Been playing with a patch using the CGS Super Psycho LFO.  I decided to fire up Audio Mulch with the idea to try sampling.  Yikes!  Me.  Sampling.  I recorded a bit of the Psycho LFO patch and then played it back through a Bubble Blower, a contraption that reads samples and trashes them all sorts of ways I don’t understand.  I just play with all the sliders and listen.  Then I added an S-Delay to it.  Then I doubled it all by feeding a supplied sample file, fluoro-seqence.wav, into a second Bubble Blower and another S-Delay.  I mixed these in real time and mouse-twiddled the knobs.  It’s pretty cool, actually.

 

 Standard Podcast [3:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (55)

First example recording based on the CGS Super Psycho LFO.  The Psycho LFO is running all six LFO’s in low frequency mode.  I used the Modcan CV Recorder to make four copies of it at different times.  Two of the four psycho CV outputs patch into CGS Slope Detectors, resulting in gates for triggering four MOTM-800 envelope generators that in turn modulate the cutoff frequencies of each of the Cynthia Quad Low Pass Gates.  Four VCO’s generate audio, modulated with a bunch of sample and holds, including two CGS Analog Shift Registers.  The WoggleBug Smooth output is tracked and held by two Oakley S&H’s.  The Teezer VCO is linear FM’ed by one of the other VCO’s.  Finally, the MPX-1 Garage reverb finishes it.

 

 Wild Beast [2:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (54)

Arpeggio Drone is based on the example project of the same name that comes with Audio Mulch.  I used it to learn the arpeggiator, so I made a copy of the example project and tweaked the parameters quite a bit.  Then I added modular sound into the mix by including the Modcan VCDO, slowly modulated by a MOTM-320 LFO.  I simply tuned the VCDO to match the pitch of the Mulch oscillators.  And I added the Blacet StonZ Phaser, as well.  This recording was actually performed by manually stopping and starting the arpeggiator clock in Mulch in real time.

 

 Standard Podcast [4:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (85)

Who needs a step sequencer, if you’ve got a Blacet Binary Zone!  This recording shares the same basic patch with  ‘Sequence with MPX Effects’.  The Binary Zone outputs, normal and inverted, are each separately quantized by one half of the Modcan Dual Quantizer.  One drives the Cynthia ZerOscillator, the other the Fritz Teezer VCO one volt per octave inputs.  (No linear FM is used, despite the choice of VCOs.  I  patched it up, but it was too raucous for what I wanted here.)  Sawtooth waves from each VCO are filtered with a MOTM-490 Moog-style low pass VCF.  A MOTM-800 envelope generator twangs the filters, and two Oakley ADSR/VCA modules envelope the final audio.  That’s the basic patch.  I performed an improvisation on the quantizer scale selection knobs and on the Binary Zone.

This version uses the dual Pulse Comb Filter from Audio Mulch that I’ve been playing around with lately.  It’s the same mulch patch as the other pulse comb stuff posted here, but with different settings (there’s a lot of settings to play with!).

 

 Standard Podcast [4:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (66)

Who needs a step sequencer, if you’ve got a Blacet Binary Zone!  This recording shares the same basic patch with  ‘Sequence with Mulch effects’.  The Binary Zone outputs, normal and inverted, are each separately quantized by one half of the Modcan Dual Quantizer.  One drives the Cynthia ZerOscillator, the other the Fritz Teezer VCO one volt per octave inputs.  (No linear FM is used, despite the choice of VCOs.  I  patched it up, but it was too raucous for what I wanted here.)  Sawtooth waves from each VCO are filtered with a MOTM-490 Moog-style low pass VCF.  A MOTM-800 envelope generator twangs the filters, and two Oakley ADSR/VCA modules envelope the final audio.  That’s the basic patch.  I performed an improvisation on the quantizer scale selection knobs and on the Binary Zone.

This version uses two additional effects.  The MOTM-410 sweeps the sound with two bandpass filters, resulting in a stereo effect.  And the MPX-1 Double Delay.

 

 Standard Podcast [4:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (60)

Same modular patch as Octaverb Zone, but with a totally different outboard effect.  This is an application of the Pulse Comb filter of Audio Mulch.  Actually, two Pulse Comb filters, one per stereo channel.  I’m having a blast playing with Audio Mulch.  There’s so much to learn.  I’m limiting myself initially to exploring effects applications, i.e. patches where a stereo input from my synthesizer passes through sound processors and is mixed back with the original, just like any effect.

I don’t completely fathom the Pulse Comb yet.  It is a type of delay line with envelopes.  I learned that the parameter values need plenty of tweaking and trial to obtain the just the right effect.  I set the repeat frequencies to match fairly closely to the Binary Zone clock, but not synchronized.  And I set the echo times fairly long and each slightly different.  The Pulse Comb has the ability to pitch shift up or down, too!  But that feature didn’t lend itself to this patch.

The recording starts out dry, with just the modular patch running.  Gradually the pulse comb effects are mixed in, become wildly intense around the middle of the piece and then gradually being mixed back to dry.

 

 Standard Podcast [3:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (61)

This is an application of the Lexicon MPX-1 5th-Octaverb preset, running in the suboctave mode.  The melody is generated by the Blacet Binary Zone driving two MOTM-300 VCOs with the Modcan Dual Quantizer in the middle.  Some randomness hits the quantizer transpose CV input.   The notes are gated by envelopes triggered by the pulse outputs of the quantizers, which yield a pulse whenever a note changes.  MOTM-440 and MOTM-480 filters are included.

 

 Standard Podcast [3:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (51)

Here’s a little composition that uses live input from my MOTM processed through Audio Mulch and Lexicon MPX-1 Delays.  I mixed this in real time.  It starts with raw, unprocessed MOTM, which consists of a random quantized tone generator of two MOTM-300 VCOs through one half of a MOTM-480 filter.  Then I bring up the simple echo delay from the MPX-1.  After that gets going I use a cross fader inside Audio Mulch to mix in a software delay.  About half way through I change the FREQ pot on the MOTM-480 a little.  At the end first the software and then the hardware delays are faded out, in reverse of the beginning.  It’s simple but interesting.  I am excited about Audio Mulch allowing me to produce better compositions.  If I take more time than I did for this recording, it’ll be better.  But this is cool.

 

 Standard Podcast [3:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (56)

I’ve given into the dark side and my new light sabre is Audio Mulch.  I’ve been trying out all the basic demo patches.  One of them is called RissetPan.  It uses seven RissetTones contraptions (a contraption is Audio Mulch lingo for a patchable module) mixed together.  This recording is nothing more than that demo passed through the Classic Detune on the Lexicon MPX-1.  No MOTM or any other ‘real’ synthesizer modules used.  You’ve got to hear this.

 

 Standard Podcast [2:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (60)

Am I being drawn to the dark side?  Using a computer for audio processing!  The Apple Macbook Pro combined with the Konnekt6 firewire interface opens up a lot of audio possibilities.  I learned about Audio Mulch by hanging out on Muff Wiggler’s message board, and downloaded the 60-day trial.  Audio Mulch provides a modular approach to sound processing.  It has a drag-and-drop work area where you can create instances of effects, mixers, etc., and patch them together with the mouse.  I am a relative newbie to computer audio.  (I’ve used Pro Tools LE and Cubase LE as recorders).  I was hoping I could make use of Audio Mulch as an effects processor in real time, something I didn’t see how to do with Cubase.  And I could!  For this recording I opened a file on the output ‘contraption’ and recorded a WAV in 24-bit resolution.  Then I played it back and routed it to my Tascam SS-R1 to get an MP3.  I was noodling with the Random Walk patch as my input and stumbled on the Audio Mulch 5Combs filter.  You can make as many filters of the same type as you like, so I created two instances of 5Combs for a stereo patch.  Here’s a short example.

 

 Standard Podcast [0:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (55)