After getting an interesting voice using a double delay, I decided to spend some time playing with delays. After a lot of experimenting, a bunch of failed attempts and a couple of working ideas, I ended up with this patch.
The voice that started it all is simple enough: every four beats, play one of the notes of the current chord through a Dark Energy module. That is sent into a SurgeXT delay. The two sides of the delay are set to give cross feedback into each other, and the left side is set to a longer delay time (4s), while the right side is set shorter (1.25s). This gives the effect that the note repeats a couple of times on one side, and then comes back a couple of seconds later to repeat again. And while the repeats of this note slowly fade out, the next note starts on the same journey. The result is that the simple one-note-per-measure input ends up as a more complex interweaving pattern that is then sent through a reverb and a filter.
To drive all this, a chord sequence was needed, so an Impromptu PhraseSeq32 module is programmed to provide this. And since one chord sequence starts getting boring after a while, I added two more sequences to the module after a while, with a Sample & Hold switching between them at random.
Although delays make for an interesting melody and/or rhythm voice, there is also a need for a stable pass in this patch. Two such voices are the bass voices. A first bass voice combines (modulated) Terrorform and Basal modules into a mixer and through a filter. The modulation of the Shaper and Enhancer on the Terrorform occasionally gives this voice a bit of a growl. A second bass voice uses the stereo output of the Instruo Cruïnn module, sends it through two I-o47 filters and fades the voice in and out using two Instruo Vinca modules before sending it through a stereo Chorus and Reverb.
A third non-delay voice constructs a pad sound by quickly switching between the root and the third of the current chord using the Prodigal Son super-saw module. The output is filtered by a Vult Freak module and spread out using a wet-only reverb module.
The next voice is partly relying on a delay. On the one side, it is playing the root, third and fifth notes of the current chord using a regular filtered sawtooth VCO without applying any delay effect, and on the other side, the same notes are sent through a Dark Energy module (with VCA enabled) into a Tap Dancer delay. Both outputs are mixed together into one voice. While the regular sawtooth VCO signal provides a constant sound here, the delayed Dark Energy provides a bit more of a pulsing effect at the start of each chord.
But a delay doesn't always have to be distinguishable as a delay sound. Another voice in this patch uses the Tap Dancer delay to give the voice a bit more of a fade-out effect. In this voice, two FM-OP modules play longer notes from the A minor pentatonic scale into a Tap Dancer delay. The delay is set to mostly output the delay sound itself, which due to the longer notes being played, is a blend of repeats that slowly fades out with a much more interesting texture then what you would get if the fade out was done using a simple VCA.
The next voice took a lot of experimenting, and passed by at least three completely different setups before ending up in its current form. In this voice, the delay isn't done using a dedicated delay module, but instead is more of a DIY-delay approach by using the Nysthi Simpliciter. The notes in this voice are generated by sending an LFO (with some modulation applied to change its rate) through a quantizer set to the A minor pentatonic scale. Both the sawtooth and triangle output of a VCO are combined to play these notes through a filter, and the result is sent into the left side of the Simpliciter recorder. The Simpliciter is triggered to record every other measure, and subsequently play it back in reverse. The left output of the Simpliciter is also connected to its own right input. Because the module is recording both the incoming signal and the reverse signal of whatever was recorded before, the result is a delay-like effect where the original signal is first repeated in reverse, and subsequently back in its original form, all the while slowly fading out.
The last voice provides a bit of a low pulse to the patch by sending the root note through a Bleak and aBasal VCO, applying VCA and filtering to it, and subsequently sending it into a Chronoblob delay set to a 1.5 off-beat.
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___ Setup ___
- VCV Rack 2.5.2 Pro on Windows
- All audio generated internally within VCV Rack (no external connections)
- Video is captured by OBS
- RAW FLAC Audio output from VCV Rack
- Audio recording synced to OBS, and fade added at the end with Reaper
- OBS video and Reaper audio are merged and cut to length using Shutter Encoder.
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