Piece 9 (from Outta Space) - the final piece in this series

The final piece in this series (exploring chaotic control systems in VCV Rack, and its iPad realization, miRack) is an example of a hand-controlled randomly-controlled feedback system involving multiple random generators and multiple Low Frequency Oscillators, controlling four Oscillators arranged in a feedback loop.  So the result could be a mess, but not nearly as messy as when we add manual control from an X-Y pad on a Korg nanoKEY.  This allows me to select between 10 different chaotic states of the system, and also to control the degree of reverb that will be applied to it.  NOW were getting really messy, but also having a patch that allows me a pretty great degree of physical control in the shaping of the sound.  Recently, I've been doing some research into what I did in my very early analog synthesis work and with this piece, I think I'm approaching the kind of verve and sonic shaping I used in those days, while working with the capabilities of the latest developments in modular design.  The patch is based on the VCV Rack Audible Instruments realisations of Olivier Gillet's Mutable Instruments designs, with Antonio Tuzzi's NYSTHI modules providing control, display, mixing and reverb functions.  I especially like the four waterfall displays on the right.  They provide a real sense of a real-time visual score of the sound gestures in the piece

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A Polyrhythm (Rock Artist Reverb)

This one - the eighth in the series, uses two randomish sources - the stoermelder Hive hexagonal sequencer from Benjamin Dill and Anthony Lexander Matos and three iggy.labs More Ideas - an "elementary cellular automata" - by Isabel Kapriskie, connected in a feedback loop and also controlled by the Hive.  These control two sets of oscillators.  One, a set of two FM pairs (using Antonio Tuzzi's NYSTHI TZOP oscillators) which are processed through the NYSTHI Convolvzilla convolution reverb (the impulse response in the reverb is classic jazz DJ (and virtuoso jazz singer) DeeDee Bridgewater saying "rock artist"); and the other, two Audible Instruments Resonators, making physically modeled percussion sounds, processed by the NYSTHI Plateverb.  The tuning is a 7-note Recurrence Relation (Additive Sequence) scale based on Erv Wilson's work (made with Marcus Hobbs' Wilsonic app), and the two polyrhythmic Improptu Clocked modules (by Marc Boule) are driven by the Seriously Slow LFO from Frozen Wasteland (Eric Sterling).  This LFO makes a single ascending ramp, five minutes long, which drives the piece in a continuous accelerando for its duration.  This may all sound like techno-mumbo-jumbo to the uninitiated, but what it produces is a (to my ears anyway) very nice complex accelerating polyrhythm with enough timbral interest to keep my ears puzzling things out as well.  A kind of audible maze for one's ears, and consciousness, to happily wander within.  The long cast-list of module developers shows a bit of the incredible community collective effort that is involved in the VCV Rack project. 

New book on Grainger and Cross Free Music Experiments

Latest - Nov 2020 - reviews in Soundbytes

Two new reviews in the latest Soundbytes.

In this issues Music for Tablets, we review 3 distortion plugins from K-Devices, and very nice (and inexpensive) devices they are too:

https://soundbytesmag.net/music-for-tablets-three-ios-sound-manglers-from-k-devices/

Then, there's a review of an update on UVI's already wonderful World Suite.  The new version has even more goodies to keep your ethnomusicological compositional desires happy and satisfied:

https://soundbytesmag.net/review-world-suite-2-from-uvi/

Enjoy!

Just Another Just Chorale - the latest in the series

This latest tune continues the explorations of chaotic system generation modules in VCV Rack and miRack.  Here, however, I'm making a thicker texture, one that is more chorale like, and one that has a more continuously shaped sense of phrasing.  The central core of this piece is Antonio Tuzzi's "Boh!ngler" module, a kind of sample and hold feeding a shift register feedback circuit.  It can produce 16 simultaneous (and related) random control sequences. Quite useful. Michael Hetrick's Random Gates distributes the first 8 voltages to 8 separate oscillators, which are then processed through 8 Lindenberg West Coast wave shapers.  Processing of the Boh!ngler outputs was done with a set of Holonic Systems Swiss Cheese Knife modules.  This piece was made on the iPad, and I thought it would be fun to try out the Apple Pencil as a means of control.  This worked wonderfully well - the tiny knobs in miRack responded quite readily to the pencil, and gave me quite fine control, especially of the frequency of the main driving Low Frequency Oscillator.  The oscillators are playing in a 25-tone Just Intonation scale - made by adding up several 7 note Erv Wilson additive sequence scales (made in Wilsonic), then mixing them with the inversion of those same scales (following Harry Partch's notion that any good scale should be symmetrical), making the 25 note scale heard here.  It consists of mostly very consonant Just intervals with the occasional close and crunchy relationships.  When used over a several octave range, with pitches randomly selected by the 

Boh!ngler control sequences, the result seems to be a pleasing mix of consonance and dissonance.  This is, once again, a live performance, this time on the iPad Pro, improvising within the limits and parameters of the patch.