Temporal Drift: Exploring Time Dilation with Modular Synthesis

‪@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC‬ Multimod (MM) is back for round two. I enjoyed all the pitch sequence MM demos I've seen, sending one sequence to multiple oscillators. I wondered if it was possible to also trigger LPGs in sync with the distributed sequences. I decided a second MM would be needed to test the idea. And yes, it works. The trick is to match the Spread/Phase/Time knob positions on both MMs, and then mult offsets & modulation sources before sending them to matching inputs on the MMs. Rene is clocked from Pam's and doing a simple minor pentatonic sequence, with CV from Rene sent to one MM and gate sent to the other. The MM's are not clocked, but there's a reset going into them every 16 bars from Pam's. I thought, just in case the modulation throws them too out-of-sync, it would be good to bring them home every so often. Though the patch is so freeform, I'm not sure it mattered to do that.

I went all the way and patched eight different oscillators, and ran them through as many LPGs as I could. The idea was to make each sound very short so I could clearly hear the work MM is doing (some sounds are not short, but that's okay). Everything except the bass is mixed through ‪@busycircuits‬ Jumble Henge, and from there through the ‪@strymon‬ Starlab before recording in the DAW. The occasional glide from Rene gave it some liquid droops and drops.

I think when you use forward/backward/ping-pong (and maybe wow & flutter ping pong?) read modes, the V/O changes and gate timings line up in time with one another. When you use a random mode they don't. Which can sound also sound cool. I'm not sure about staircase mode. Purple / Wow and Flutter Ping-Pong Read was my favorite because of how it treated the ramp envelope going into Rene's X-CV (Add) every 9 bars; it plays the downward ramp both up and down, because of its fwd + back read. Gave the patch a little pitch run to play around with. And with the slowdown/speedup of the read 'head', you get extra time dilation.

Even though it's a proof of concept patch it came out kind of nice so I let it go for a while. I'm delighted at how diverse all the patterns are, if you can even call them patterns. I'm certain I've barely touched on the power of this module.

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/northeastpas...

#eurorack #synthesizer #ambientmusic #ambient #ambientsounds #electronicmusic #modularsynth #modularsynthesizer