Reading The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist has got me pondering the two hemispheres of the human brain. This patch started out as a left hemisphere set of four Quantussy cells and a right hemisphere set of five Quantussy cells. Each hemisphere produced two voices (Oscillator + EG + VCA), the left going through Mimeophon, and the right through Black Stereo Delay.

I tweaked and listened, tweaked and listened and wasn’t satisfied. Each voice being panned hard left or right (each hemisphere produces both left and right outputs) sounded too wide when heard on headphones, though it sounded OK as a stereo field heard through left and right speakers, where each ear can listen to both speakers.

I put my Shakmat Modular SumDif modules, set up for mid-side processing, in between the stereo mix of both hemispheres and the output. The mid and side signals were sent through a dual stereo delay in FX Aid before being combined back to stereo. I found I had to also add a panning mixer, to reduce the channel separation.

The first recording exhibits the wide stereo spread, before doing mid-side processing. It’s also brighter then the following three recordings. The left is edgier, due to using pulse waves and through-zero FM, and the right has some dynamic wave shaping.

This next recording is only of the right hemisphere, that uses the Black Stereo Delay. It also adds tilt equalization from River Marble, cutting the sharpest highs. I wanted to tone it down a bit and removed the edgy wave shapes too.

The following recording is only of the left hemisphere, that uses Mimeophon. Same tilt eq.

The fourth recording is a mix of the right and left hemispheres. (You can also try playing the right and left hemisphere recordings together, above, for a different take.)