The Three Body Problem is a physics problem. It concerns the gravitational relationships between three bodies in space. For example, the Earth, Moon and Sun. Or a Triple Star system.

On hearing about it I almost immediately thought of a patch. The basic idea is to patch three LFOs in such a relationship that the period of each LFO is modulated by the mixed outputs of the other two. Realizing this on the Quantisise meant simply using the matrix mixer on the blue panel. The mixed triangle outputs of two LFOs are patched to the CV input of the third, passing through a sample and hold that is triggered on each period of the LFO being controlled (see Quantisise posts for more about this). The output of that sample sample and hold is passed on to be re-sampled by the next LFO, using the ‘castle’ S&H. This sample is then used to control the frequency of an oscillator, in this case one of the remaining three in the Quantisise.

Each of the audio frequency oscillators is passed through a treatment, either a Serge wave multiplier or a CGS tube VCA. Then the three signals are mixed to stereo and sent to Mutable Instruments Clouds. An interesting ‘defect’ or feature of the VCOs in the Quantisise is that when receiving a jump in the frequency CV they impart a little glissando of their own, over which there is no control.