comparison between the two. The Morphagene has some advantages in the realms splicing a sample, sequencing those splices, CV control, and sound-on-sound recording. As undisputed champion in those areas, it definitely has a niche and will probably stay in my rack until the end of time. As a synth module, I suppose it only makes sense that it fits into a niche. Despite it’s granular capabilities, it excels in the space that would have formerly been occupied by absurdly elaborate tape splicing setups.

Now, the GR-1 on the other hand, excels in just about every other area—as you would expect from a machine that costs twice as much. But there are challenges if I wanted to recreate the Morphagene tape-splicing functionality. For starters, there’s not really the concept of splices… you can set the boundaries of a sample and lock the cursor’s position therein, but I cannot set a dozen markers and jump from one to another on the fly. Something similar can be accomplished with sending a sequence by CV, but this seems less precise in practice.

Furthermore, I haven’t figured out a good way to accomplish a sound-on-sound, time-lag-accumulation effect with the GR-1. Since this device supports live looping recording and playback, I imagine it must be possible by feeding the output (and whatever input) to a mixer and then feeding it back into the machine, but my experiments in this realm have not yielded adequate results (but it is something I intend to experiment with again). Again, these are different devices that fill different niches.

Despite all the praise I have for the GR-1, there are certainly a few issues. At the top of that list might be the somewhat awkward and possibly buggy process of managing samples, patches, and performances. I think more than once I’ve had a patch (or worse, a sample) wiped out of existence either by some terrible bug or some mistake I made in traversing the menus. Tasty Chips GR-1 news and announcements seem to suggest some change is coming, and indeed it seems like some recent firmware has reduced my frustrations.

Another complaint is the somewhat unimpressive MPE implementation. Albeit, it works, but in a sort of no-frills, bare minimum sense. With all the sophisticated touch sensitivity on my Linnstrument, it is really only good for triggering ASDR envelopes. I would expect at least to be able to craft an expressive “envelope” with the pressure of my finger. Even though I can map aftertouch to amplitude, it doesn’t seem to have much affect. This ought to work, and ideally I would have a filter cutoff for each note of polyphony, also responsive to pressure. The timbre parameter (the Linnstrument’s y-axis) seems to work well enough, however, and gives me much joy.

Although the hardware driving the GR-1 seems generally capable, and there visual indicators that appear when you are pushing the machine to its limitations, I still experience quite noticeable dropouts in the sound that happen abruptly even when I’m not taxing the machine especially hard. They last maybe less than a millisec ond, but it necessitates editing out the popping and crackling, which has been a bit of a pain.

Even given these drawbacks, I’m still in love with this machine. I look forward to many more hours tuning motorboat samples with the sound of 3D printers or geese honking and turning traffic noise into ambient tracks. I’ve already recorded a few things that I’ll be sure to post about soon-ish.

A Brief Sojourn in the Land of Synth DIY

So I’ve been a little low-key with the whole blog thing, of late. Sorry, team. We crusty old-timers need plenty of beauty sleep and smoothing down the wrinkles erupting all over my body is a time intensive process, especially given that the joints are taut as bowstrings. I blame the microdoses of Viagra in the drinking water.

But in my free time, between brushing cat hair off my dentures and filing down my corns, I have embarked on a rather interesting journey: I’ve decided to pick up synth DIY as a hobby. Yeah, another one, amirite? The learning curve has been fairly intense and quite intimidating, and, as I have long maintained, have no idea what I am doing. This mantra of mine is especially true of electronics, where my experience is limited to some rather weak Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects. However, after a few frustrating months, I have breadboarded a VCO! See above (the blog consultant I spoke to said to put a picture towards the top, even if it is just a cat picture, because nobody reads anything anymore.)

This is a fairly simple VCO, if ever such a thing can be said. In fact, it is somewhat lazy, relying largely on the AS3340 (a knockoff of the famous CEM 3340) which requires very little in the way of effort to get sound out of it. Well, sort of. If anything, it is a godsend that it takes care of the 1v/oct tracking for you, which is one of the tricky bits of building an oscillator. This design is based on a subset of the AS3340 reference schematic, which is pretty straightforward after you spend a couple semesters in trade school learning how to read schematics. Just kidding—a few hours of Googling is enough to get up to speed.

Naturally, if you want to get up and running without knowing what you are doing (an approach I often endorse) there are some pretty excellent tutorials from LookMumNoComputer (perhaps most famous for his Furby Organ, which is probably the niftiest thing on the Internets so far.) If you are going down that route, be aware that he is using the rather more expensive CEM 3340, so be sure to pay attention to the values used in the AS3340 reference schematic, if you are an old cheapskate like me.

Anyway, whatever your approach, it won’t be long before you’ll end up with some dope, clean waveforms, as pictured here:

See the blurred oscilloscope in the background? Cool.

Do the kids still say “gnarly”? Because I think that looks gnarly. In any case, expect some more writeups about this in the coming months. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll have an Etsy storefront and some PCBs for sale on the Thonk or whatever.

Carpe Diem!

The Stag Funeral

Well a fresh Neolithic Ceremonial Headdress release has “dropped” as the kids say. It has a sort of scatological ring to it, doesn’t it? Regardless, I am pleased to present The Stag Funeral, my latest release under the Neolithic Ceremonial Headdress moniker. Much like previous releases, it’s a sort of ambient record that’s hard to slot into a specific subgenre. Besides the drone-y bits and characteristic mangled field recordings that have become part of the NCH sound, there’s also a few tracks that lean rather heavily into percussion, and then some bits that stray into a contrapuntal melodic style. In short, it builds on to many of the things that made the previous record so unique and interesting to listen to. Also like the previous record, it makes great background music for your desk job, a walk in the park, or a midnight drive.

For modular synth nerds who are super curious, I can speak briefly about the rack and modules used in the production of The Stag Funeral. As with the previous record, I wanted to keep the rig I recorded on fairly small: 6U of 84hp with a complementary row of 1U tiles. For most of of the album, the configuration looked something like this:

The first thing that that jumps out at you is probably that the only sound sources (not counting the audio rate signals from the Wogglebug) are two Antumbra Atom modules and the MakeNoise Morphagene (which can also be characterized as a DSP effects module). For those of you not familiar with the Atom, it is essentially an 18hp version of Mutable Instruments Elements, a modal synthesis module, that provides a huge pallete of sounds that range from eerie to dark to beautiful. Learning to keep this module reigned in is a bit of a chore, but well worth it. I certainly tried to keep things out of the “really weird” end of the spectrum for the most part (after all, the album has to be listenable, doesn’t it?) but still managed to eke out some very expressive stuff.

Probably the most ballsy move is taking up 36 of my precious hp with the Intellijel Rainmaker, the delay module to end all delay modules. Much has already been said elsewhere about why this module is so incredibly magnificent. I was a little hesitant to bring it into the fold, given that I find the Intellijel Shapeshifter very un-fun to use for anything beyond a basic dual wavetable VCO on account of its extreme reliance on menu diving, but my experience with the Rainmaker has been very pleasant. Despite its appearance as a menu-diving monster, it’s actually very straightforward to use and doesn’t take long to acquire a decent understanding.

Some tracks swap these components variously—some use the Shapeshifter instead of the Atoms, some use the Make Noise Erbe Verb. I’ve swapped out the single Ornament and Crime and replaced it with two 8hp “micro” versions of the module as built by some dude on Reverb.com. All in all the setup was pretty good for my intentions, and I’ll probably continue to use some variation going forward.

The biggest godsend to my new setup was taking the mixer outboard… sort of. It’s still a Eurorack mixer (the WMD Performance Mixer to be precise), but I installed it in its own 3U 54 hp case that also has two rows of 1U tiles. This allows me to transition easily between this portable rig and my studio rig without sacrificing all the WMD PM bells and whistles (figurative bells and whistles) that I’ve grown to rely on.

To summarize, it’s all so incredibly awesome, am I right? Feel free to leave a comment or such if you have questions, or simply wish to showing my work with praise. Or horrible insult or whatever. Anyhow, I’ll try to be a little bit more active on this blog this year. Given that I receive only a handful of visitors in any given month, I’m usually fairly content to keep my thoughts to myself. Naturally, I might have some more visitors if I improved the content, so I suppose that’s on me, right? Anyway, thank you for listening, and carpe diem!

Voltage-Controlled Acoustic Drone Instrument - Rough Internals Render

Here's a (rough) render of the internal workings of the Voltage-Controlled Acoustic Drone Instrument I have dreamed up. (Maybe V-CAD works as a name? VolCAD?) Blue parts represent 3D printed parts, orange is used to denote the wheel and the coupler for the threaded rod, though I see no reason that these could not be 3D printed as well. The black part is a NEMA 17 stepper and the white rod is, naturally, a 6mm threaded rod. The purple-ish transparent sheet represents the soundboard. What do you suppose are the chances that I could use a sheet of acrylic as a soundboard?

It's not what I would call a final product by a very long shot: tuning pegs are not represented in this render, nor is the ball bearing for the rod, nor are the strings, and as you can see, there is no mechanism in place to change the pitch of the chanter strings--yet. Furthermore, there's nothing holding the whole stupid thing together; it would all readily fall apart with the combination of its own weight and the tension of the strings.

That said, it's enough to work with to test the concept. Feel free to drop a comment, suggestions, encouragement, or just to tell me this idea is totally freaking crazy and I should probably just stop.

Re-Naming the CV Controlled Acoustic Drone Instrument

Every day is a new opportunity to learn something new. Today I get to learn how to handle profound disappointment.

My amazing idea for an CV-controlled acoustic drone instrument inspired by the hurdy gurdy, which I so cleverly dubbed the "nerdy gurdy," will require a new name, as a Nerdy Gurdy already exists, and is indeed appropriately nerdy. This official Nerdy Gurdy consists of a DIY kit of laser-cut and 3D printed parts that produce a pretty exceptionally sounding instrument. The details of this project can be found here: http://www.nerdygurdy.nl/ From there you can order your very own kit or (if you are lucky enough to own both a laser cutter and 3D printer) get the plans to build your own. It's a pretty awesome project and appears to be one borne of equal parts love and craftsmanship.

Naturally, I'm a little disappointed, since I thought the name was pretty fresh (in a colloquial sense), but since my proposed instrument will perhaps not at all resemble nor function the same as a hurdy gurdy, I suppose its fitting that it should have a name that matches its uniqueness. I'm open to suggestions. The Bedravolin, perhaps?

The Nerdy Gurdy - Conceiving a New Voltage-Controlled Drone Instrument

Rediscovering an Ancient Instrument

I recently learned of a peculiar instrument born in the Middle Ages called a hurdy gurdy. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's perhaps best conceived as a viola with a hand-cranked wheel that is used to excite its strings, producing a tense, persistent drone. A set of levers or buttons control a melody on one or more dedicated strings called "chanterelles." The sound created by this incredible device is comparable to a bagpipe fused with a viol da gamba. Its workings are best explained by a pro as in the video below:

Patty Gurdy makes some exceptional videos about the hurdy gurdy, and is part of a pretty neat metal band besides. Given that she has the most tricked out hurdy gurdy the world has ever known, and given her special expertise with the instrument, the music featured in her videos is not often representative of the typical hurdy gurdy sound, which has a distinct Ren-Faire flair, and often tracking towards pirate music, such as is heard in Bear McCreary's incredible score for the television series Black Sails.

It's interesting that such a complex instrument comes out of the 11th century and was a not-uncommon folk instrument for hundreds of years in various forms across Central and Eastern Europe through the Renaissance. To produce a hurdy gurdy requires a fairly high degree of craftsmanship that I'd have not thought within reach of the average Teutonic serf.  Today, a professionally built fully featured hurdy gurdy costs roughly the same amount as a down payment on a new car, give or take, though if you like to play eBay Roulette, you can find much cheaper ones.

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Send in the Drones

And while I dig Medieval and Renaissance music, I'm not sure if it it fits in with my oeuvre. That said, there's something rather interesting about the sound of this instrument that might lend it to the sort of experimental/drone/dark ambient genre as well. Phill Niblock's piece Hurdy Hurry (left), crystallizes this idea splendidly, subtly evolving the interplay of the various strings over the course of fifteen minutes. Like most drone music, it's something of a niche sound, sure. It is a little reminiscent of Gyorgi Ligeti's Atmospheres in the way it transforms an acoustic sound to something otherworldly.

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Reinventing the Wheel (and Soundboard, Chanter Lifter, Trompette, Etcetera)

A strange idea took root while researching this music-making machine. What if I were to build one? I don't mean one of these carefully crafted works of art and meticulous Renaissance recreations. What about creating something hurdy-gurdy-ish? Something that included some of the elements of a hurdy gurdy, but responded to voltage control, such as from a modular synth system, or some other kind of controller. The wheel could be driven with motors, and an array of servos could control the chanter lifters. The resulting contraption might not look much like a hurdy gurdy (nor even sound like one), but I think the idea still has some merit, at least insofar as it presents some interesting challenges. I think I'd like to call it a "nerdy gurdy." Over the next few weeks I'll try to sketch up some ideas and evaluate the feasibility. Stay tuned.

One Year Restrospective and the Path Forward

It's been a year since I fell down the rabbit hole and into the wild world of modular synthesis, and it's been quite a journey. I've made some pretty great tunes, had some pretty great musical adventures, and maybe learned a few things along the way—some practical advice that I can impart to future generations of modular synthesists who are maybe just getting started with Eurorack and such. So here's a Year Zero retrospective

Lessons Learned

• Modular synthesizers are expensive. I belabor this point quite extensively in my first couple of posts, and this has certainly not changed much. I will say, however, that the prices of powered cases seems to be trending downward with new competitors entering the market, and there's also a robust DIY and open-source sub-movement rippling through the world of Eurorack that can help financially-challenged aspirants save a few dollars. But in the final analysis, the overall investment in an even quasi-serious Eurorack system is easily thousands and thousands of dollars. Fortunately modules retain their value fairly well, so trading a stale module for something fresh seems easy, though I have yet to part with even a single module.

• Limitations breed creativity. My understanding of a particular module opens up tremendously when I contrive ways to force myself to use it. The best way to do this is to arbitrarily reduce your rack space. I went from 9U 120hp to 7U 84hp and ended up learning much about some of my less frequently used modules, like the Make Noise DPO. This move came from a desire to create a highly-portable system that I could travel with and was easy to lug out onto my back porch to jam, but the accompanying restrictions opened up a lot of new doors for me. In terms of portability, I can't speak highly enough about my Synthrotek Waterproof Case, and probably everyone should have one if that's important to them. As an exercise, try challenging yourself with specific modules, particularly those that you might not gel with. Absorb it. Own it.

• VCAs are overrated (but not by much). You've probably heard the axiom "You can never have enough VCAs" and that's probably true to a point, but I think the emphasis is perhaps a little too strong, given the prevalence of attenuators built into the inputs of many modules these days. I think instead, we should be asking ourselves what the right number of VCAs is. If all the inputs on all your modules are attenuated, then you aren't going to need very many. The rack on which I wrote my amazing album doesn't have any (except Maths). That said, there has almost never been a patch when I didn't wish I had maybe one more VCA for this CV or that. Your mileage may vary.

• Mixers are hard. I've tried a few cheap off-rack mixers and have been disappointed at every turn. There's always something weird about them as they interact with my modular system. A hum. A problem handling unbalanced inputs. Amps being noisy. Whatever else. The best solution I've so far found (in terms of audio quality) has been to keep my mixing on-rack with a simple 1U stereo mixer and audio out module from Synthrotek. It doesn't have any CV panning and has only four inputs (two per channel), but it gets the job done. This gets output straight to a handheld recorder, for better or worse. Someday I'll figure out a decent multi-track setup, but I find many of my options both frustrating and expensive.

• Embrace random! Because we only have so many hands, am I right? Random CV is a great way to give your patches some movement while leaving you free to tweak other parameters and such. I tend to rely on quantized random voltages for melodic content especially, since I'm a garbage keyboard player, and the body of work rejects the need for a distinct, catchy melody line. Even if you're just using random to, say, subtly modulate the shape of an envelope, it can have a profound impact on the sound of your music. It's strange and intimidating to not have complete control all the time, but also liberating. And who doesn't like to feel liberated?

• Drum modules are overrated (and not). I'm pretty pleased with my Dinky's Taiko and the Tiptop Audio drum modules I have, but I honestly feel like the money I spent on them would have been better spent on a set of more generic modules that can be used to create percussion. An STO, a filter, and an envelope generator can produce an amazing kick drum with potentially a lot of CV points.  However, those three modules will cost together twice as much or more than the Tiptop BD909 and will take up twice as much space or more. Some drum modules have a lot of great features (like the HexInverter Mutant Bassdrum) but are themselves fairly expensive and take up a decent amount of room. And some are unique and interesting, like the Basimilus Iteritas Alter, or the Dinky's Taiko, and may not really have a perfect analog constructed from disparate modules.

• Menus are the worst. Yeah, I hate menu diving, especially when I need to consult a manual much like I do every time I want to use the Expert Sleeper's Disting. It's a great utility module, but it doesn't harmonize will with my highly spontaneous workflow. The Intellijel Shapeshifter also has a pretty deep menu, but I feel like if I gave it more time and effort I could master it. Worst of all might be compact sequencers that don't have a good way to see a sequence's state. I'm thinking of the sequencer on the Mutable Instrument's Edges module, which is otherwise a pretty nifty module. Something like the Intellijel Metropolis is more what I have in mind when I think of the ideal sequencer.

• I still have no idea what I'm doing. Yeah, I did produce a pretty amazing album of dark, often experimental ambient music, but I can't shake the feeling that there's lots I don't know. Little by little the scales fall from my eyes and I start to absorb new and interesting concepts, but it's a slow process. Even a small investment of time is enough to pick up a few tricks on your own, but there are also a lot of great multimedia resources and forums from which you can learn a lot. But hey, don't sweat it. It's supposed to be fun and not some stuffy academic exercise. If you never learn anything, well, that's cool too as long as you're happy.

What's next?

I have no idea! I'm going to begin recording another Neolithic Ceremonial Headdress release pretty soon. building on and evolving the sounds from A Pool of Broken Reeds. I am imposing a moratorium on spending on modules for the time being, so I'll have to get a little creative with what I have on hand. I'll shuffle some things around, and perhaps finally master the Shapeshifter and do some pretty amazing things. Musically speaking, 2017 was pretty great for me, and it might be a hard year to top (even if you happen to loathe my debut album), but I'm going to give it a shot. And so should you! As always, feel free to drop me a comment or two. Maybe you've learned something cool about Eurorack this year and want to share, or maybe you just want to shower me with praise. Well, go for it. I am totally ready.

Day 297 - Neolithic Ceremonial Headdress

Exciting times! I've released my modular album under the moniker Neolithic Ceremonial Headdress. If you like dark, meandering ambient music, you can check it out on Spotify, Apple Music, or CDBaby, and coming soon to iTunes, Tidal, and a few other miscellaneous streaming services, and perhaps a Bandcamp page as time allows.

A pretty stunning album cover, am I right?

As you might imagine, I am immensely proud of this work. It was recorded between June and November of this year (outdoors, on my back patio no less) using a small Eurorack rig. Here is the setup I used for most of the work: 

As you can see, this is a fairly modest setup, comprising roughly half of my modules. On a few tracks I brought in an off-rack Circadian Rhythms and one or two other modules, but the configuration above truly is the heart of the album, and I think being fairly consistent with the setup has lent a certain continuity across all tracks.; despite each having a distinct sound and construction, they are unmistakably siblings of each other. It's heavy on DSP, light on VCAs and modulation, but it all turned out pretty great.

If you have any questions about this rack or production of this album, I'd be happy to answer them.

Some links and whatnot for your enjoyment:

Day 222 - 3D Printed Odds and Ends

It's no secret I have a 3D printing fetish. To take an idea from its most basic conception to a physical product in the span of an afternoon is a truly remarkable thing. Whereas this once required a certain degree of highly specialized knowledge of woodworking, pottery, plastic casting, or metalworking, the modern world has given us 3D printing, which, although not entirely without its own technical challenges, has collapsed hours and hours of strenuous effort into mere moments. So, yeah, being a person without a lot of specialized knowledge in artisanal disciplines, I am a big fan.

Merging my hobby of 3D printing with my love of electronic music, I present to you a few designs.

3D printed eurorack rails affixed to a 3d printed bracket.

Here's a design for 3d printed rails. Their design is sort of specific to some brackets I had had in mind, also pictured (whose design is similarly conceived to complement that of the rails). I don't know what all risks I'm taking by mounting stuff on plastic rails, though heat dissipation comes up in a lot of threads about the uZeus. That said, I've seen people screw these things directly on wood, and you certainly don't get more insulating than that. I'd wager the heat-sinking properties of the aluminum rails is overstated and that this will be suitable.

I'd like to mention that I am providing these designes for strictly experimental purposes; they have not undergone any rigorous testing and I cannot make any promises about their safety to you and your equipment.

Stiffness is another major consideration when talking plastic. You certainly don't want rails bending this way and that. For the print pictured above I chose a carbon fiber PLA from ProtoPasta, who makes some quality exotic filaments. This material is extremely stiff, but it's also extremely expensive in comparison to plain-Jane PLA. My advice to anyone going this route is to make sure you have your settings dialed in perfectly when using this filament, lest continual reprints cost you dearly.

The cheaper alternative is to use regular PLA, which, when printed dense enough, is more than adequate for the job. It will be a fair amount heavier than the carbon fiber and lack the beautiful, matte black. But you can have as many rails as you desire for only a dollar or two a pair, depending on your settings and filament cost.

Of course, a pair of rails isn't going to get you much if you don't have a bracket into which to affix them. If you're intimidated by woodworking (which you shouldn't be; see my post about DIYing a wooden case), lazy, or just want to put your 3D printer to good use, then I have also provided an alternative, and one that plays quite nicely with the rails described above. See my Parameteric Eurorack Bracket on Thingiverse for fun and adventure. Witness the glory of my entirely 3D printed (except for screws and nuts) Eurorack case:

Now isn't that special? You're probably wondering what the hell I was thinking in the selection of my modules here, but I promise you it's all cool... this case will serve as a supplement to my Portable Rig, which will occasionally benefit from an outboard sequencer, trigger source, and the modular world's two quirkiest percussion modules in the Dinky's Taiko and Mysteron.

As you can see, the printed 6U brackets have customizable angles for each tier, which I think is pretty nifty. You might not have guessed it, but this turned out to be pretty challenging to get just right, and provided a firm reminder of all the things I ever hated about trigonometry. I've been wondering what benefit is conferred by these progressive angles such as I see on a variety of cases and such as are implemented in this design. I haven't come up with anything yet, other than it makes a pretty striking visual impression. Any thoughts?

Again, I stress that I haven't tested these prints in any sort of serious way, and that there is risk implied in their use. They are merely fun experiments.

Day 160 - The Portable Rig

I've been quiet, but largely because I've been busy, and--let's face it--as I continue on my Eurorack journey, I am better to discern keen observations from banal, masturbatory drivel. I hope to try to bring more of the former and a little slightly less of the latter.

One thing I noticed about my Pittsburg Modular Structure 360 is that it is unwieldy to move around. Yeah, I can move it around the house with a little bit of elbow grease, and wouldn't feel bad about taking it out and about with me. After all, it is durable and incredibly good-looking. But, free spirit that I am, I was craving something even more portable, something that would fit on my lap and I could move about with ease.

So, I bought one of Synthrotek's 84hp 6U+1U waterproof cases. Slimline and in SOLAS orange, of course. The thing is light as feather (well, about 20 pounds of feathers after all the modules are in) and is incredibly attractive. The orange practically glows (see below).

Somehow the light from the strips of LEDs mounted on my workbench (not shown) give off a purple cast on camera and make the plastic of the case radiate an intense life-preserver orange.

I was expecting the shift from 360hp to 168 to be a little painful, but it caused me instead to make carefully considered, deliberate choices about which modules belonged, and which did not. Noticeably absent are the any "performance" modules, such as Pressure Points or Rene, or something along those lines. This perhaps puts this configuration squarely into more experimental territory, but I felt like the space was better served creating a unique "voice" that was controlled with CV rather than touch pads. There's certainly plenty of opportunity for an off-rack 1V/Oct keyboard or sequencer if the need overtakes me.

I am perhaps relying too heavily on the Ornament and Crime to provide quantized voltages for melodies and such. As awesome as the module is, its capabilities in the musical space can take me only so far. I will see how it is I wield this module in the crafting of sound, and if I'm not taking better advantage of it, I'll replace it with a quantizer and some other doodads.

Since this picture was taken I have also replaced the Intellijel Linix with a Make Noise Wogglebug, an LxD, and a 2hp Filt. While, yes, you can never have too many VCAs as they say, but, after some experimentation, I felt the space was better served with some random. The LxD, as a dual low-pass-gate serves as a sort of VCA anyway.

Of course, I still have plans for my 360hp case. I'd like to see it turned into an amazing percussion powerhouse. I'm not sure there are enough VCOs on the portable rig to belt out any serious amount of percussion. This of course is subject to the results of hours of experimentation.

What the portable rig is good at is some pretty intense ambient. Dark, atmospheric stuff. Here's an example I threw together while jamming on my back porch, wearing my spiffiest space-man suit:

Day 104 - Experiment In "Found Sound"

I'd never paid a lot of attention to the "found sound" movement. Sample is certainly ubiquitous enough in electronic music that I typically don't give a second thought when I hear some grainy recording of old timey radio or television as a prominent part of a piece. '50s sci-fi cinema seems to be a common well into which to dip a musical brush, and naturally you'll hear the Amen break a dozen times over the course of any electronica playlist worth its salt, but it has never really been part of my creative palette.

Enter the Make Noise Morphagene, a so-called "tape and microsound" module released a month or so ago. I first saw a demo from NAMM 2017, and, while I thought it was pretty interesting, I didn't think it was a great match for the music I like to make... initially. As demos and tutorials started trickling out last month, I realized that this module could have some truly fantastic sonic potential and decided I'd give it a try, knowing that if I didn't like it I could surely find it a good home.

After a few days of playing with it, I can comfortably say that not only do I really like this module, but I can imagine it becoming a prominent tool in my toolkit, perhaps even completely reshaping my creative workflow. I can see myself starting to carry a portable recorder to collect interesting sounds to feed to the Morphagene, as if the module were the temple of some dark Pagan god and I were its faithful disciple. I certainly need to do some research on field recording before I get to that point, sure, but suffice it to say: I am pretty jazzed about the Morphagene.

Above you will see a quick experiment I whipped up yesterday after a few minutes with the Morphagene. Enjoy and carpe diem!

Day 94 - Workspace Photos

I'm in the process of reprovisioning my office such that all the accoutrements of my various hobbies are not piled on top of each other. Here's a picture of the corner with my synth.

Day 69 - The Meta-Conductor and the Jazz Musician

I've recently had a few occasions to show off some YouTube videos of my modular rig to some friends and associates and somewhat predictably their initial reaction is something along the lines of "Whoa, there are so many wires, that looks incredibly complicated!" True enough, right? After a few minutes of gazing upon the hairy knot of cables and the starfield of blinking LEDs, almost without fail they follow up with a question that is some variation of the following:

"How do you tell it what notes to play?"

Often "Where the hell is the keyboard?", this question can have some complicated answers if you're using quantized random voltages, as I often do. If you're using sequencers, the answer may be a little less obtuse, though I think I might be hard pressed to explain the full range of functionality if something like the Make Noise René which seems to rejoice in its own (mild) incomprehensibility. A less abstract sequencer such as the Intellijel Metropolis is fairly easy to explain and simple to demonstrate to a layperson. But these explanations are often unsatisfactory, as they fail to address the unspoken and perhaps even unconscious subtext in their question, a subtext with some pretty deep implications.

This subtext might be best expressed as "If, for the most part, you're not telling your instrument what notes to play, then are you really playing an instrument at all, and if not then what is it exactly you are doing?"  In short "Are you really a musician?" A good question indeed. Although I would certainly concede that throughout most of my noodling, jams, and performances, I am not concerned with telling my machine which notes to play at any given moment, and yet I am producing sound that (occasionally) resembles music. So I would say, yeah, I'm playing a musical instrument. And yet that's not quite right.

The role of a modular synthesists may perhaps be more aptly compared to that of an orchestral conductor who, besides keeping time, controls the dynamics of a section, urges timbre, and crafts the emotive message of a performance. In modular terms, he is a mixer, a clock, and a source of modulation in one small sweaty package (lol @ "small sweaty package"). And so that is a comparison fits. Almost.

"Almost" because there's no one among modular synthesists who is, for the duration of his performance, actively keeping time (i.e., tapping on a tempo button) or twisting every knob there is to be twisted at any one time. There are modules that take care of that for us: clocks, LFOs, et al. In essence, a modular synth performer, is a conductor-of-conductors; a Meta-Conductor. Catchy, yeah? But it's still not quite right.

Though a conductor may impart each performance with subtle differences those differences are subtle, and often unintended. (Bear in mind I say this with very little authority on the subject, so feel free to drop a comment to call me on my bullshit.) Orchestral performances are meticulously rehearsed affairs that are thoroughly drilled into the musicians for months before they are ever presented to a live audience. In contrast, compositions coming out of the modular world (with some exceptions) come from a musical philosophy that is far less regimented, far less concerned with following a score. It's a lot more like jazz.

I might not be the first to suggest the comparison between modular synthesists and jazz musicians. It's obvious once you spend a little bit of time in the modular world, especially as you trek out to the West Coast (in modular terms) and experience some of the more experimental (a.k.a., avant-garde) compositions that arise from the Buchla sensibilities. In the same manner that a jazz quintet puts a spin on an old jazz standard, a modular synthesist puts a spin on each performance, subtly or not adjusting the various parameters over which they have control. In jazz these parameters might be rhythm, harmony, melody, timbre, etcetera, and so it is in the modular world too.

In the words of bassist Charles Mingus, "You can't improvise on nothing, man. You've got to improvise on something." And that might be true in the context of a jazz band. After all, without some framework to tie all the parts together, you can quickly descend into non-musical chaos. Of coarse "non-musical chaos" describes a lot of modular "music" out there, for better or worse. Still, a virtuoso musician (jazz or otherwise) might not need to rely on a framework to tie things together. They can just play and play and play, the music continually evolving. And this is true of the typical modular performance as well. Perhaps as with the jazz virtuoso, they start with something small in their head, a musical seed, and then pick up their instrument and watch it grow. My own compositions tend to follow this sort of approach, and though I hate the word "organic" in most artistic contexts, it seems to fit well enough here. No two trees grow exactly the same, even if they've come from the seeds of the same parent, and so it is with improvised music. No matter how much I meticulously patch my rack, no two performances are the same, even if I'm not doing a lot of in-process patching. Simply glitching out my hihats or bumping the coarse tuning knob on an oscillator will instantly take my music on a strange an unexpected journey. Sometimes it might even not sound like shit.

So where does this leave us? How do we answer the "Are you playing a musical instrument or not?" sort of questions? As with most questions where art is concerned, there's not going to be an answer the everyone finds satisfactory. I'm a musician, in the sense that I produce music; my instrument is this rack of modules. I'm a conductor in the sense that I conduct a flurry of unseen electronic hands; my score is the patch, this tangle of cables. I'm a jazz performer in the sense that I improvise, experiment, and push against the boundaries of music; my weapon of choice is modulation. So, I dunno. I kind of like as a response: "I'm a jazz meta-conductor."

Day 52 - Jamming in the Dark

I snapped this picture this morning while noodling around. I think it s a quintessential portrayal of a modular enthusiast enraptured by their machine, hypnotized by the flashing lights and tangle of cables.

Day 48 - DIY Eurorack Case, A first attempt

One of the most expensive up-front investments in the Land of Eurorack is a case in which to affix all your beautiful modules. At $20-$40US per hp for a powered case, the price stacks pretty quickly. This is especially true if you're entering Eurorack with grand ambitions of expansion (and who isn't, am I right?), such that the barrier of entry can be intimidating. Luckily, there are some DIY options that, although intimidating in their own right, can ameliorate some of the financial burden of getting started.

After rapidly filling up my 360hp case, I decided to move some of my sequencer modules into a smaller skiff-like rack. Sequencers tend to take up a little more space than your average module, and it's useful to have them not obstructed by cables for the sake of on-the-fly changes. A skiff format (~50mm deep) makes the most sense here; being thinner allows for a little bit more mobility.

Bill of Materials

• Some red oak planks, 50mm high or more and 12mm thick. The wood pictured is actually only 30mm high, which is barely tall enough for most modules, even skiff compatible ones.
• Rubber feet. If you're an idiot like me and buy planks that aren't tall enough, get some fairly large rubber feet.
• Wood screws
• Eurorack rails. These ones worked very well for me, but you can get them much cheaper elsewhere.
• A power source and power supply. The uZeus from Tip Top Audio is a decent enough deal, provides 5v power, and is widely available. There might be options that are even more affordable. Obviously, you'll have to be satisfied with the flying bus cable, but a power bus stick might be preferable though you'll have to add a "bottom" to the case to which to mount the power bus.
• M4 screws to affix the rails to the case.
• Some wood filler if you are countersinking your screws.
• Wood stain. I would be remiss to not recommend a tea-based stain with a simple gray wash as pictured above and below. A gray wash is as easy as mixing up 1 part gray latex pain and 4 parts water.

I didn't document the putting-it-all-together process, since I have no idea what I'm doing, but it's actually fairly straightforward.

Here's the gist of the process: Drill some pilot holes for the wood screws (bonus points if you can countersink your screws). Then screw the frame together, and mark out where the screws for your rails will be attached with the M4 screws. Drill out the holes for the M4 screws. Screw the rails in place and apply wood putty if desired and let it dry. At this point you can stain your frame, being careful not to slop a bunch of stain on the rails. Let it all dry, add your rubber feet, and Bob's your uncle, as they say.

Not so bad, right? And all done for the cost of dinner and a movie, assuming you're one of those people who gets a lot of candies and whatnot at the theater. Again, there are probably some cheaper options, particularly in regards to the rails and the power supply. The next time I make one of these, I'll see if I can't better document the process of drilling out the holes and putting things together. Enjoy and carpe diem!

Day 33 - Sunrise Ambient 1a

Here's kind of a fun idea! Dragging all my shit outside and doing a nice little jam in time for the sun rise. It turned out pretty good (see video below), though I'll freely admit it's not the most dynamic piece of music I can imagine. As a matter of fact it's quite simplistic in its composition. The melody (the most prominent element of the piece) is actually born of an experiment in using the Make Noise Maths function generators to shape a control voltage that is then fed into the Ornament and Crime CopierMaschine mode. It turned out to produce some pretty nice little melodies, but required that I dig my fingers into that nest of cables to turn the attenuator knobs on the Maths in order to change the melody. So, I dunno, A minus for effort?

Day 26 - BloopFwoopFwoop 1a

Note: Apparently I forgot to hit the "Publish" button on this newfangled blog thing and thus this gets published a week or so after the recording was made, so "Day 26" is incongruous with the publish date. I really can count, I swear.

I've whipped up another little jam on my modular (see video below). This one came together quite quickly. I'm still struggling getting the mix right, but I think I'm hearing overall improvements. I don't know if it's the adapters or the mixer itself, but the headphones output sounds very strange. Running it to my computer via USB and plugging in my headphones there seems to work well, but I'd much rather just plug in my headphones.

Patch notes

Three channels from the Ornament and Crime in Turing Machine mode proved 1V/Octive to the Mutable Instruments Edges. Edges is gated by Intellijel Plog by way of the Doepfer Quad ASDR (doesn't actually provide an envelope, but gives me the opportunity to use variable gate lengths). Edges is run through Clouds, whose parameters are modulated by various sources, most notable the 4ms Pingable LFO.

The fourth channel from Ornament and Crime provides a melody to the Make Noise DPO's second oscillator, whose waveshaping parameters are modulated via Maths. "Final" VCO output to Optomix and on to the Erbe Verb.

Sine output on DPO's first oscillator is output to the MMG, which is struck by the end-of-decay trigger on one of the ASDR channels, providing a nice vactrol bongo.

Bass drum and hihats come from Tiptop audio drum modules.