Strings of Time

When I first started building my rack, I remember being very eager to hear what sounds I could actually produce. My first patches were nothing special, an oscillator being fed some voltages, changing the pitch, mostly. But it sounded so cool to me and it was unlike anything I've ever heard before.

After a bit of tweaking, researching and frankly just exploring what each of my modules could do, I managed to put together a patch that sounded pretty decent (at least to me). 

Without further ado, here is my first real patch: "Strings of Time"

Remember in Guitar Hero those notes that you could hit without strumming? That's exactly what's going on here!

When Pluck is strummed, TM varies it's pitch. If the decay of Pluck is fast, no additional notes are heard (staccato), but if the decay is slow, you hear a soft variety of notes. The Doepfer LFO varies the speed of decay. 

Here are the full details:

• Pam's Workout is strumming 2HP Pluck on every 4th beat, triggering 2HP TM every 16th of a beat and triggering Expert Sleepers Disting mk2

• The voltages from TM are put through Shades (in attenuverter mode) to control the range of voltages that pass through. From 12 o'clock, turning clockwise increases the range. These filtered voltages are put through 2HP Tune, to quantize them to a melodic scale (major here), then inputted into Pluck's V/OCT input

• Pluck's audio output is sent to Expert Sleepers Disting mk2, which is set to clockable delay mode. In this mode, Disting mk2 will add a delay/echo effect to an inputted audio source, clocked to a inputted clock source

• An inverted sawtooth wave from the Doepher LFO is sent to Pluck's decay input, to add some modulation to the patch

What struck me most about this patch was that it was exactly the sound I was looking to get out of my rack, an ambient, echo-like feel, with some randomness added to it. It's feelings like these that make you want to explore even more, to see how you can make what you love sound even better!

What was your first patch like? How did it sound? Let me know in the comments below!

Happy patching friends,

-Uncle Peter